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TRIBE OF MENTORS, TOOLS OF TITANS, TIM FERRISS, TIMOTHY FERRISS, THE 4-HOUR, THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK, THE 4-HOUR BODY, THE 4-HOUR CHEF, SLOW-CARB DIET, OTK, and 5-BULLET FRIDAY are trademarks or registered trademarks, all under license. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Four-time #1 bestselling author and podcast giant Tim Ferriss has tracked down more than 100 eclectic mentors to help him, and you, navigate life. Through short, action-packed profiles, he shares their secrets for success, happiness and meaning. No matter the challenge or opportunity, something in these pages can help.

INTRODUCTION

Two thousand seventeen was an unusual year for me. The first six months were a slow simmer, and then, within a matter of weeks, I turned 40, my first book (The 4-Hour Workweek) had its tenth anniversary, several people in my circle of friends died, and I stepped onstage to explain how I narrowly avoided committing suicide in college.fn1

Truth be told, I never thought I’d make it to 40. My first book was rejected 27 times by publishers. The things that worked out weren’t supposed to work, so I realized on my birthday: I had no plan for after 40.

As often happens at forks in the path—college graduation, quarter-life crisis, midlife crisis, kids leaving home, retirement—questions started to bubble to the surface.

How could I better say no to the noise to better say yes to the adventures I craved?

How could I best reassess my life, my priorities, my view of the world, my place in the world, and my trajectory through the world?

One morning, I wrote down the questions as they came, hoping for a glimmer of clarity. Instead, I felt a wave of anxiety. The list was overwhelming. Noticing that I was holding my breath, I paused and took my eyes off the paper. Then, I did what I often do—whether considering a business decision, personal relationship, or otherwise—I asked myself the one question that helps answer many others …

“This” could be anything. That morning, it was answering a laundry list of big questions.

What would this look like if it were easy? is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re not redlining, you’re not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process.

But what happens if we frame things in terms of elegance instead of strain? Sometimes, we find incredible results with ease instead of stress. Sometimes, we “solve” the problem by completely reframing it.

And that morning, by journaling on this question—What would this look like if it were easy?—in longhand, an idea presented itself. Ninety-nine percent of the page was useless, but there was one seed of a possibility …

More specifically, what if I asked 100+ brilliant people the very questions I want to answer for myself? Or somehow got them to guide me in the right direction?

Would it work? I had no idea, but I did know one thing: If the easy approach failed, the unending-labor-in-the-salt-mines approach was always waiting in the wings. Pain is never out of season if you go shopping for it.

And so it began. First, I scribbled down a list of dream interviewees, which started as one page and quickly became ten. It had to be a list with no limitations: no one too big, too out-of-reach, or too hard to find. Could I get the Dalai Lama? The incredible Temple Grandin? My personal white whale, author Neil Gaiman? Or Ayaan Hirsi Ali? I wrote out the most ambitious, eclectic, unusual list possible. Next, I needed to create an incentive to encourage people to respond, so I worked on a book deal. “Be in my book” might work. From the outset, I told the publisher that it also might not work, and that I’d return the advance if so.

I sent an identical set of 11 questions to some of the most successful, wildly varied, and well-known people on the planet with “Answer your favorite 3 to 5 questions … or more, if the spirit moves you.”

After hitting “send” dozens of times, I clasped my hands to my excited writer’s chest with bated breath, to which the universe replied with … silence. Crickets.

For 12 to 24 hours, nothing. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. And then, there was a faint trickle through the ether. A whisper of curiosity and a handful of clarifying questions. Some polite declines followed, and then came the torrent.

Nearly all of the people I reached out to are busy beyond belief, and I expected I would get short, rushed responses from a few of them at best. What I got back instead were some of the most thoughtful answers I’d ever received, whether on paper, in person, or otherwise. In the end, there were more than 100 respondents.

Granted, the “easy” path took thousands of back-and-forth emails and Twitter direct messages, hundreds of phone calls, many marathons at a treadmill desk, and more than a few bottles of wine during late-night writing sessions, but … it worked. Did it always work? No. I didn’t get the Dalai Lama (this time), and at least half of the people on my list didn’t respond or declined the invitation. But it worked enough to matter, and that’s what matters.

