Timothy Ferriss

A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn't depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.

People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

People don__ want to be millionaires _ they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

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.

As you stumble and learn, stumble and learn again, resolve to talk to yourself as if you were your best friend. So no "What a #?%$@ idiot!" when your BFF smashes an egg on the floor, m'kay? Be cool, like the Fonz.

What you study is more important than how you study. Students are subordinate to materials, much like novice cooks are subordinate to recipes. If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn't matter how much (or how well) you study. It doesn't matter how good your teacher is. One must find the highest-frequency material. Material beats method.

Don__ confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple _ many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.

It__ 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 mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for __ealistic_ goals, paradoxically making them the most time-consuming. It__ easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.

Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren__ lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.

Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.

Someday_ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.

Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.

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.

You don't have to travel, but I find extended travel to be a helpful tool for reexamining yourself and the constraints you've artificially placed on your life. It's easy to believe everything has to be done one way if you're always in one place around the same people.

I tend to split my activities into fun, income and legacy. The number of things in that finance bucket is pretty few and far between and doesn't consume much time at all.

I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in 'American History X,' yes. I remember coming home from school and asking my mum if I could get an eye transplant, and of course she declined.

When I left the U.S. for the first time, I spent my first year abroad in Japan. That culture shock and abundance of new stimuli combined with a lack of guidance forced me to develop my own approaches to learning and juggling.

One of the bigger misconceptions of learning is that many skills take a lifetime to get world-class at, or 10,000 hours to become world-class at.