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# Tools Of Titans: A Comprehensive Guide To High-Performance Tools And Tactics For Success

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The latest groundbreaking tome from Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek . From the author: "For the last two years, I’ve interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show , to deconstruct their success habits. The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists. For most of my guests, it’s the first time they’ve agreed to a two-to-three-hour interview. This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads. "This book contains the distilled tools, tactics, and ‘inside baseball’ you won’t find anywhere else. It also includes new tips from past guests, and life lessons from new ‘guests’ you haven’t met. "What makes the show different is a relentless focus on actionable details for self-improvement. This is reflected in the questions. For example: What do these people do in the first sixty minutes of each morning? What do their workout routines look like, and why? What books have they gifted most to other people? What are the biggest wastes of time for novices in their field? What supplements do they take on a daily basis? "I don’t view myself as an interviewer. I view myself as an experimenter. If I can’t test something and replicate results in the messy reality of everyday life, I’m not interested. "Everything within these pages has been vetted, explored, and applied to my own life in some fashion, delivering powerful business insights. I’ve used dozens of the tactics and philosophies in high-stakes negotiations, high-risk environments, or large business dealings. The lessons have made me millions of dollars and saved me years of wasted effort and frustration. "I created this book, my ultimate notebook of high-leverage tools, for myself. It’s changed my life, and I hope the same for you." This ultimate notebook of high-leverage tools for peak performance includes: Proven Habits from Icons: Learn the distilled tools and tactics of super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger), elite athletes, and legendary Special Operations commanders. Actionable Morning Routines: Discover what the world's best do in the first sixty minutes of each morning to set themselves up for success, and what their workout routines look like. High-Stakes Business Strategies: Explore the philosophies Tim has personally used in high-stakes negotiations and large business dealings to make millions of dollars. A Blueprint for a Better Life: Find out what books have influenced today's titans most, what supplements they take, and the biggest wastes of time they've learned to avoid.

Review: Tim Wrote This Book So I Wouldn't Have To - On my list of "Someday/Maybe" projects was this one, innocent little item: "Distill notes on Tim Ferriss's best podcasts." Backstory: in the beginning, I didn't like Tim's podcast much, because I thought it was too long. No editing. Eventually, I realized the fault was not with Tim's approach - it was with my premise. That premise: good interviews are tight, controlled, and edited down to maximize the "pithiness factor". Sound bytes. Our culture is trained to react to the 10-second sound byte, the 140-character tweet, and the 300-word "blog post." Longer content causes our brain to burn calories. As I was awakened from the matrix, I realized these long interviews allowed Tim to dig deeper, pursue "tangents", and get the person he's interviewing to say things they might never have said in a traditional interview. Conversations. Tim Ferriss was having conversations. One day I was perusing all the show notes, looking at the guest's names, and it struck me: I had a cave full of dragon's treasure in front of me. Wide open. I was free to take as much as I could carry. That's when the idea occurred to me: it would be extraordinarily useful to comb through all this material, to sift and sort, and to distill the very best idea, tools, methods, habits, and routines into a single document. Big project. But worthwhile. There is rested, on my "Someday/Maybe" list, until an obscure day somewhere in the distant future. Then I heard Tim talking about this new project. He was going to sift, sort, organize, and summarize all this material for me! (Okay, so it's not just for me... but it sure felt that way when I heard the news!) And who better to unearth not only the obvious moments of genius, but also the more obscure moments of deeper insight, the unglamorous truths that yield exponential results, and the profound moment of insight that might easily be missed when listening to a podcast. What You Will Find In The Book Tim has divided this tome (673 pages) into three main sections: • Healthy (containing the best material regarding health, nutrition, strength training, wight loss, and healing... among other subjects). • Wealthy (insight, tools, techniques, and approaches for building one's material fortune). • Wise (how to pursue a live worth living, learn from mistakes and challenges... and summaries of the wisdom of his most sages guests). Tim suggests thinking of these three categories as the legs on a tripod upon which life is balanced. Each of the three main sections includes dozens of profiles focused on the best guests from The Tim Ferriss Show podcast scattered throughout each interview. The profiles are like "Cliff Notes" of the conversations Tim shared with each guest. These are NOT transcripts, but something mich better. These are the actionable, usable, profitable, beneficial gems sc He also includes some of his best writing not tied to a guest profile. Among my favorites: • How To Earn Your Freedom • How To Say "No" When It Matters Most • Is This What I So Feared? • Testing The Impossible": 17 Questions That Changed My Life I found the book to be well-organized and Tim's choices of who/what to include spot on. If I had written up these summaries, would I have made different choices? In some cases yes. But if this project had been left to me, there would have been a few problems: 1. It would probably have never been finished (hey, I have work of my own to do!) 2. It would have been more focused on only the things of obvious value to me - Tim's approach is undoubtedly broader, and therefore more useful to the reading public at large. 3. And finally, the most obvious problem: these are Tim's guests, Tim's articles, and Tim's ideas. If I had written up these notes, they would not have been as good. And more problematic: nobody else would have ever read them. I give the book my highest recommendation. And thanks Tim, for writing it so I wouldn't have to.