Eight of the questions were fine-tuned “rapid-fire” questions from my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, the first business-interview podcast to pass 200 million downloads. These questions have been refined over more than 300 interviews with guests such as actor/musician Jamie Foxx, General Stanley McChrystal, and writer Maria Popova. I knew that these questions worked, that interviewees generally liked them, and that they could help me in my own life.

The remaining three questions were new additions that I hoped would solve my most chronic problems. Before taking them into the wild, I tested, vetted, and wordsmithed them with friends who are world-class performers in their own right.

The older I get, the more time I spend—as a percentage of each day—on crafting better questions. In my experience, going from 1x to 10x, from 10x to 100x, and from 100x to (when Lady Luck really smiles) 1000x returns in various areas has been a product of better questions. John Dewey’s dictum that “a problem well put is half-solved” applies.

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask. After all, conscious thinking is largely asking and answering questions in your own head. If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions.

Fortunately, this is a skill you can develop. No book can give you all of the answers, but this book can train you to ask better questions. Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has said that “The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.” Substitute “master learner” for “novel,” and you have my philosophy of life. Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.

The 11 questions I chose for this book are listed below. It’s important to read the full questions and explanations, as I shorten them throughout the rest of the book. Special thanks to Brian Koppelman, Amelia Boone, Chase Jarvis, Naval Ravikant, and others for their hugely helpful feedback.

First, let us take a quick pass of the 11 questions. Some of them might seem trite or useless at first glance …. But lo! Things are not always what they appear.

Now, let’s take a look at each, and I’ll explain why they appear to work. You might ask, “Why should I care? I’m not an interviewer.” To that, my response is simple: If you want to build (or foster) a world-class network, you need to interact in a way that earns it. All of these points will help.

For instance, I spent weeks testing the order of questions for optimal responses. To me, proper sequencing is the secret sauce, whether you’re trying to learn a new language in 8 to 12 weeks,fn2 overcome a lifelong fear of swimming,fn3 or pick the brain of a potential mentor over coffee. Good questions in the wrong order get bad responses. Conversely, you can punch well above your weight class by thinking about sequencing, as most people don’t.

Example: the “billboard” question is one of my podcast listener and guest favorites, but it’s heavy. It stumps or intimidates a lot of people. I didn’t want to scare busy people off, who might opt out with a quick, “Sorry, Tim. I just don’t have bandwidth for this right now.” So, what to do? Easy: let them warm up with lightweight questions (e.g., Most gifted books, purchase of <$100), which are less abstract and more concrete.

My explanations get shorter toward the end, as many of the points carry over or apply to all questions.

1. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

“What’s your favorite book?” seems like a good question. So innocent, so simple. In practice, it’s terrible. The people I interview have read hundreds or thousands of books, so it’s a labor-intensive question for them, and they rightly worry about picking a “favorite,” which then gets quoted and put in articles, Wikipedia, etc. “Most gifted” is lower risk, an easier search query (easier to recall), and implies benefits for a broader spectrum of people, which the idiosyncratic “favorite” does not.

For the curious and impatient among you, here are a few books (of many) that came up a lot:

If you’d like to see all of the recommended books in one place, including a list of the top 20 most recommended from this book and Tools of Titans, you can find all the goodies at tim.blog/booklist

2. What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My fans love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc.

This might seem like a throwaway, but it isn’t. It provides an easy entry point for busy interviewees while providing readers with something immediately actionable. The deeper questions elicit more profound answers, but profundity is the fiber of knowledge—it requires intensive digestion. To keep marching forward in the meanwhile, humans (yours truly included) need short-term rewards. In this book, I accomplish that with questions that provide tangible, easy, and often fun answers—Scooby snacks for your hard-working soul. To get the heavier lifting done, these breathers are important.

3. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

4. If you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?)

Self-explanatory, so I’ll skip the commentary. For would-be interviewers, though, the “If helpful …” portion is often critical for getting good answers.

5. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)

This is also self-explanatory … or so it seems. With questions like this and the next, I’ve found it productive to give interviewees a real-world answer. In a live interview, it buys them time to think, and in text, it gives them a template. For this question, for instance, I gave everyone the following:

6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I was first asked this when interviewed by my friend Chris Young, scientist, co-author of Modernist Cuisine, and CEO of ChefSteps (search “Joule sous vide”). Before responding, and while sitting onstage at the Town Hall in Seattle, I said, “Oooooh … that’s a good question. I’m going to steal that.” And I did. This question has deeper implications than you might expect. Answers prove a number of helpful things: 1) Everyone is crazy, so you’re not alone. 2) If you want more OCD-like behaviors, my interviewees are happy to help, and 3) Corollary to #1: “normal” people are just crazy people you don’t know well enough. If you think you’re uniquely neurotic, I hate to deliver the news, but every human is Woody Allen in some part of life. Here’s the sample answer I gave for this question, taken from a live interview and slightly edited for text:

7. In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

This is short, effective, and not particularly nuanced. It has particular application to my midlife reassessment. I’m surprised I don’t hear questions like this more often.

8. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

The second “ignore” sub-question is essential. We’re prone to asking “What should I do?” but less prone to asking “What shouldn’t I do?” Since what we don’t do determines what we can do, I like asking about not-to-do lists.

9. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

A close cousin of the previous question. Many problems of “focusing” are best solved by defining what to ignore.

10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?

Saying yes is easy. Saying no is hard. I wanted help with the latter, as did many people in the book, and some answers really delivered the goods.

11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

If your mind is “beach balling” (nerdy Mac reference to when a computer freezes), nothing else matters much until that is resolved. Once again, the secondary “if helpful” question is often critical.

Since any greatness in this book is from other people, I feel comfortable saying that, no matter where you are in life, you will love some of what’s here. In the same breath, no matter how much I cry and pout, you will find some of what’s inside boring, useless, or seemingly stupid. Out of roughly 140 profiles, I expect you to like 70, love 35, and have your life changed by perhaps 17. Amusingly, the 70 you dislike will be precisely the 70 someone else needs.

Life would be boring if we all followed exactly the same rules, and you will want to pick and choose.

The more surprising part of all of this is … Tribe of Mentors changes with you. As time passes and life unfolds, things you initially swatted away like a distraction can reveal depth and become unimaginably important.

That cliché you ignored like a throwaway fortune cookie? Suddenly it makes sense and moves mountains. Conversely, things you initially found enlightening might run their course, like a wonderful high school coach who needs to hand you off to a college coach for you to reach the next level.

There’s no expiration date on the advice in this book, as there’s no uniformity. In the following pages, you’ll find advice from 30-something wunderkinds and seasoned veterans in their 60s and 70s. The hope is that, each time you pick up this book, not unlike with the I Ching or Tao Te Ching, something new will grab you, shake your perception of reality, illuminate your follies, confirm your intuitions, or correct your course that all-important one degree.

The entire spectrum of human emotion and experience can be found in this book, from hilarious to heart-wrenching, from failure to success, and from life to death. May you welcome it all.

On my coffee table at home, I have a piece of driftwood. Its sole purpose is to display a quote by Anaïs Nin, which I see every day:

It’s a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take.

The most fulfilled and effective people I know—world-famous creatives, billionaires, thought leaders, and more—look at their life’s journey as perhaps 25 percent finding themselves and 75 percent creating themselves.

This book is not intended to be a passive experience. It’s intended to be a call to action.

You are the author of your own life, and it’s never too late to replace the stories you tell yourself and the world. It’s never too late to begin a new chapter, add a surprise twist, or change genres entirely.

Some Housekeeping Notes That Might Help

“Quotes I’m Pondering” are spread throughout this book. These are quotes that have changed my thinking and behavior in the past two years or so. Since publishing Tools of Titans roughly 12 months ago, I’ve had the most productive year of my life, and my selection of books played a large role. The “quotes I’m pondering” (usually from the aforementioned books) were shared on a weekly basis with subscribers of my 5-Bullet Friday newsletter (tim.blog/friday), a free newsletter in which I share the five coolest or most useful things (books, articles, gadgets, foods, supplements, apps, quotes, etc.) I’ve discovered that week. I hope you find them as thought-provoking as I did.
Remember those rejection letters I mentioned receiving for this book? Some of the polite declines were so good that I included them! There are three “How to Say No” interludes that feature actual emails.
We shortened nearly every profile and subjectively selected the “best” answers. Best answers sometimes meant eliminating repetition, or focusing on answers detailed enough to be both actionable and non-obvious.
In nearly every guest’s profile, I indicate where you can best interact with them on social media: TW=Twitter, FB=Facebook, IG=Instagram, LI=LinkedIn, SC=Snapchat, and YT=YouTube.
During outreach to guests, I always asked the same questions in the same order, but in the following pages, I frequently reordered the answers for optimal flow, readability, and impact.
I’ve included some non-responses (e.g., “I’m terrible at saying no!”) to make you feel better about having the same challenges. No one is perfect, and we’re all works in progress.

