Tactics, Routines and Habits of Performers

Some notes from “Tools of Titans,” interviewed and compiled by Tim Ferriss.

Chris Sacca

Investor, https://lowercarboncapital.com/

Works from a cabin in the mountains, not Silicon Valley
Why: I wanted to have the time to focus, to learn the things I wanted to learn, to build what I wanted to build, and to really invest in relationships that I wanted to grow, rather than just doing a day of coffee after coffee
His tip: As you survey the challenges in your life, it’s just: Which of those did you assign yourself, and which of those are you doing to please someone else? Your inbox is a to-do list to which anyone in the world can add an action item. I needed to get back to my own to-do list.
A suggestion: If one is working on a startup environment and wants to learn and improve as much as possible? Go to all the meetings you can, and figure out how to be helpful.
On A Beginner’s Mind: Experience often deeply embeds the assumptions that need to be questioned in the first place. When you have a lot of experience with something, you don’t notice the things that are new about it. You don’t notice where the gaps are, what’s missing, or what’s not really working.
On his childhood: Recollects how his Dad used to send him on summers to relatives or friends and ask them to put him on hard jobs – fix septic systems, filling up propane tanks, construction work. Or even some sweet summers like when he worked for a DC Lobbyist.
Good stories always beat good spreadsheets. Underneath all the math and the MBA bullshit talk, we are all still emotionally driven human beings. We want to attach ourselves to narratives. We don’t act because of equations. We follow our beliefs. We get behind leaders who stir our feelings.
A closing thought: Authenticity is one of the most lacking things out there these days. Let’s be our unapologetically weird self.

Marc Andressen

Netscape founder, Tech Investor

Raise Prices: Marc says companies are not charging enough for their products. Too hungry to eat problem. How else can they afford the sales and marketing required to actually get anybody to buy it?
On Failure: What others call ‘pivot,’ we call it a fuck-up. They’re never going to converge on anything because they’re never going to put the time into actually figuring out and getting it right. My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing.
Nerds at Night Test: What do the nerds do on nights and weekends? What’s the hobby?
Suggests Elvis Cole novels by Robert Crais
Strong Views, Loosely Held: Most people go through life and never develop strong views on things. They buy into consensus. If you are going to start a company, you better have strong conviction. But don’t hate changing your mind. You need to be able to adapt in light of new information.
Rule to live by: Be so good they can’t ignore you.
Don’t overestimate the people on pedestals: Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarts than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
Study the Opposites: On why he studies Warren Buffet investing: He is betting against change. We are betting for change. When he makes a mistake, it’s because something changes that he didn’t expect. When we make a mistake, it’s because something doesn’t change that we thought would. But what both schools have in common is an orientation toward original thinking – being able to see things as they are as opposed to what everybody says about them.
To do original work, it’s not necessary to know something nobody else knows. It is necessary to believe something few other people believe.
For every metric, there should be another ‘paired’ metric that addresses adverse consequences of the first metric.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Among many things he did, he is also Chairman of After School All Stars
A huge Chess fan and plays daily. Brooklyn Castle, a film about chess in inner city schools is his favorite.
Started a brick-laying company early in his career
Did not rely on his movie career for a living. Did real estate investments.
Never auditioned – his mantra? Own or create a unique niche. In negotiation, he who cares the least wins!
A tip to remember: When George Lucas crafted Star Wars, the studio effectively said, “Toys? Yeah sure, you can have the toys.” That was a multi-billion dollar mistake that gave Lucas infinite financing for life. When deal making, ask yourself: Can I trade a short-term incremental gain for a potential longer term, game changing upside?
Does Transcendental Meditation. This helps him not merge and bring together and see everything as one big problem.
Cincinnatus is his favorite historical figure. An emperor in the Roman Empire. A farmer who went on to lead Rome in a crisis, and then want back to farming.

Derek Sivers

Author of Anything you Want. Founder of CD Baby.

