There’s no doubt that Tim Ferriss is a jack-of-all-trades. The man has amazing self-discipline and an insatiable thirst for knowledge, which have enabled him to achieve a great deal in his life. In addition to being a successful author, investor, and entrepreneur, he’s also an experienced traveler who has ventured to some of the most far-flung corners of the world.
If you’re looking to transform your life with travel, then there’s nobody better to learn from than Tim Ferriss. His insights into what makes travel so transformative are invaluable – so don’t miss out on this chance to learn from one of the best!
Without further ado, here are some of the best Tim Ferriss quotes on travel, productivity, and life.
Tim Ferriss Quotes
By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
Tim Ferriss
To enjoy life, you don’t need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.
Tim Ferriss
The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?
Tim Ferriss
It is possible to become world-class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6-12 months, or even 6-12 weeks.
Tim Ferriss
For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.
Tim Ferriss
A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.
Tim Ferriss
If you let pride stop you, you will hate life.
Tim Ferriss
Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
Tim Ferriss
Pareto’s Law can be summarized as follows: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs.
Tim Ferriss
The fishing is best where the fewest go and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone is aiming for base hits.
Tim Ferriss
Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.
Tim Ferriss
Age doesn’t matter: an open mind does.
Tim Ferriss
Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitate to get in the way if you’re moving.
Tim Ferriss
The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
Tim Ferriss
Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic.
Tim Ferriss
People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends.
Tim Ferriss
Life is too short to be small.
Tim Ferriss
The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.
Tim Ferriss
Remember – boredom is the enemy, not some abstract “failure.
Tim Ferriss
Many a false step was made by standing still.
Tim Ferriss
Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.
Tim Ferriss
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
Tim Ferriss
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.
Tim Ferriss
The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.
Tim Ferriss
Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive.
Tim Ferriss
It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming.
Tim Ferriss
People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
Tim Ferriss
If you spend your time, worth $20-25 per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it’s simply a poor use of resources.
Tim Ferriss
It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.
Tim Ferriss
I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.
Tim Ferriss
Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.
Tim Ferriss
You are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.
Tim Ferriss
$1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.
Tim Ferriss
If you don’t have time, the truth is, you don’t have priorities. Think harder; don’t work harder.
Tim Ferriss
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
Tim Ferriss
It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.
Tim Ferriss
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
Tim Ferriss
But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.
Tim Ferriss
If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.
Tim Ferriss
Money doesn’t change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.
Tim Ferriss
The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?
Tim Ferriss
Three ingredients of luxury lifestyle design are time, income, and mobility.
Tim Ferriss
I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
Tim Ferriss
Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat.
Tim Ferriss
Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash.
Tim Ferriss
The best way to counter-attack a hater is to make it blatantly obvious that their attack has had no impact on you.
Tim Ferriss
Luxury, to me, is not owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed.
Tim Ferriss
Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
Tim Ferriss
That’s precisely the question everyone should be asking – why the hell not? Why not you, why not now?
Tim Ferriss
Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
Tim Ferriss
The way we measure productivity is flawed. People checking their BlackBerry over dinner is not the measure of productivity.
Tim Ferriss
Nothing can match the wonderment that comes from staring up into the star-filled canopy above and realizing that you are a part of that creation.
Tim Ferriss
Personal branding is about managing your name – even if you don’t own a business – in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records. Going on a date? Chances are that your “blind” date has Googled your name. Going to a job interview? Ditto.
Tim Ferriss
The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.
Tim Ferriss
The first book was turned down by 26 publishers.
Tim Ferriss
I’m not a big believer in long-term planning and far-off goals. In fact, I generally set 3-month and 6-month dreamlines. The variables change too much and in-the-future distance becomes an excuse for postponing action.
Tim Ferriss
Life is too short to think small.
Tim Ferriss
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
Tim Ferriss
If you don’t have time, the truth is, you don’t have priorities. Think harder; don’t work harder.
Tim Ferriss
The most important actions are never comfortable.
Tim Ferriss
It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.
Tim Ferriss
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
Tim Ferriss
Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.
Tim Ferriss
You can lose money and make it back, you can’t do that with time.
Tim Ferriss
One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.
Tim Ferriss
The best way to improve mental performance, is to improve physical performance.
Tim Ferriss
An entrepreneur isn’t someone who owns a business, it’s someone who makes things happen.
Tim Ferriss
Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.
Tim Ferriss
Reality is negotiable.
Tim Ferriss
If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us, then it’s probably not that important.
Tim Ferriss
Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Life’s too short to think small.
Tim Ferriss
A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.
Tim Ferriss
Fear is your friend. It is an indicator. Sometimes it shows you what you shouldn’t do, more often than not it shows you what you should do.
Tim Ferriss
Ninety-nine percent of people believe they can’t do great things, so they aim for mediocrity.
Tim Ferriss
Simplicity requires ruthlessness.
Tim Ferriss
Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.
Tim Ferriss
Be bold and don’t worry about what people think. They don’t do it that often anyway.
Tim Ferriss
People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
Tim Ferriss
Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. If you find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow, these doubts disappear.
Tim Ferriss
Believe it or not, it is not only possible to accomplish more by doing less, it is mandatory. Enter the world of elimination.
Tim Ferriss
What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.
Tim Ferriss
Perfection is an impossible destination.
Tim Ferriss
Doing less is not being lazy. Don’t give in to a culture that values personal sacrifice over personal productivity.
Tim Ferriss
Just because you are embarrassed to admit that you’re still living the consequences of bad decisions made 5, 10, 20 years ago shouldn’t stop you from making good decisions now. If you let pride stop you, you will hate life 5, 10, and 20 years from now for the same reasons.
Tim Ferriss
The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
Tim Ferriss
Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.
Tim Ferriss
Luxury, to me, is not owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed.
Tim Ferriss
Luxury is feeling unrushed. It is designing a life that allows you to do what you want with high leverage, with many options, all while feeling unrushed.
Tim Ferriss
The best results I have had in my life; the most enjoyable times, have all come from asking the simple question: ‘What is the worst that could happen?
Tim Ferriss
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
Tim Ferriss
The biggest misconception about work is that you need to spend the majority of your time doing it.
Tim Ferriss
People don’t want to be millionaires – they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.
Tim Ferriss
Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.
Tim Ferriss
Doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic.
Tim Ferriss
The best way to counter-attack a hater is to make it blatantly obvious that their attack has had no impact on you.
Tim Ferriss
There are two components that are fundamental to enjoy life and feel good about yourself: continual learning and service.
Tim Ferriss
Sometimes you need to go on a low-information diet.
Tim Ferriss
Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress – stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.
Tim Ferriss
The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met are all good communicators. It’s perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.
Tim Ferriss
Many a false step was made by standing still.
Tim Ferriss
Parting Words
Tim Ferriss is a genius when it comes to self-improvement and productivity. He has a knack for distilling complex concepts into simple, actionable advice that anyone can follow. And his quotes are no exception.
Whether you’re just starting out on your journey to becoming a better version of yourself or you’ve been at it for a while, there’s something in these quotes for everyone.
We hope you enjoyed this roundup of some of our favorite Tim Ferriss quotes and that you put his advice into practice.
What’s your favorite Tim Ferriss quote? Leave a comment and let us know!
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