SAMIN NOSRAT

IG: @ciaosamin

FB: /samin.nosrat

saltfatacidheat.com

SAMIN NOSRAT is a writer, teacher, and chef. Called “a go-to resource for matching the correct techniques with the best ingredients” by The New York Times, and “the next Julia Child” by NPR’s All Things Considered, she’s been cooking professionally since 2000, when she first stumbled into the kitchen at Chez Panisse. Samin is one of five food columnists for The New York Times Magazine. She lives, cooks, surfs, and gardens in Berkeley, California. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

Paul Stamets’ Host Defense MyCommunity mushroom complex is the most incredible immunity supplement I have ever taken (and I have taken a lot of them!). No matter how much I travel, how many hands I shake, or how exhausted I am, I don’t get sick as long as I take the supplement diligently.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

I have had so many spectacular failures, but looking back, I can see how each of them led me a little closer to doing what I actually wanted to do. Years before I was ready to write a book of my own, I bungled two opportunities to co-write cookbooks with other people. These mistakes haunted me, and I was sure I’d never get to write another book. But I waited, and I persisted, and after 17 years I wrote the book I’d always dreamt of.

In 2002 I was a finalist for a Fulbright grant, but didn’t receive it and felt like I’d never get to study traditional foodmaking methods in Italy. Instead, I found my way back to Italy and cooked and worked there for a year and a half, and now, 15 years later, I’m working on a documentary that will take me there to study traditional foodmaking methods!

I worked at, and eventually ran, a restaurant that was failing financially for its entire five-year existence. It was grueling, especially because I cared about it as if it were my own. I knew chances of our success were slim about three years in, and was ready to leave then, but the owner, who was also my mentor, just wasn’t ready to give up. So we dragged things out for two long years beyond that, and it was really challenging. Unbearable at times, even. By the time things were done, I was exhausted and depressed and just really, really unhappy. We all were. But it didn’t have to be that way.

That experience taught me to take agency in my own professional narratives, and that endings don’t have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. Shortly after the restaurant closed, I started a food market as a small side project, and it ended up being wildly successful. I had more press and customers than I could handle. I had investors clamoring to get in on the action. But all I wanted to do was write. I didn’t want to run a food market, and since my name was all over it, I didn’t want to hand it off to anyone else, either. So I chose to close the market on my own terms, and I made sure that everyone knew it. It was such a positive contrast to the harsh experience of closing the restaurant. I’ve learned to envision the ideal end to any project before I begin it now—even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

On a much, much smaller scale, while cooking, I have ruined more dishes than I can recall. But the wonderful thing about cooking is that it’s a pretty quick process, really, and it doesn’t allow for much time to get attached to the results. So whether a dish stinks or turns out beautifully, you have to start over from scratch again the next day. You don’t get a chance to sit around and wallow (or toot your own horn). The important thing is to learn from each failure and try not to repeat it.

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?

Ten years ago, while running a restaurant, I made the time to audit a class at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley with Michael Pollan. It seemed crazy at the time to leave the restaurant for three hours once a week to go sit in a classroom, to get home after 15-hour days and read the books and articles on the syllabus. But some little voice inside me told me I had to find a way to do it, and I am so glad that I did. That class changed my life—it brought me into an incredible community of writers, journalists, and documentarians who have inspired and supported me along this crazy path. I got to know Michael, who encouraged me to write. He also hired me to teach him how to cook, and over the course of those lessons he encouraged me to formalize my unique cooking philosophy into a proper curriculum, go out into the world and teach it, and turn it into a book. That became Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which is now a New York Times bestseller and is on its way to becoming a documentary series. Total insanity.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

American cheese. I don’t eat it often, but I find the way it melts on a burger to be entirely irresistible.

