My next guest hosts a podcast that has hit over 100 million downloads. And while I'm not responsible for all of those, I will admit I'm a huge fan. Tim Ferris first attracted attention with his book The 4- Hour Work Week, published in 2007. His newest book is called Tools of Titans. I should also point out that Tim was on Fortune's most recent 40 Under 40 list. Tim, welcome to Fortune Live. Thank you for having me. So congratulations on the book for which you talked to how many hundred? 200 plus. Yeah. World class performers across the widest spectrum. Huge cross disciplinary diversity. Mm- hm. Which is great and you asked them all about their tools, habits, rituals, routines that Help them in their success. So of all these people, these are type A performers, who as you write are hardwired for goal pursuit. So what are some, did you see any patterns among them? There were a lot of patterns, you saw some books that are lesser known pop up a lot. For instance when I asked them what book have you gifted the most to other people, which I think is a better question than what's your favorite book. You have Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger popped up a lot. Good one. Siddhartha which people may know but the way in which these people have used it or adapted into their lives by Herman Hesse popped up a lot. So you have certain commonalities there. At least 80 % of the people that I interviewed have some form of mindfulness practice. Whether that is say guided meditations from [ INAUDIBLE ] or an app like Head Space or not medication but something like the same music track on repeat. Or Matt Mullenweg does that. Matt Mullenweg does that, Amelia Boone does that, there's a long list of folks who do that. And so it can take many different forms. Interesting. What are, these are such successful people. So what, what do they most need help with? I mean, what do you find to be their biggest struggle? I think that across the board, the biggest struggle is Self- flagellation, meaning just beating themselves up. At the end of the day, Rick Rubin the legendary music producer, put this nicely to me, and I'm paraphrasing, That you said, at the end of the day you have to realize that beating yourself up past a certain point is not of service to you and it's not of service to your audience .>> Interesting .>> And that would be one, second is really just appreciation and Really being able to take in and value the present moment because by definition almost as you mentioned these people are very good at goal targeting and accomplishment are future focused. It's not enough it's always about what more can I do? It's always the next, next big thing. Interesting one tenant that really struck with me and it was in your podcast with Chris Saka the investor was He talks about playing offense, and not defense. Right. And that just hit me. I really thought, that's me, and that is so right. So, tell me about that a little bit. So, Chris's example, which I think is illustrative in a lot of respect. So there are different ways you can do this, but he ended up moving to Truckee, which is near Tahoe. No tech From San Francisco. From San Francisco. So he moved from the hotbed of where he was hoping to establish himself as an investor to [ INAUDIBLE ] and then he would invite very specific people up to the jampad, as he called it, and this led to investments in Uber and a whole slew gigantic com [ INAUDIBLE ] because he realized he was whittling away all this time with meaningless Coffee date after coffee date and By saying yes to invitations that come in just cuz you're there. Exactly and email is a lot of people phrased it his way, everyone else's agenda for your time. So if you're in a reactive mode, in other words if you're playing defense instead of offense you're going to get At best, average results. You'll get the same results as every other VC in Silicon Valley. And that can be applied to all sorts of different things. And a lot of people in the book like Josh Waitzkin who's known as a chess prodigy, all the way to the Chris Saccas and these billionaires, create Create slack in their schedule. These uninterrupted say two to four hour blocks of time regularly for different purposes. So that's another pattern that popped up. It's like taking control of your time rather than having others control it. That's right. Speaking of investing, let's talk about that for a minute. You have been a really successful angel investor. You've invested in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Ali Baba In 2014 CB Insights listed you sixth on it's list of the top thousand in Angel Investor's. Mm- hm But you gave it up. You stopped doing it. I did. Tell me why. Well, I think that right now there are, or at least at the time, I haven't tracked it very closely since I'm out of the game, but there are a lot of fair weather investor's. And a lot of fair weather Entrepreneurs. And that's created a glut of, or I should say a surplus, I'll make it more polite, surplus of capital. And has made it more difficult to vet inbound That creates a lot of noise and signals to know it's rate, it is very un favor. My job has become much more difficult and I realize to do that affectively even I use my own money. I realized that I would probably need to build a fund and do it more full time. If I were to do it properly and not be irresponsible. I didn't want to do that. I would have had to give up other parts to my life that I think are more aligned maybe with some of my. Stronger suits, like the writing, and the teaching, and the experimenting. And I had a close friend of mine who's also an investor say, " Please don't stop writing ." And he gave me a bit of a talking to, very heartfelt lecture. And so, I decided to call it quits. And I will be back. I intend