Tim Ferriss – 13 Questions to Radically Change Your Thinking

Posted by Toby Jenkins

Updated on September 16th, 2015

As a huge fan of Tim Ferriss’s work, I was stoked to have the opportunity to meet him in Sydney last month at an event put on by The Growth Faculty.

In typical Tim fashion, rather than presenting his journey as a series of events, he walked us through using the questions he’d asked, sharing the stories and discoveries of what he learnt in his search for the answers.

1. What if I did the opposite for 48 hours?
2. What do I spend silly amounts of money on?
3. What’s my real Target Monthly Income (TMI)?
4. What is the worst thing that could happen?
5. If I had only 2 hours to work each week in my business, what would I do?
6. What if I let them make decisions up to $100?
7. What if I went to 100% trade shows to go 100% online?
8. What if I couldn’t pitch my product directly?
9. Do I need to make it back the way I lost it?
10. What if I could only subtract things to solve problems?
11. What rules and systems would I need for a 4-8 week vacation?
12. Am I hunting Antelope or Field Mice?
13. Is achievement worth anything without appreciation?

Here were a few of my take homes from Tim’s session:

1. If Data is power, then Questioning is king – How do you know this? What evidence do you have?
2. Everything is an experiment – your whole life is an experiment of what works and what doesn’t, what you’re interested in and what you’re not.
3. Raise the stakes to force compliance with your own goals.
4. There are 3 currencies – time, income, and mobility. Any one alone is not as valuable as a combination of all 3.
5. D.E.A.L. frame work – Define specific and measurable targets, Eliminate as much as possible, Automate, Liberate.
6. The power really lies in asking the right question. The answers may be different for everyone, but the questions may well be universal.
7. Define your fears every 4-8 weeks to make sure you are doing what is most important to you. What are the worst things that could happen? | How can I minimise by my actions? | How would I get back to where I am?
8. Let small bad things happen.
9. Sell around the product: Phenomenise, Polarise, Communitise.
10. Your network is your networth.
11. “Your email inbox is everyone else’s agenda for your time.”
12. “If you are not content with what you have, you will not be content with what you get.”
13. Practice gratitude – Write down 3 things I’m grateful for everyday
14. Vulnerability – share what’s really going on.
15. Ultimately in sales all things come down to Fear, Greed, Sex, Health.
16. Start with people who are price insensitive.
17. Entrepreneurship – the moving of resources from an area of low return to one of high return.
18. It’s not about idleness, you need to fill your new found time with meaning and purpose.

Have you read any of Tim’s work? Please leave your thoughts is the comments below.

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About Toby Jenkins

Toby Jenkins is co-author of Web Marketing That Works. He also released 33 free marketing templates, is CEO of Bluewire Media and co-hosts an iTunes podcast and has written for Fairfax Media, ProBlogger, Jeff Bullas and many other blogs. Toby is an Athens Olympian.

• The Olympic story I reluctantly shared – Nov 20, 2015
• Time Management and Productivity Hacks of Billionaires & Olympians [Podcast] – Nov 18, 2015