I like his website; among others, has notes on 250 books he read!
Reading Awaken the Giant Within (Tony Robbins) changed his life
A directive: Choose the plan with the most options. The best plan is the one that lets you change your plans.
Another: Be expensive.
Another: Own as little as possible.
There’s the instant, unconscious, automatic thinking and then there’s the slower, conscious rational, deliberate thinking. Derek is into the slower thinking and for a deliberate response instead. That’s the subject of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow too.
What is being successful? Richard Branson is. But we can’t really know that till we know a person’s aim. What if he set out to live a quiet life, but like a compulsive gambler, can’t stop creating companies? Then that changes everything, and we can’t call him successful anymore!
Advice to people starting out: Say yes to every little gig. You just never know what are the lottery tickets.
Advice to his 30 year old self: Don’t be a donkey. Don’t try to pursue many different directions at once, and not end up making progress in any!
On Entrepreneurship: Business models can be simple. You don’t need to constantly “pivot.” And you shouldn’t start a business unless people are asking you to.
Most of us say yes to too much stuff, and then we let these little mediocre things fill our lives … The problem is when that occasional “Hell, yeah!” thing comes along, you don’t have enough time to give it the attention that you should, because you’ve said yes to too much other little, half ass stuff right?
Busy = Out of Control. Lack of time is lack of priorities.
What would you put on a billboard? “It won’t make you happy!“. Place it outside shopping malls, car dealerships, anywhere.
Treat life as a series of experiments: Do little tests. Try a few months of living the life you think you want, but leave yourself an exit plan, being open to the big chance that you might not like it after actually trying it. Read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
His recommendation is to talk to a few people who are currently where you think you want to be and ask them for the pros and cons. Then trust their opinion since they’re right in it, not just remembering or imagining.
Google “private cd baby jet“. One silly email, sent out with every order has been so loved. That one goofy email created thousands of new customers. It’s often the tiny details that really thrill someone enough to make them tell all their friends about you.

Matt Mullenweg

Original Lead Developer of WordPress, founder of automattic.com

A thought: When you can write well, you can think well
A thought: Everyone is interesting. If you’re ever bored in a conversation, the problem’s with you, not the other person!
A fan of Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive and Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life.
Matt is the epitome of “Getting upset won’t help things.”
A metaphor: What does the dog do if he catches the car? He doesn’t have a plan for it. So I find it just as often on the entrepreneurial side. People don’t plan for success.
Read this: Tail End by Tim Urban on the Wait but Why blog. It uses diagrams to underscore how short life really is.
A tap tip: Move away from QWERTY keyboards. Try Dvorak layout instead. Easier on your tendons and helps prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. Colemak is even more effective if you dare.
Suggests p2theme.org to replace emails, Slack to replace IM, Momentum chrome extension to help you focus, Wunderlist to help you get stuff done, and Calm.com for meditation.
Loves books on framing and language. Words that work. Women, fire, and dangerous things.
At Automattic: Fully distributed across 50 countries. No head quarters. No in-person or phone meetings. Interview process is all email or text chat, because that’s how we primarily communicate. Also prevents you from any subconscious bias. We look for passion, attention to detail, drive beyond the things that they need to do. How much care and attention they put into the email they send? Not just this one indicator though. Clarity in writing indicates clarity in thinking. Read more in this post.
Advice to 20 year self: Slow down. I think a lot of mistakes of my youth were mistakes of ambition, not mistakes of sloth. So just slowing down, whether that’s meditating, whether that’s taking time for yourself away from screens, whether that’s really focusing in on who you’re talking to or who you’re with.

Tony Robbins

Performance Coach. Writer.