Review: A great book for founders - From the perspective of a VC-backed founder + also former seed investor: I just finished Tool of Titans. I bought this book on June 11th 2025 and finished it on June 25th (~45 pages a day). Over the past few months and the 20+ books I have read in my own self-curriculum to self-growth, I catch myself saying “this was the best book ever.” Tim Ferris’s book - “Tool of Titans” generally has felt like the best book so far. When I first opened the book, my first observation was around how thin the pages were. It almost felt as thin as the pages in the bible. Of which my first thought based on that observation was: “ugh, gosh. Is this guy trying to create what is the modern day bible for tech-entrepreneur-abes?” I bought this book to understand how “billionaires” think so that I could understand the rules in which to understand them, play alongside them, and ultimately beat them. Now having finished the 645 pages of this book, I walk away feeling: they are all just normal people. They all wished they “worried” less when they were younger, they all are practicing some form of “meditation” to fight their inner self-talk of doubt. Taking risks, leaning into discomfort, to hard conversations, living more authentically, reframing from people-pleasing…these are “hardships” we put onto ourselves and that rather life is so simple, to become a “titan” is so simple: it's about being led by love and curiosity. This is my first Tim Ferriss Book. Actually, this is the first anything I’ve consumed by Tim. I never wanted to buy his work because I thought it wouldn’t resonate with me given how different our identities are. He’s a presumably fit white man who went to Princeton. I am a 5’2 medium-sized east-asian woman who grew up in the Bay Area and went to Stanford. There are many things to like about this book in its encyclopedic style of short form Q&A recaps with these Titans, but what I appreciated most actually were Tim’s essays: “the lazy manifesto” and “suicide”. Those short essays / manifestos spoke to me. I’ve read a lot of books over the past couple months on my sabbatical (I am in month three) - 5,000 pages, 20-ish books (most of which are NYT bestsellers) about mindset/the brain/ego to be exact. I’ve enjoyed each book but a few stand out in having produced a “bodily feeling”: - Inner Excellence left me with what it felt like to release ego, this feeling of nakedness. I remember finishing this book on a bus ride from the airport to my friend’s apt in Los Angeles to attend a gathering of the top 100 most influential AAPI leaders, thinking…”how can I go? I feel this uncomfortable feeling of rawness.” That rawness was the temporary release of ego. This book produced that same feeling of ego-release that sometimes takes place when taking psychedelics. I realized how much I had driven by ego (self centered thoughts of “I must..”) the past few months of my founder’s journey - The Upside of Stress left me with a deep sense of relief. I felt like I finally realized how powerful our minds are and how we have choice and agency in the beliefs we choose to let guide our thoughts and actions. This book taught me the extent to how powerful “the mind-body” connection is. - Messy Middle left me with a sense of connection in the founder’s journey. That I was not alone. Scott’s way of describing feelings of the founder’s journey and all the messy turns almost perfectly encapsulated a lot of the thoughts I had in my own journey. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have read this book before starting my company or at least at some point when I was running it and if it would have led to a different outcome - maybe I could have been a better CEO to my team. Probably more to chew on there. Now, Tools of Titans was the book I cried to the most of, most of the crying taking place in the last fifty pages or so. Towards the end, he talks about the chapter of meeting a fan, Silas, who asks Tim to sign the book for his brother only to find out later that Silas’s brother had committed suicide shortly before and Silas wanted to have a signed copy to leave in his dead room’s brother given how much his brother loved listening to Tim. In this chapter, Tim walks through then his own battle of struggling against thoughts of suicide. For me, as I rank the 20 something books I’ve read now, I put Tools of Titans as probably #1 and the reason for it is the last two lines that Tim ends his book with: “it is my hope that when