86Thousand400: Tools of Titans 5

Peter Diamandis (One of the World's 50 Greatest leader)

How to find your driving purpose or mission

- Tony Robbin's Date with Destiny program, helps people improve their "operating system". Peter also poses the following three questions:

- What did you want to do when you were a child, before anybody told you what you were supposed to do?

- What was it you wanted to become?

- What did you want to do more than anything else?

- "If Peter Diamandis or Tim Ferriss gave you $1 billion, how would you spend it besides the parties and Ferraris and so forth?

- If I asked you to spend $1 billion improving the world, solving a problem, what would you pursue?

Peter's Laws

- Peter has a set of rules that guide his life. His 28 Peter's Laws have been collected over decades. Here are some of Tim's favourites:

- When given a choice...take both

- Multiple projects lead to multiple successes

- When forced to compromise, ask for more

- If you can't win, change the rules

- If you can't change the rules, then ignore them

- "No" simply means begin again at one level higher

- When in doubt: THINK

- The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live

- The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself

- You get what you incentivise

- The day before something is a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea

- If you can't measure it, you can't improve it

B.J. Novak (Actor in Emmy Award winning comedy series The Office)

- Schedule (and, if possible, pay for) things in advance to prevent yourself from backing out. Tim's applied this to early morning Acro Yoga sessions, late-night gymnastics training, archery lessons, etc. Make commitments in a high-energy state so you can't back out when you're in a low energy state

How to say "No" when it matters most

Why are you investing anyway?

- For me the goal of "investing" has always been simple: to allocate resources (eg money, time, energy) to improve quality of life. This is a personal definition, as yours likely will be

- Life favours the specific ask and punishes the vague wish

BJ Miller (Palliative care Physician at University of California and advisor to the Zen Hospice Project in San Fran)

Stargazing as therapy

- When you're struggling with just about anything, look up. Just ponder the night sky for a minute and realise that we're all on the same planet at the same time. As far as we can tell, we're the only planet with life like ours on it anywhere nearby.

- Just mulling the bare naked facts of he cosmos is enough to thrill me, awe me, freak me out, and kind of put all my neurotic anxieties in their proper place. A lot of people - when you're standing at the edge of your horizon, at death's door, you can be much more in tune with the cosmos."

- "Star therapy" every night that he can. The effects are disproportionate to the effort

The Miracle of a snowball

- It really made it so palpable that we as human beings, as long as we're in this body, are feeling machines

Maria Popova

"If you're looking for a formula for greatness, the closest we'll ever get I think, is this: Consistency driven by a deep love of the work."

Note-taking - Distilling the gems

- Tim and Maria both create their own indices at the beginning of books on near blank pages. This makes review later much faster

- Maria does most of her long-form reading at the gym

Worst Advice

"Follow your dreams.' It's impossible to do without self-knowledge, which takes years. You discover your 'dream' (or sense of purpose) in the very act of walking the path, which is guided by equal parts choice and chance."

Jocko Willink (After retiring from the Navy, he co-founded Echelon Front, a leadership and management consulting company, and co-authored the No.1 New York Times best seller Extreme Ownership: How US Navy SEALs Lead and Win. He now discusses war, leadership, business, and life in his top-rated podcast, Jocko Podcast. He is an avid surfer, a husband, and father of four "highly motivated" children)