If you’re looking for the best collection of Tim Ferriss quotes then look no further.
Tim Ferriss is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, and podcaster.
Whether its productivity hacking, bio-hacking, meditation, morning routines, or developing the optimal mindset for success – Ferriss has acquired a wealth of knowledge and experience from researching, self-experimentation, and interviewing some of the top athletes, CEOs and thought leaders around the world. In fact his blog and his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show is very popular for that reason.
In 2001, Tim Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, an internet-based nutritional supplements business which he later sold in 2010. It was during this time that he started applying the principles he teaches in his bestselling book, The 4-Hour Workweek.
What most people don’t know is that The 4-Hour Workweek was rejected by 26 different publishers before it went on to become an international bestseller. His other books include The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans, and Tribe of Mentors.
Some would consider Tim Ferriss to be the ultimate hacker of success and this collection of Tim Ferriss quotes will not only give you the motivation and inspiration you’re looking for but are also packed full of great advice to become successful.
Inspirational Tim Ferriss Quotes
1. “What we fear doing the most is usually what we most need to do.” – Tim Ferriss
2. “One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.” – Tim Ferriss
3. “Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.” – Tim Ferriss
4. “Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now.” – Tim Ferriss
5. “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
6. “Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Lifes’s too short to think small.” – Tim Ferriss
7. “I don’t think people are fearless. If you’re fearless, you’re nuts. But you can learn to fear less.” – Tim Ferriss
8. “To do the impossible, you need to ignore the popular.” – Tim Ferriss
9. “Being busy is not the same as being productive. In fact, being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.” – Tim Ferriss
10. “Babe Ruth struck out all the time, but he’s not remembered for that. He’s remembered for what worked.” – Tim Ferriss
11. “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
12. “There is no sure path to success. But the sure path to failure is trying to please everyone.” – Tim Ferriss
13. “The question you should be asking isn’t, ‘What do I want?’ or ‘What are my goals?’ but ‘What would excite me?'” – Tim Ferriss
14. “Focus on impact, not approval.” – Tim Ferriss
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13. “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
16. “Remember—boredom is the enemy, not some abstract ‘failure.'” – Tim Ferriss
17. “I’ve interviewed everyone from gold medalists to CEOs who make $100 million a year, and their one common characteristic is the ability to ‘single-task’ without interruption.” – Tim Ferriss
18. “When you try to do something big it’s hard to fail completely.” – Tim Ferriss
19. “Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective – doing less – is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.” – Tim Ferriss
20. “Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive.” – Tim Ferriss
21. “If we’re talking about just distractions, we’re talking about prioritization. If you feel like you don’t have time, you don’t have priorities. Everyone has the same amount of time.” – Tim Ferriss
22. “If you’re wasting time having fun, you’re not wasting time.” – Tim Ferriss
23. “As you stumble and learn, stumble and learn again, resolve to talk to yourself as if you were your best friend. Be cool, like the Fonz.” – Tim Ferriss
24. “Think big but ensure payday comes every day.” – Tim Ferriss
25. “Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market – define your customers – then find or develop a product for them.” – Tim Ferriss
26. “Don’t follow a model that doesn’t work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.” – Tim Ferriss
27. “When people think of mental activity, they tend to think of it as an ethereal zapping of electricity that has no cost to the body. That’s not true, the brain is a massive blood and oxygen sink. You need stimulus and recovery in mental work in the same way that you need stimulus and recovery for sports.” – Tim Ferriss
28. “Instead of thinking of the repercussions of an action, you should also be asking yourself, ‘what are the costs of inaction?” – Tim Ferriss
29. “It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside of the box.” – Tim Ferriss
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30. “Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence.” – Tim Ferriss
31. “If you want to have more, do more, and be more, it all begins with the voice that no one else hears.” – Tim Ferriss
32. “Just because they say it can’t be done doesn’t make it so.” – Tim Ferriss
33. “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
34. “The most important actions are never comfortable.” – Tim Ferriss
35. “If you believe you can change the world, which I hope you do, do what you believe is right and expect resistance and expect attackers.” – Tim Ferriss
36. “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” – Tim Ferriss
37. “The objective is to control your time – a non-renewable resource – and apply it where you have the highest leverage or enjoyment.” – Tim Ferriss
38. “Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.” – Tim Ferriss
39. “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
40. “10x results don’t always require 10x effort.” – Tim Ferriss
41. “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.” – Tim Ferriss
42. “Simple works, complex fails.” – Tim Ferriss
43. “Give vulnerability a shot. Give discomfort its due. Because I think he or she who is willing to be the most uncomfortable is not only the bravest, but rises the fastest.” – Tim Ferriss
44. “Emphasize strengths, don’t fix weaknesses.” – Tim Ferriss
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45. “You are the author of your own life, and it’s never too late to replace the stories you tell yourself and the world.” – Tim Ferriss
46. “Just because it’s labeled “impossible” doesn’t make it even remotely impossible.” – Tim Ferriss
47. “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
48. “The way that you become world-class is by asking good questions.” – Tim Ferriss
49. “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.” – Tim Ferriss
50. “There is no one right answer. Only better questions.” – Tim Ferriss