you read and reread this book, you will feel the spirit of these titans with you. No matter the hardship, challenge, or grand ambition before you, they are here. You are not alone, and you are better than you think. As Jocko would say: Get after it.” This book goes as my #1 of the books I’ve read so far because it helped me feel seen. And the chapter that helped me feel most seen, was the suicide chapter. It served as a reminder that dark thoughts are universally felt. In that universalness, we then feel connected. In all of my travel, prompted journaling, reading I’ve done over the past 3 months across Turkey, Egypt, Ironman week in Houston, Los Angeles, Bay Area, San Diego, the one prompt I never wrote about was my own battle with suicidal thoughts. When I reflect back on January to end of March 2025 as I was working through the transitions of removing myself as CEO of my company, passing the baton on to our co-founder and COO (who I respect deeply), that was the darkest moment of my professional life. The only other moment that felt that dark was more of a personal experience when a family member was battling with thoughts of suicide. Normally, I am someone who would describe myself as extroverted (almost too extroverted), happy-go-lucky, jovial. But during this dark time, I felt alone. I retreated to social conversations only with my husband. This dark period started when one of my favorite board members had abruptly left to join another venture capital firm, returning then another board member, who I deeply respect but is someone who I was intimidated by. I was scared to be honest with him, whereas with this previous board member, he had a calmness where moments of honesty felt more like brainstorming. As I reflect back, it was my own fear of being honest with this new board member that led to the need for my transition out. I was scared to admit where we weren’t thriving as a business and as a result, I was doing a greater disservice to the business. My transition out was the best decision for the business at that point in time for two reasons: 1. Deep down, I knew that our COO would be willing to serve the business’s purpose greater than me having lived the journey of the customer (and for anyone in the founder’s journey or thinking about starting a company, you need to be willing to suffer. She was willing to suffer). And 2. If the board functions as your married partner, chemistry matters and my chemistry was no longer there with this board change. The dark time was initiated when the new board member had called me and shared that in a couple months, we should decide if you are the right CEO. It was a comment made in passing, I don’t know if he remembers even saying it. But for me, that was the moment where I lost complete faith in myself. Perhaps for other founders, hearing a statement like that would have evoked a sense of: “well, I am going to prove him wrong.” For me, at that moment in time, I took it as: “I know enough about this person to know that if he is thinking that, I shouldn’t try fighting this because the thought has already been planted.” The backstory I haven’t shared is that I had worked in the past with this board member as his right-hand for almost 5-6 years. I know him well, and he knows me well and that is probably why that statement hit me harder than it should have. I am not a parent, but it felt as if at that moment in time, the person I wanted to believe in me the most, no longer did. I now know that it mustn’t have been easy for him to share that statement with me either and that he was doing his fiduciary responsibility as a board member to be tough on me. While board members are certainly not parents, the board-member to founder relationship can feel like a parental one for a first time founder - where we are seeking the “approvals” of board members. With more experience, we learn that board members, if assembled correctly, are not parents; rather they are extra guardians of the vision. Their job is to help us catch blind-spots and ultimately it is to determine when to hire/fire the CEO. The loss of faith in me, which I do not fault anyone because I was not my most authentic and honest self in the woes of the business in that January board meeting, was debilitating. Everyday after, I woke up in panic. What used to be days where I looked forward to meeting the team, to reading patient quotes and how much they valued our experience, turned into my worst thoughts of: “does the team respect