I didn’t survive, I prepared: Nelson Mandela’s answer when Tony asked him, “Sir, how did you survive all these years in prison?”
A quote that guides his life: Life is always happening for us, not to us. It’s our job to find out where the benefit is. If we do, life is magnificent.
Stressed is the achiever word for fear.
Losers react, leaders anticipate.
What you know doesn’t mean shit. What do you do consistently?
Investing in yourself is the most important investment you’ll ever make in your life .. there’s no financial investment that’ll ever match it, because if you develop more skill, more ability, more insight, more capacity, that’s what’s going to really provide economic freedom.
If you let your learning lead to knowledge, you become a fool. If you let your learning lead to action, you become wealthy.
The quality of your life is the quality of your questions. Questions determine your focus.
A focus on “me” = suffering. This brain inside our heads is a million years old brain. It’s ancient, old survival software that is running you a good deal of time. Whenever you are suffering, that survival software is there. The reason you are suffering is you’re focused on yourself. Suffering comes from three patterns: loss, less, never.
STATE -> STORY -> STRATEGY: In a lowered emotional state, we only see the problems, not solutions. “Prime” your state first. The biochemistry will help you proactively tell yourself an enabling story. Only then do you think of strategy, as you’ll see the options instead of dead ends.
Priming your state can be as simple as 10 push-ups or 20 min of sun exposure. Or cold water plunge (30 to 60 sec under a cold shower), breathing exercises, breath walking.
Tony’s meditation routine. First 3 minutes: Feeling totally grateful for three things. I make sure one of them is very very simple: The wind on my face, the reflection of the clouds I just saw. But I don’t just think gratitude. I let gratitude fill my soul, because when you’re grateful, we all know there’s no anger. It’s impossible to be angry and grateful simultaneously. When you are grateful, there is no fear. You can’t be fearful and grateful simultaneously. Second 3 minutes: Total focus on feeling the presence of God, if you will, however you want to language that for yourself. But this inner presence coming in, and feeling it heal everything in my body, in my mind, my emotions, my relationships, my finances. I see it as solving anything that needs to be solved. I experience the strengthening of my gratitude, of my conviction, of my passion … Last 3 minutes: Focusing on three things that I’m going to make happen, my ‘three to thrive’.

Four commonalities across the best investors:

Capping the downside: Be obsessed with not losing money. What’s the downside? How do I protect against it? Test with little or no risk. Think long-term.
Asymmetrical risks and rewards: Use the least amount of risk to get the max amount of upside. They don’t believe they have to take huge risks for huge rewards.
Asset allocation: They absolutely know they’re going to be wrong … so they set up an asset allocation system that will make them successful. Asset allocation is the single most important investment decision. You absolutely must diversify.
Contribution: All of them were real givers, not just givers on the surface.

Tony wrote many best seller books. Do check them out. He also suggests reading The Fourth Turning by Willian Strauss, Mindset by Carol Dweck (for parenting), and As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.

Casey Neistat

Youtuber.

Got my understanding of how business and life works from studying the Second World War
Fav books: Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Second World War by John Keegan. Fav Movie: Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Fav documentary: Little Dieter Needs to Fly.
When in doubt about your next creative project, follow your anger.
His most popular video: Make it Count. About chasing what matters to you. If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.
You’ll never be the smartest person in the room. Or most educated, or most well versed. You can never compete on those levels. What you can compete on, is hard work. You can always work harder than the next guy.
Quantification of success? Not how much time you spend doing what you love. It’s how little time you spend doing what you hate.

Morgan Spurlock

Documentary Filmmaker

Famous for Super Size Me. Done in response to McDonald’s statement “Our food is healthy. It’s nutritious.”
His idea: Is there a common saying, or some public pronouncement, that you can disprove by making art about it? By doing a test? What makes you angry?
Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.
Advice: You can’t be afraid to show your scars.
Most recommended book? Living Gita by Swami Satchidananda.
Fav documentaries? The Fog of War, Brother’s Keeper, Hoop Dreams, Enron: Smartest guys in the room, The Prison of Belief

Reid Hoffman

Oracle of Silicon Valley?

Responds to an insult with “I’m perfectly willing to accept that.” & moves on.
Enjoyed Avalon Hill Board games as a kid
If you are trying to talk to someone about a problem or trying to make progress, how do you make language as positive instrument as possible? What are the ways language can work and does not? Suggests reading Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works.
Solve the simplest, easiest and most valuable problem.
Give the mind an overnight task. To possibly bubble up the thoughts and solutions to it. And sit down and work on the problem first thing after waking up.
Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious – Thomas Edison.