51. “I encourage you to make huge, ambitious plans. Just remember that the big-beyond-belief things are accomplished when you deconstruct them into the smallest possible pieces and focus on each “moment of impact”, one step at the time.” – Tim Ferriss
52. “Time is wasted because there is so much time available.” – Tim Ferriss
53. “Focus on what’s in front of you, design great days to create a great life, and try not to make the same mistake twice.” – Tim Ferriss
54. “If the answer isn’t simple, it’s probably not the right answer.” – Tim Ferriss
55. “Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple—many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.” – Tim Ferriss
56. “I believe that life exists to be enjoyed, and that the most important thing is to feel good about yourself.” – Tim Ferriss
57. “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
58. “If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear questions.” – Tim Ferriss
59. “To dramatically change your life, you don’t need to run a 100-mile race, get a PhD, or completely reinvent yourself. It’s the small things, done consistently, that are the big things.” – Tim Ferriss
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60. “If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.” – Tim Ferriss
61. “If we’re serious all the time, we’ll wear out before we get the truly serious stuff done.” – Tim Ferriss
62. “You don’t need to go through life huffing and puffing, straining and red-faced. You can get 95% of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other.” – Tim Ferriss
63. “The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met are all good communicators. It’s perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.” – Tim Ferriss
64. “The customer is not always right. “Fire” high-maintenance customers.” – Tim Ferriss
65. “Deadlines over details… Perfect products delivered past deadline kill companies. Better to have a good-enough product delivered on-time.” – Tim Ferriss
66. “An entrepreneur isn’t someone who owns a business, it’s someone who makes things happen.” – Tim Ferriss
67. “Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.” – Tim Ferriss
68. “If you can free your time and location, your money is automatically worth 3-10 times as much.” – Tim Ferriss
69. “If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?” – Tim Ferriss
70. “‘Not-to-do’ lists are often more effective than to-do lists for upgrading performance.” – Tim Ferriss
71. “If I have 10 important things to do in a day, it’s 100% certain nothing important will get done that day.” – Tim Ferriss
72. “What might you do to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months, if you had a gun against your head?” – Tim Ferriss (Inspired by Peter Thiel)
73. “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
74. “The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.” – Tim Ferriss
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75. “Observe your thoughts, instead of being constantly the victim of your thoughts.” – Tim Ferriss
76. “It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three.” – Tim Ferriss
77. “In a world of distraction and multitasking, the ability to single task — to genuinely do one thing without getting distracted by push notifications, alerts, email, text messages, social media, whatever it might be — is a superpower.” – Tim Ferriss
78. “The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.” – Tim Ferriss
79. “I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control.” – Tim Ferriss
80. “In practice, strictly making health #1 has real social and business ramifications. That’s a price I’ve realized I must be fine paying, or I could lose weeks or months to sickness or fatigue.” – Tim Ferriss
81. “People on diets will cheat regardless, so we mitigate the damage by pre-scheduling it and limiting it to 24 hours.” – Tim Ferriss
82. “The more you schedule and practice discomfort deliberately, the less unplanned discomfort will throw off your life and control your life.” – Tim Ferriss
83. “Stoicism can help you to become a better, kinder person. In helping you to become less emotionally reactive (e.g., reflexively angry or annoyed), it helps you to better resolve conflict, and teach others to do the same.” – Tim Ferriss
84. “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
85. “Don’t get angry, don’t get even – focus on living well and that will eat at them more than anything you can do.” – Tim Ferriss
86. “Anyone you have in your mind as an icon is an imperfect, flawed creature, just like all humans on the planet.” – Tim Ferriss
87. “Greatness is setting ambitious goals that your former self would have thought impossible, and trying to get a little better every day.” – Tim Ferriss
88. “When — despite your best efforts — you feel like you’re losing at the game of life, remember: Even the best of the best feel this way sometimes.” – Tim Ferriss
89. “Learn from your mistakes until you succeed. It’s that simple.” – Tim Ferriss
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90. “To do anything remotely interesting you need to train yourself to be effective at dealing with, responding to, even enjoying criticism.” – Tim Ferriss
91. “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
92. “If you want great mentors, you have to become a great mentee. If you want to lead, you have to first learn to follow.” – Tim Ferriss
93. “If the challenge we face doesn’t scare us, then it’s probably not that important.” – Tim Ferriss
94. “For overcoming fear, I think that an exercise called “fear-setting” is extremely helpful.” – Tim Ferriss
95. “What are you waiting for? If you cannot answer this without resorting to the previously rejected concept of good timing, the answer is simple: You’re afraid, just like the rest of the world.”- Tim Ferriss
96. “Fear is your friend. Fear is an indicator. Sometimes is shows you what you shouldn’t do, but more often than not it shows you exactly what you should do.” – Tim Ferriss
97. “The best people in almost any field are almost always the people who get the most criticism.” – Tim Ferriss
98. “If someone’s criticism is completely unfounded on data, then I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.” – Tim Ferriss
99. “If think about killing yourself, imagine yourself wearing a suicide bomber’s vest of explosives and walking into a crowd of innocents. That’s effectively what it is.” – Tim Ferriss
100. “Even if you ‘feel’ like no one loves you or cares about you, you are most likely loved – and most definitely lovable and worthy of love.” – Tim Ferriss
101. “You have gifts to share with the world. You are not alone. You are not flawed. You are human.” – Tim Ferriss
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