me? Will they leave me?” And worst of all…”will they conspire against me?” I sleep in a room with black-out shades and every morning felt like walking with black-out shades that never left. Everything felt dimmer. My heart would race wondering…”when are they going to fire me?” I lived this for almost 3 months. The first thing I did when we announced my transition into the board member role as our COO stepped into the CEO role was go to the doctor because my armpits/lymph nodes were so swollen it hurt to exercise. I thought I had cancer. (Isn’t that crazy?) I remember one of our physician board members texting me on a Friday…”can you share the number of the new board member’s number? He emailed me to connect. It probably isn’t about you but about the election.” I shared his number, but I knew that it was about me. I actually am grateful for that text from the physician board member because it helped prime me. So when the Wednesday call happened announcing the mutual consensus for the need to consider a CEO transition, I already knew. I wasn’t surprised. Rather, the first thought that came to mind was: relief. Relief was the #1 feeling I had. Leading up to that call, I called one of my best friends - someone who now I only cherish even more - out of emotional desperation. For the past few weeks leading up to that call, I started developing a thought that was only becoming louder and that was: “I don’t want to live anymore.” It had started as a very slow comment - maybe only presenting itself every now and then. But towards those last few weeks, It had started becoming louder and louder to where on my commute to work, I would imagine what it would look like to jump into the train tracks. I don’t think I ever would, but I hated that the thought even surfaced. Now three months post this board transition and grateful for this transition, I realize how devastating of a thought that is to have especially for all the love that surrounds me with my husband, my family, and my friends. I look back now, and I think to myself: how tragic would it have been to off myself because of a company not working out, where we know the odds are <10% of it not working out anyways? But in the moment, the company felt like my identity, my sense of self worth, the reason that people found me interesting. That board member who gave the call saved me. As much as it was because of the self doubt I placed on myself when he had shared “his thoughts of if I was the right CEO”, he was also the one that I think saved me from what would have been months more of this sadness for a mission / purpose that no longer quite compelled me after three years of serving it. The reason why Tim’s book ranks #1 for me is because of how deeply vulnerable his own manifestos were in the book. It takes a great deal of courage to share your own bouts of doubts, let alone thoughts of suicide with others. Heck, it's taken me 7 cities, 3 countries, 20+ books, 5,000 pages of reading on the brain/mindset, to have the courage to write my own battle with those then dark thoughts. Now being on the other side, 3 months post board decision of transition, I feel so thankful for that board decision. It takes courage to walk away when you feel so easily like a quitter. The last 3 months for me have been the first time in the last 8 years where I have given myself more than 10 business days off. These last 3 months have been my own self-guided curriculum of “books” as I understand the emotions that I had to wrestle with as a founder/CEO who raised probably more venture funding than we should have during that point in time. When I was in my dark era, I had lost my will to be curious. Rather, I felt like I was in survival mode serving my ego of “how not to get fired” rather than my questions being centered around “how to best serve the mission of our company.” Stepping away was the best thing I could do for the business, but also for regaining my curiosity to live. And that curiosity has been regained. Books did that for me. Reading these 5,000 pages, 20+ books, restored my perspective so that I can be deeply curious, a trait that I have always prided myself in having. Tim’s books restored a sense of connectedness in that all of us - even the Titans - fall down and over again. That we are not alone in the inner battles of self-doubt. That “the greats”are battling their gremlins every day. The last two sentences of his book are a masterful ending and encapsulate why this books means so much to me.”

