BOOK REVIEW: Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Entrepreneurship

My Rating: 5/5

I introduced myself to Tim Ferriss last year when I randomly found a post on his blog in which he had interviewed Maria Popova. Actually, I was searching for Brain Picking’s Maria Popova’s interviews as she is such an inspiring blogging personality, the way she curate the content for every post is amazing and seems an example of a creative process, just right out of her imagination.You must check out Brain Pickings. Moreover, scan through Tim Ferriss’ blog which is called FourHourWorkWeek.com and got introduced to his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show [Podcast Link]. He has done an amazing job by taking more than hundred 60+ minute interviews with some of the successful and interesting people by digging deep into their “mind”, process of their workings, process of maintaining their bodies, listening to their suggestions and how do they motivate, inspire, live and do something that they love to do.

Tools of Titans is an enormous collection of bits and pieces of interviews that are available on his podcast and highlights the major theme of most of the interviews Tim has included in this book. The book is huge, exceeding 700 pages and is certainly not meant to be read all at once. It’s not Tolstoy’s War and Peace or David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest that you can read continuously without moving your body parts for next 7 to 10 days or so. Bear in mind, reading Tools of Titans will take more than that many days since it has a sheer amount of practical information to be processed by our mind. I’d recommend you to take your time with each interview described by Tim, think over it, if there’s a book recommended in between as there are so some interesting book recommendations, try to read few of them or at least do a little research on why the book is being recommended, what’s there inside and is the book for you? Then you can definitely add it to your TBR.

For the last 18 days I have been getting up early to read a few chapters of this book. I found its better to change my routine of to spending time on Medium or WordPress for some days and as the sun rises, I get to dwell in a book. I have been reading this book on my Kindle for the sole purpose to take notes comfortably and not to disturb my reading process. I love highlighting and in recent months it has proved beneficiary for me to reuse the highlights in my blog posts as paraphrasing or go through the highlights in later time, to get a glimpse of a particular book that I read and don’t want to re-read it again. (I will be posting a collection of my book notes soon…Look out for it)

The book is divided into three sections: Healthy, Wealthy & Wise. If there’s another title for Tools for Titans, I  imagine it’d be “Healthy, Wealthy & Wise”. In the Healthy section, there are professional athletes, researchers and world famous doctors who share their best insights, tips and tricks for a healthy living and having an efficient diet that will help you to go through your day, each day.

The second section is on Wealthy. This is section is the fact that this book is a great business book. Memorable sections that include actionable ideas, suggestions, tools for taking your personal brand and business to the next level. There’s a major theme of this section and that is to learn from other experiences. You can only experience one thing in one moment of a time but reading is a great asset that gets you familiar with more than one experience in one particular moment of time.

Last section: Wise. This is my favourite part of the book. I was really captivated by different process that people implement in their daily working life that includes mental toughness, brevity of language, and observing things. Learning how to learn is probably the best investment you can make in yourself. This part is all about that. On a closer look you will observe how the simple Tim’s questions are and yet they simple ones have more detailed answers. He has even included his rapid fire questionnaire in the end of the book that I am going to take a look into and amend some of them in the interviews that I take.

Another thing that I liked about this book is the way Tim projects his own voice in between these interviews which are a representation of his self-doubting, and self-motivated emotions. This way the book became more interesting with change of dialogs and I find them useful and motivating as they shine more light on a specific topic of discussion.

Everything that is mentioned in this book whether a person or a book, is accurately indexed at the end of this books opening doors for to reference to it later.

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