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

I have to be on a lot of the time, whether to be able to think and write clearly, or to be out in the world teaching and talking about cooking. Both parts of my job require extraordinary amounts of energy.

Over the last five years, I’ve started to become more attuned to the various ways I need to take care of myself. And at the top of that list is sleep. I need eight to nine hours of sleep to function properly, and I’ve started guarding my sleep time mercilessly. I spend a lot more quiet nights at home, and when I do go out to dinner, I’ll insist on an early-bird reservation or cut out early. I’ve even been known to go to bed while my guests are still partying. They’re happy, I’m happy, it’s all good. My obsession with sleep has improved my life immeasurably.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”?

When in doubt, let kindness and compassion guide you. And don’t be afraid to fail.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?

Truth be told, I’m still working on getting better at saying no. But I will say this: the more clear I am about what my goals are, the more easily I can say no. I have a notebook into which I’ve recorded all sorts of goals, both big and small, over the last ten or so years. When I take the time to articulate what it is that I hope to achieve, it’s simple to refer to the list and see whether saying yes to an opportunity will take me toward or away from achieving that goal. It’s when I’m fuzzy about where I’m headed that I start to say yes to things willy-nilly. And I’ve been burned enough times by FOMO-based and ego-based decision-making to know that I’ll always regret choosing to do something for the wrong reason.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I try to get out of my head and into my body. On writing days, this usually amounts to getting up and going for a walk around Downtown Oakland. Sometimes I throw in the towel completely and go for a swim. Other times, I decide to go to the farmers’ market to look at, touch, smell, and taste the produce and let my senses guide me in the decision of what to cook for dinner.

When I’m cooking or doing other physical work and I get overwhelmed, it’s usually because I’m not taking care of myself, so I’ll take a break. I’ll make a snack or a cup of tea. Or I’ll just drink a glass of water and sit down outside for a few minutes. It’s usually enough to get me calm and clear.

But the thing that will always get me unstuck is jumping into the ocean. It’s been that way ever since I was a kid. I’ve always loved the ocean, and now, whenever I can, I’ll go to the beach to swim or surf or just float. Nothing else resets me like the ocean.

STEVEN PRESSFIELD

TW: @spressfield

stevenpressfield.com

STEVEN PRESSFIELD has made a professional life in five different writing arenas—advertising, screenwriting, fiction, narrative nonfiction, and self-help. He is the best-selling author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, The Afghan Campaign, and The Lion’s Gate, as well as the cult classics on creativity, The War of Art, Turning Pro, and Do the Work. His Wednesday column on stevenpressfield.com is one of the most popular series about writing on the web.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

This’ll sound crazy, but I have certain places that I go to, usually alone, that summon up for me earlier eras in my life. Time is a weird thing. Sometimes you can appreciate a moment that’s gone more in the present than you did when it was actually happening. The places that I go to are different all the time and they’re usually mundane, ridiculously mundane. A gas station. A bench on a street. Sometimes I’ll fly across the country just to go to one of these spots. Sometimes it’s on a vacation or a business trip when I’m with family or other people. I might not ever tell them. Or I might. Sometimes I’ll take somebody along, though it usually doesn’t work (how could it?).

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

I’m probably hopelessly out of date but my advice is get real-world experience: Be a cowboy. Drive a truck. Join the Marine Corps. Get out of the hypercompetitive “life hack” frame of mind. I’m 74. Believe me, you’ve got all the time in the world. You’ve got ten lifetimes ahead of you. Don’t worry about your friends “beating” you or “getting somewhere” ahead of you. Get out into the real dirt world and start failing. Why do I say that? Because the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul. Adversity. Everybody spends their life trying to avoid it. Me too. But the best things that ever happened to me came during the times when the shit hit the fan and I had nothing and nobody to help me. Who are you really? What do you really want? Get out there and fail and find out.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

The single book that has influenced me most is probably the last book in the world that anybody is gonna want to read: Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. This book is dense, difficult, long, full of blood and guts. It wasn’t written, as Thucydides himself attests at the start, to be easy or fun. But it is loaded with hardcore, timeless truths and the story it tells ought to be required reading for every citizen in a democracy.