## Features

- Authors Signature in book.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #33,258 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #240 in Motivational Management & Leadership #701 in Success Self-Help #739 in Motivational Self-Help (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 9,600 Reviews |

## Images

![Tools Of Titans: A Comprehensive Guide To High-Performance Tools And Tactics For Success - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61UIDFafg8L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tim Wrote This Book So I Wouldn't Have To
*by R***S on January 8, 2017*

On my list of "Someday/Maybe" projects was this one, innocent little item: "Distill notes on Tim Ferriss's best podcasts." Backstory: in the beginning, I didn't like Tim's podcast much, because I thought it was too long. No editing. Eventually, I realized the fault was not with Tim's approach - it was with my premise. That premise: good interviews are tight, controlled, and edited down to maximize the "pithiness factor". Sound bytes. Our culture is trained to react to the 10-second sound byte, the 140-character tweet, and the 300-word "blog post." Longer content causes our brain to burn calories. As I was awakened from the matrix, I realized these long interviews allowed Tim to dig deeper, pursue "tangents", and get the person he's interviewing to say things they might never have said in a traditional interview. Conversations. Tim Ferriss was having conversations. One day I was perusing all the show notes, looking at the guest's names, and it struck me: I had a cave full of dragon's treasure in front of me. Wide open. I was free to take as much as I could carry. That's when the idea occurred to me: it would be extraordinarily useful to comb through all this material, to sift and sort, and to distill the very best idea, tools, methods, habits, and routines into a single document. Big project. But worthwhile. There is rested, on my "Someday/Maybe" list, until an obscure day somewhere in the distant future. Then I heard Tim talking about this new project. He was going to sift, sort, organize, and summarize all this material for me! (Okay, so it's not just for me... but it sure felt that way when I heard the news!) And who better to unearth not only the obvious moments of genius, but also the more obscure moments of deeper insight, the unglamorous truths that yield exponential results, and the profound moment of insight that might easily be missed when listening to a podcast. What You Will Find In The Book Tim has divided this tome (673 pages) into three main sections: • Healthy (containing the best material regarding health, nutrition, strength training, wight loss, and healing... among other subjects). • Wealthy (insight, tools, techniques, and approaches for building one's material fortune). • Wise (how to pursue a live worth living, learn from mistakes and challenges... and summaries of the wisdom of his most sages guests). Tim suggests thinking of these three categories as the legs on a tripod upon which life is balanced. Each of the three main sections includes dozens of profiles focused on the best guests from The Tim Ferriss Show podcast scattered throughout each interview. The profiles are like "Cliff Notes" of the conversations Tim shared with each guest. These are NOT transcripts, but something mich better. These are the actionable, usable, profitable, beneficial gems sc He also includes some of his best writing not tied to a guest profile. Among my favorites: • How To Earn Your Freedom • How To Say "No" When It Matters Most • Is This What I So Feared? • Testing The Impossible": 17 Questions That Changed My Life I found the book to be well-organized and Tim's choices of who/what to include spot on. If I had written up these summaries, would I have made different choices? In some cases yes. But if this project had been left to me, there would have been a few problems: 1. It would probably have never been finished (hey, I have work of my own to do!) 2. It would have been more focused on only the things of obvious value to me - Tim's approach is undoubtedly broader, and therefore more useful to the reading public at large. 3. And finally, the most obvious problem: these are Tim's guests, Tim's articles, and Tim's ideas. If I had written up these notes, they would not have been as good. And more problematic: nobody else would have ever read them. I give the book my highest recommendation. And thanks Tim, for writing it so I wouldn't have to.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A great book for founders
*by C***Z on June 25, 2025*

