How Tim Ferriss changed my life
It’s been almost a year since I first read Tim’s book The 4-Hour Workweek (these are not affiliate links) and it changed the entire course of 2017 for me.
Who is Tim?
To borrow Tim’s own words from his podcasts, I think the best way to describe him would be a self-improvement human guinea pig. But really there’s so much more to his work than that. He’s an author of many books on self-improvement and entrepreneurship. He frequently experiments with various supplements to push himself cognitively and physically. He is also an early stage investor in startups like Uber and Shopify.
I hadn’t heard of him until I came across the title of his book and at first glance, it really annoyed the hell out of me. Really, a 4-hour workweek? Can I get some snake oil with that too, please?
Turns out he wasn’t selling snake oil, he was selling an injection of self-confidence right into the spinal cord and the rest, as they say, is history.
Post 4-Hour Workweek
It’s hard to place myself back in the mindset before reading The 4-Hour Workweek, but suffice to say I had no idea what entrepreneurship is beyond some Yahoo Finance articles here and there. Not to mention I didn’t even think of myself as one before reading that book. After reading, it dawned on me that much of my discontent with life was driven by the fact that at the core I am entrepreneurial, it’s just that over the years I’ve completely repressed that part of myself and always chose the safe paths. Those safe paths have left me well-off financially but discontent in all other aspects of my life. With the 4-Hour Workweek, it blew the doors open on that and introduced me to a whole slew of other characters and books, each of which took me another step further past the point of no return.
Because of The 4-Hour Workweek, I began to absorb any topics mentioned through Tim’s podcasts and his book Tools of the Titans. Over the course of 2017, I began to scratch the surface of works by Tony Robbins, Pat Flynn, Kevin Rose, Chris Guillebeau, Jordan Harbinger, and Mark Manson.
Doubling down on meditation
I had already been dabbling in meditation towards the end of 2016. It wasn’t until I read Tools of the Titans and Tim’s podcast that I began to make meditation my daily habit. In short, it completely changed my ability to cope with any number of stressful situations. I can’t recall the number of times people have commented “I don’t know how you’re able to cope with that situation” — often referring to some work or personal drama. I’ll admit it was hard at times, but I credit my ability to bounce back and push forward entirely to establishing a daily meditative practice. I’ll have more to share on meditation, and what’s worked for me in a separate post.
Failing, failing again… and again
Another helpful takeaway for me has been to fail fast and learn. It’s something that’s thrown around a lot in Silicon Valley, but I think it’s one thing to fail at a project and not get the conversion rate on a new feature when you have the safety net of a giant corporation at your back, versus the failure of launching a new product yourself under your name and hearing crickets. Nothing will blow your ego away faster and send you cowering into a corner with a blanket and a jar of Nutella.
STOCK TIP: I recommend buying Nutella stock if I continue working on business ideas for 2018 because they’re going to churn some record profits off of me 😜
Walt Disney was quoted as saying “The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.” So if you’re on the same path as me, keep that in mind. It’s been mind-blowing to learn that many of the people I idolize and look up to, have faced similar struggles and had dozens of failures before they hit their stride and became a household name.
Now what?
Now, a year later, I actually have some not completely god-awful business ideas of my own. It’s been a steep learning curve over the last year, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Having just launched one product idea and it falling on deaf ears, I’m going to share some lessons learned from that as I move on to another project in coming weeks. In the meantime I’ll be taking all the lessons from Tribe of Mentors to heart and seeing how I can improve in 2018.
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