Peter Thiel

A master debater. Often reframes the question before answering it. Examines whether the question is the right question.
Note to 20 yr self: You don’t have to wait to start something. College or law school. If you are planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10-year plan of how to get there, you should ask: why can’t you do this in 6 months? It’s at least worth asking even if you have to go through the 10 year trajectory.
On failure: it is massively overrated. You often don’t learn anything. Failure is neither a Darwinian nor an educational imperative. Failure is always simply a tragedy.
On trends. What I prefer over trends is a sense of mission. That you are working on a unique problem that people are not solving elsewhere. Next Bill Gates will not create a OS. Next Mark won’t create a social network!
On Anti College: There is something very odd about a society where the most talented people all get tracked toward the same elite colleges, where they end up studying the same small number of subjects and going into the same small number of careers.
On future of education: I don’t like the word ‘education’ because it is such an extraordinary abstraction. I’m very much in favor of learning. I’m much more skeptical of credentialing or the abstraction called ‘education.’ What is it that we are learning? Why are you learning it? Are you going to college because it’s a 4-year party? Is it a consumption decision? Is it an investment decision? Is it insurance? Or is it a tournament where you are beating other people? Are elite universities exclusive night clubs? If we move beyond the education bubble that we’re living today, the future will be one in which people can speak about these things more clearly.
Ask myself everyday: How do I become less competitive in order that I can become more successful?

Seth Godin

Be a meaningful specific instead of a wandering generality
Once you have enough for beans and rice and taking care of your family, money is a story. Tell yourself a story about money that you can happily live with.
If you generate enough bad ideas, a few good ones tend to show up.
What you track determines your lens. Why be caught in the cycle of keeping track of wrong things? Rejected. Heart broken. Let me down. Why keep track of them? Are they making us better? Wouldn’t it make sense to keep track of the other stuff? To keep track of all the times it worked. All the times you took a risk. All the times we were able to brighten someone else’s day? The narrative is up to us. Choose carefully.
Tell 10 people. Show 10 people. Share it with ten people; ten people who already trust you and already like you. If they don’t tell anybody else, it’s not that good and you should start over. If they do tell other people, you are on your way.
To create something big, start extremely small. What is the smallest possible project that is worth my time? What is the smallest group of people who I could make a difference for? Infinity is safe. Infinity gives us a place to hide.
I quantify nothing in my life. No comments on his blog. Doesn’t pay attention to analytics. No Twitter or Facebook except to rebroadcast. He simply focuses on putting out good and short daily posts.
Parenting Advice. What could be more important than your kid? Please don’t play the busy card. If you spend 2 hours a day without any electronic device, looking your kid in the eye, talking to them and solving interesting problems, you will raise a different kid than someone who doesn’t do that.
On Education. Sooner or later, parents have to take responsibility for putting their kids into a system that is indebting them and teaching them to be cogs in an economy that doesn’t want cogs anymore. We need to teach kids two things: 1) how to lead, and 2) how to solve interesting problems. And don’t criticize them when they fail. Or they’ll just go back to getting an A.
A final word of advice? Send someone a thank you note tomorrow.

Chris Young

ChefSteps, Modernist Cuisine, The Fat Duck. Lifelong curious cook.

Suggested Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash
And Criptonomicon
And The Diamond Age
Also suggests The Second Law by PW Atkins. Hard to find book now.
A mention: High school was not a great time for me
Loved: The job I was going to do hadn’t even been invented yet … the interesting jobs are the ones that you make up. Do things that you are interested in, and if you do them really well, you’re going to find a way to temper them with some good business opportunity.
Some good questions to ask anyone we meet: What interesting thing are you working on? Why is that interesting to you? What’s surprising about that? Is anybody else thinking about this?
A Jedi Mind Trick: This is what he says to a chef who is reluctant to hire him yet: I totally understand. Is there anybody in town you’d recommend would be a good place for me to work? I’m really committed to doing this. I really want to see what it’s about …. and he gets hired! Can anybody else be good in town for a chef with enormous ego?
On Excellence: Don’t try to slip by something that is below the standard. But how to balance insisting on high standards and not be overbearing? Ask this question. What context and visibility do I have and what do they have? Am I basically being unfair because I am operating from a greater set of information?