From the perspective of a VC-backed founder + also former seed investor: I just finished Tool of Titans. I bought this book on June 11th 2025 and finished it on June 25th (~45 pages a day). Over the past few months and the 20+ books I have read in my own self-curriculum to self-growth, I catch myself saying “this was the best book ever.” Tim Ferris’s book - “Tool of Titans” generally has felt like the best book so far. When I first opened the book, my first observation was around how thin the pages were. It almost felt as thin as the pages in the bible. Of which my first thought based on that observation was: “ugh, gosh. Is this guy trying to create what is the modern day bible for tech-entrepreneur-abes?” I bought this book to understand how “billionaires” think so that I could understand the rules in which to understand them, play alongside them, and ultimately beat them. Now having finished the 645 pages of this book, I walk away feeling: they are all just normal people. They all wished they “worried” less when they were younger, they all are practicing some form of “meditation” to fight their inner self-talk of doubt. Taking risks, leaning into discomfort, to hard conversations, living more authentically, reframing from people-pleasing…these are “hardships” we put onto ourselves and that rather life is so simple, to become a “titan” is so simple: it's about being led by love and curiosity. This is my first Tim Ferriss Book. Actually, this is the first anything I’ve consumed by Tim. I never wanted to buy his work because I thought it wouldn’t resonate with me given how different our identities are. He’s a presumably fit white man who went to Princeton. I am a 5’2 medium-sized east-asian woman who grew up in the Bay Area and went to Stanford. There are many things to like about this book in its encyclopedic style of short form Q&A recaps with these Titans, but what I appreciated most actually were Tim’s essays: “the lazy manifesto” and “suicide”. Those short essays / manifestos spoke to me. I’ve read a lot of books over the past couple months on my sabbatical (I am in month three) - 5,000 pages, 20-ish books (most of which are NYT bestsellers) about mindset/the brain/ego to be exact. I’ve enjoyed each book but a few stand out in having produced a “bodily feeling”: - Inner Excellence left me with what it felt like to release ego, this feeling of nakedness. I remember finishing this book on a bus ride from the airport to my friend’s apt in Los Angeles to attend a gathering of the top 100 most influential AAPI leaders, thinking…”how can I go? I feel this uncomfortable feeling of rawness.” That rawness was the temporary release of ego. This book produced that same feeling of ego-release that sometimes takes place when taking psychedelics. I realized how much I had driven by ego (self centered thoughts of “I must..”) the past few months of my founder’s journey - The Upside of Stress left me with a deep sense of relief. I felt like I finally realized how powerful our minds are and how we have choice and agency in the beliefs we choose to let guide our thoughts and actions. This book taught me the extent to how powerful “the mind-body” connection is. - Messy Middle left me with a sense of connection in the founder’s journey. That I was not alone. Scott’s way of describing feelings of the founder’s journey and all the messy turns almost perfectly encapsulated a lot of the thoughts I had in my own journey. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have read this book before starting my company or at least at some point when I was running it and if it would have led to a different outcome - maybe I could have been a better CEO to my team. Probably more to chew on there. Now, Tools of Titans was the book I cried to the most of, most of the crying taking place in the last fifty pages or so. Towards the end, he talks about the chapter of meeting a fan, Silas, who asks Tim to sign the book for his brother only to find out later that Silas’s brother had committed suicide shortly before and Silas wanted to have a signed copy to leave in his dead room’s brother given how much his brother loved listening to Tim. In this chapter, Tim walks through then his own battle of struggling against thoughts of suicide. For me, as I rank the 20 something books I’ve read now, I put Tools of Titans as probably #1 and the reason for it is the last two lines that Tim ends his book with: “it is my hope that when you read and reread this book, you will feel the spirit of these titans with you. No matter the hardship, challenge, or grand ambition before you, they are here. You are not alone, and you are better than you think. As Jocko would say: Get after it.” This book goes as my #1 of the books I’ve read so far because it helped me feel seen. And the chapter that helped me feel most seen, was the suicide chapter. It served as a reminder that dark thoughts are universally felt. In that universalness, we then feel connected. In all of my travel, prompted journaling, reading I’ve done over the past 3 months across Turkey, Egypt, Ironman week in Houston, Los Angeles, Bay Area, San Diego, the one prompt I never wrote about was my own battle with suicidal thoughts. When I reflect back on January to end of March 2025 as I was working through the transitions of removing myself as CEO of my company, passing the baton on to our co-founder and COO (who I respect deeply), that was the darkest moment of my professional life. The only other moment that felt that dark was more of a personal experience when a family member was battling with thoughts of suicide. Normally, I am someone who would describe myself as extroverted (almost too extroverted), happy-go-lucky, jovial. But during this dark time, I felt alone. I retreated to social conversations only with my husband. This dark period started when one of my favorite board members had abruptly left to join another venture capital firm, returning then another board member, who I deeply respect but is someone who I was intimidated by. I was scared to be honest with him, whereas with this previous board member, he had a calmness where moments of honesty