Of Tools of Titans Part VII

Here are another 5 nuggets from Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris.
Number 5 is particularly good. With every action there’s an opportunity cost. Do A and you can’t do B or Z at the same time. So it’s best to make sure A is what you’re good at.

  1.   Being Jaden = Death

To me being jaded is almost like being dead. Nothing impresses you because you feel like you’ve seen it all before and you go through life with dark glasses on.Be a skeptic not a cynic.

 2.   Challenging the “impossibles”

If you stress-test the boundaries and experiment with the “impossibles” you’ll quickly discover that most limitations are a fragile collection of socially reinforced rules you can choose to break at any time.

 3.   Can I create a product that will scratch my own itch?

Somewhere in his writing or podcasts Ferriss talks about when he decided to go into business for the first time. He checked his monthly expenditure to see what he was spending most on. He then set up his own business selling supplements online that were intended to help improve memory retention and quicken the brain. Brainquicken he eventually sold to a private equity company in London.

 4.   People don’t like being sold products but they do like being told stories. Work on the latter.

 5.   The importance of remembering what you’re good at.

If you lose $1,000 a the black jack table should you try to win it back there? Probably not. Humans are very vulnerable to a cognitive bias called “anchoring” whether in real estate, stocks or otherwise. I am no exception. I made a study of this and shortly thereafter sold my San Jose house at a large loss. Once my attention and mind space was freed up I quickly made it back elsewhere