to work with entrepreneurs for decades, but i'll wait until there's blood in the streets and then, Only the die hard will remain and those are the people I want to bet on. Any investments that you didn't make that you regret? There are many that got away but I would say I didn't have explicitly the opportunity to do this but I've always admired Air B & B. I think Air B & B Is just a fantastic company on multiple levels and their product is incredible. I use it all the time. So, that would be one that comes to mind. There are many that I missed. But it's not about the Bets that you miss. At least for me using my own money, it's about the bets that you take if you say yes too often, that will bleed your chips. So i'm okay with missing a lot if i get the. [ INAUDIBLE ] [ LAUGH ] [ INAUDIBLE ] every once in a while and i'm fine with that. Not too shabby. Yeah. What do you make of the current climate in Silicon Valley right now. I mean you mentioned that there's a lot of capital, and a lot of companies. I mean, i don't wanna use the word, would you say we are in a Bubble, or do you think it's just over indexed a little bit? Over saturation, I think that there are great companies that come out of every climate. Even if you would consider this a bubble, there will be companies that will survive and change the world. Even though that's clich �� d, and straight from the HBO series, you hear it all the time. I think that There are a lot of folks who are a little self important and feel that simultaneously getting funded is winning the game and that's not winning the game. That's a fools, not a fools errand but it's false gold. That's the fuel for what you need to do. But that's not the score card you should be measuring the success of your company by necessarily. A lot of details and [ INAUDIBLE ] involved. How are the Silicon Valley kind of world class performers different from the other kinds of world class performers. They sort of are, as you kind of mentioned. The [ INAUDIBLE ] themselves. Yes. Yes. They are a unique bunch. I would say that. The top say 1 % of performers in any field, have more in common than they do with the b or c players in their own field. Interesting. So, if you look at some of the smartest people, from my perspective Innovative people in New York, outside of tech, that I know. they have a lot in common with the Mark Endrisesns and the Chris Sakkas and so on, on the West Coast. The biggest commonality is asking absurd questions. So if you have, say, when I interviewed Peter Thiel, He's known for this, but he'll ask questions in a paraphrase in, why can't you achieve your ten year goal in he next six months? He'll very often use this when he's talking to himself or to someone else about career planning. Then you have say, Peter D. Mannis who's in L. A.. So, he's not [ INAUDIBLE ] but, Chairman of the [ INAUDIBLE ] who asked companies who want his investment. How could you ten X the economics of your business in the next, say, three months? And if they say, that's impossible, he says, I don't accept that answer. Try again. So these absurd questions often produce breakthrough answers or brainstorm sessions because you can't use the constraints or the assumptions That you normally do. I want to end by asking you a question you often ask your guests, which is how do you spend the first 60 minutes of your day? [ LAUGH ] What are you rituals? It's very much on auto- pilot. I think that the choice minimal lifestyle is very important if you want to harness your creativity properly. First 60 minutes is wake up, make the bed, long story you can look up Admiral McCraven down the paddy other reasons. Make my bed, takes what 60 seconds. Meditate for 20 minutes generally transcendental meditation or listening to the 2010 Smile Meditation by Tara Brock. Which Maria [ INAUDIBLE ] introduced me to. Then I'll make tea which is [ INAUDIBLE ] tea plus a dash of green tea, with tumiric and ginger, once that [ INAUDIBLE ] I add two tablespoons of coconut oil to it. Or powdered MCT oil, Dr. Dominic Dagastino and then I'll sit down and I'll journal either morning pages which was introduced to me by Brian Cofelman who was an incredible screen writer and film maker. Or something called the five- minute journal, and that's the first 60 minutes. That is a ritual. [ LAUGH ] That is a ritual. One more question, you don't ask this, but this is a question I sometimes ask. What is something we wouldn't know by Googling you? [ LAUGH ] Let's see, something you wouldn't know about me by Googling. That I have An obsession with ancient Japanese saddles [ LAUGH ] And antiques. And I very rarely get any but when I hit a huge milestone for me in my life, after years of working on something. Like a book. Like for our body for instance I ended up getting two japanese cells. Why is that your obsession? Well, I live in Japan when I was fifteen, that was my first real trip abroad and that change my entire life. I was a, the only american [ UNKNOWN ] school with 5 thousand japanese kids. And I became. Really fascinated by the [ INAUDIBLE ] and the Marshall arts traditions of Japan and at one point ended up doing Japanese horseback archery. This is probably 10 years ago going to Niko and it's a very ancient tradition and became I just fell in love with the equipment and all of the rituals involved, so that's the backup .>> That's one of your tools, the tool of this titan. [ LAUGH ] It's one of my Scooby snacks that I give myself once every four five years .>> Scooby snacks, I love it. Tim thank you so much for being here, I really appreciate it .>> Thank you. 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Tim Ferriss Joins Fortune to talk Silicon Valley, Investing, and Meditation

The author and entrepreneur shared his thoughts on Fortune Live.