felt more like brainstorming. As I reflect back, it was my own fear of being honest with this new board member that led to the need for my transition out. I was scared to admit where we weren’t thriving as a business and as a result, I was doing a greater disservice to the business. My transition out was the best decision for the business at that point in time for two reasons: 1. Deep down, I knew that our COO would be willing to serve the business’s purpose greater than me having lived the journey of the customer (and for anyone in the founder’s journey or thinking about starting a company, you need to be willing to suffer. She was willing to suffer). And 2. If the board functions as your married partner, chemistry matters and my chemistry was no longer there with this board change. The dark time was initiated when the new board member had called me and shared that in a couple months, we should decide if you are the right CEO. It was a comment made in passing, I don’t know if he remembers even saying it. But for me, that was the moment where I lost complete faith in myself. Perhaps for other founders, hearing a statement like that would have evoked a sense of: “well, I am going to prove him wrong.” For me, at that moment in time, I took it as: “I know enough about this person to know that if he is thinking that, I shouldn’t try fighting this because the thought has already been planted.” The backstory I haven’t shared is that I had worked in the past with this board member as his right-hand for almost 5-6 years. I know him well, and he knows me well and that is probably why that statement hit me harder than it should have. I am not a parent, but it felt as if at that moment in time, the person I wanted to believe in me the most, no longer did. I now know that it mustn’t have been easy for him to share that statement with me either and that he was doing his fiduciary responsibility as a board member to be tough on me. While board members are certainly not parents, the board-member to founder relationship can feel like a parental one for a first time founder - where we are seeking the “approvals” of board members. With more experience, we learn that board members, if assembled correctly, are not parents; rather they are extra guardians of the vision. Their job is to help us catch blind-spots and ultimately it is to determine when to hire/fire the CEO. The loss of faith in me, which I do not fault anyone because I was not my most authentic and honest self in the woes of the business in that January board meeting, was debilitating. Everyday after, I woke up in panic. What used to be days where I looked forward to meeting the team, to reading patient quotes and how much they valued our experience, turned into my worst thoughts of: “does the team respect me? Will they leave me?” And worst of all…”will they conspire against me?” I sleep in a room with black-out shades and every morning felt like walking with black-out shades that never left. Everything felt dimmer. My heart would race wondering…”when are they going to fire me?” I lived this for almost 3 months. The first thing I did when we announced my transition into the board member role as our COO stepped into the CEO role was go to the doctor because my armpits/lymph nodes were so swollen it hurt to exercise. I thought I had cancer. (Isn’t that crazy?) I remember one of our physician board members texting me on a Friday…”can you share the number of the new board member’s number? He emailed me to connect. It probably isn’t about you but about the election.” I shared his number, but I knew that it was about me. I actually am grateful for that text from the physician board member because it helped prime me. So when the Wednesday call happened announcing the mutual consensus for the need to consider a CEO transition, I already knew. I wasn’t surprised. Rather, the first thought that came to mind was: relief. Relief was the #1 feeling I had. Leading up to that call, I called one of my best friends - someone who now I only cherish even more - out of emotional desperation. For the past few weeks leading up to that call, I started developing a thought that was only becoming louder and that was: “I don’t want to live anymore.” It had started as a very slow comment - maybe only presenting itself every now and then. But towards those last few weeks, It had started becoming louder and louder to where on my commute to work, I would imagine what it would look like to jump into the train tracks. I don’t think I ever would, but I hated that the thought even surfaced. Now three months post this board transition and grateful for this transition, I realize how devastating of a thought that is to have especially for all the love that surrounds me with my husband, my family, and my friends. I look back now, and I think to myself: how tragic would it have been to off myself because of a company not working out, where we know the odds are <10% of it not working out anyways? But in the moment, the company felt like my identity, my sense of self worth, the reason that people found me interesting. That board member who gave the call saved me. As much as it was because of the self doubt I placed on myself when he had shared “his thoughts of if I was the right CEO”, he was also the one that I think saved me from what would have been months more of this sadness for a mission / purpose that no