Thucydides was an Athenian general who was beaten and disgraced in a battle early in the 27-year conflagration that came to be called the Peloponnesian War. He decided to drop out of the fighting and dedicate himself to recording, in all the detail he could manage, this conflict, which, he felt certain, would turn out to be the greatest and most significant war ever fought up to that time. He did just that.

Have you heard of Pericles’ Funeral Oration? Thucydides was there for it. He transcribed it.

He was there for the debates in the Athenian assembly over the treatment of the island of Melos, the famous Melian Dialogue. If he wasn’t there for the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse or the betrayal of Athens by Alcibiades, he knew people who were there and he went to extremes to record what they told him. Thucydides, like all the Greeks of his era, was unencumbered by Christian theology, or Marxist dogma, or Freudian psychology, or any of the other “isms” that attempt to convince us that man is basically good, or perhaps perfectible. He saw things as they were, in my opinion. It’s a dark vision but tremendously bracing and empowering because it’s true. On the island of Corcyra, a great naval power in its day, one faction of citizens trapped their neighbors and fellow Corcyreans in a temple. They slaughtered the prisoners’ children outside before their eyes and when the captives gave themselves up based on pledges of clemency and oaths sworn before the gods, the captors massacred them as well. This was not a war of nation versus nation, this was brother against brother in the most civilized cities on earth. To read Thucydides is to see our own world in microcosm. It’s the study of how democracies destroy themselves by breaking down into warring factions, the Few versus the Many. Hoi polloi in Greek means “the many.” Oligoi means “the few.”

I can’t recommend Thucydides for fun, but if you want to expose yourself to a towering intellect writing on the deepest stuff imaginable, give it a try.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

This cost a lot more than a hundred bucks, but I bought an electric car, a Kia Soul, and got some solar panels for my roof. Driving on sun power is a major giggle, trust me.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

I just wrote a book called The Knowledge about my favorite failure and guess what? It failed too. In all truth, when my third novel (which, like the first two, never got published) crashed ignominiously, I was driving a cab in New York City. I’d been trying to get published for about 15 years at that point. I decided to give up and move to Hollywood, to see if I could find work writing for the movies. Don’t ask me what movies I wrote. I will never tell. And if you find out by other means, BE WARNED! Don’t see ’em. But working in “the industry” made me a pro and paved the way for whatever successes finally did come.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why?

I would not have a billboard, and I would take down every billboard that everybody else has put up.

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?

I’ve never invested in the stock market or taken a risk on anything outside myself. I decided a long time ago that I would only bet on myself. I will risk two years on a book that’ll probably fall flat on its face. I don’t mind. I tried. It didn’t work. I believe in investing in your heart. That’s all I do, really. I’m a servant of the Muse. All my money is on her.

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

I’ve always been a gym person and an early morning person. But a few years ago I got invited to train with T. R. Goodman at a place called Pro Camp. There’s a “system,” yeah, but basically what we do (and it’s definitely a group thing, with three or four of us training together) is just work hard. I hate it but it’s great. T. R. says, as we’re leaving after working out, “Nothing you face today will be harder than what you just did.”

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? What new realizations and/or approaches helped?

I got a chance a couple of years ago to visit a security firm, one of those places that guard celebrities and protect their privacy—in other words, a business whose total job was to say no. The person who was giving me the tour told me that the business screens every incoming letter, solicitation, email, etc., and decides which ones get through to the client. “How many get through?” I asked. “Virtually none,” my friend said. I decided that I would look at incoming mail the same way that firm does. If I were the security professional tasked with protecting me from bogus, sociopathic, and clueless asks, which ones would I screen and dump into the trash? That has helped a lot.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I have a friend at the gym who knew Jack LaLanne (Google him if the name is unfamiliar). Jack used to say it’s okay to take a day off from working out. But on that day, you’re not allowed to eat. That’s the short way of saying you’re not really allowed to get unfocused. Take a vacation. Gather yourself. But know that the only reason you’re here on this planet is to follow your star and do what the Muse tells you. It’s amazing how a good day’s work will get you right back to feeling like yourself.

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE BOOK

INTRODUCTION

1. What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

2. What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My fans love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc.

3. How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

5. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)

6. What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

7. In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

8. What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

9. What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?

10. In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?

11. When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)

Some Housekeeping Notes That Might Help

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”?

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why?

What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to? What new realizations and/or approaches helped?

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?