longer quite compelled me after three years of serving it. The reason why Tim’s book ranks #1 for me is because of how deeply vulnerable his own manifestos were in the book. It takes a great deal of courage to share your own bouts of doubts, let alone thoughts of suicide with others. Heck, it's taken me 7 cities, 3 countries, 20+ books, 5,000 pages of reading on the brain/mindset, to have the courage to write my own battle with those then dark thoughts. Now being on the other side, 3 months post board decision of transition, I feel so thankful for that board decision. It takes courage to walk away when you feel so easily like a quitter. The last 3 months for me have been the first time in the last 8 years where I have given myself more than 10 business days off. These last 3 months have been my own self-guided curriculum of “books” as I understand the emotions that I had to wrestle with as a founder/CEO who raised probably more venture funding than we should have during that point in time. When I was in my dark era, I had lost my will to be curious. Rather, I felt like I was in survival mode serving my ego of “how not to get fired” rather than my questions being centered around “how to best serve the mission of our company.” Stepping away was the best thing I could do for the business, but also for regaining my curiosity to live. And that curiosity has been regained. Books did that for me. Reading these 5,000 pages, 20+ books, restored my perspective so that I can be deeply curious, a trait that I have always prided myself in having. Tim’s books restored a sense of connectedness in that all of us - even the Titans - fall down and over again. That we are not alone in the inner battles of self-doubt. That “the greats”are battling their gremlins every day. The last two sentences of his book are a masterful ending and encapsulate why this books means so much to me.”

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tools of Titans is the most motivating book of the year.
*by M***O on February 12, 2017*

I will admit, when I first heard Tim was going to release this book, my ears perked up. I was at the time in quite a funk, both personally and professionally. Having become a slave to some unproductive habits and spinning within some prehistoric negative feedback loops that felt impossible to unwind. On top of this, I have spent the last 2 years revitalizing my soul through a journey of healing from sustained trauma that imprinted me with a case of Complex PTSD. For people with this wiring, it can be doubly difficult to reprogram and dismantle self defeating beliefs and the behaviors they feed. I pre-ordered this book in the hopes that it would serve at the very least as a motivational catalyst towards implementation of subtle changes within my environment day to day. The analysis paralysis phase in which I found myself didn't lend itself very well to the monolithic task of reading this book! I blocked off 1-2 hours each day when I would consume the gems of knowledge sprawled liberally throughout this compendium. The simple task of setting aside and scheduling a date with Tools of Titans each day was the launching pad that I required in order to enter into a state of motion, as inconsequential as that seemed. And that is the magic of this book. I found that as I gained momentum and read each day, I was rewarded with actionable items that I could pepper into my routine without a lot of pressure or commitment. We are talking about things like the 5 minute journal, writing down affirmations each day, stretching, moving and forcing myself to get sunshine when possible. I did all of this in the kindest way possible, avoiding any impulse to punish myself when I failed, and instead celebrating each small victory. I will admit, I wasn't sure whether the book would fulfill my idealized objectives, but as I continued to flow through the motions, the re-wiring started to become apparent in various facets of my life. From the book and all the people represented there, I began to feel a sense of encouragement which then translated into satisfaction, accomplishment and discipline. All coalescing towards the strength required in order to pull myself out of the slippery rut I'd descended into within the last couple of years. In the month that I've dedicated towards self actualization, I've managed to reset my brain, write daily in my journal, collect ideas for future endeavors, reentered my body through a daily yoga practice that starts at dawn every day and transitioned out of reactionary defense physiology. This has allowed me focus on regaining my health and mobility which directly sustains a balanced mental state. I started to feel myself growing out of the discomfort of doing things that I didn't really want to do, but knew were necessary medicine. I managed to complete tasks that I had been procrastinating on for months due to physical limitations and lagging energy. I have been unemployed, (mostly due to burnout) for about 4 months and living on a dearth of savings feeling quite irrelevant, expendable and kind of hopeless. I had little motivation to better my situation. I became somewhat addicted to digital media having for over a month been immobile due to a back injury and having little in way of productivity. I've slowly weaned myself off this nefarious internet addiction, using some of the principles in this book, mostly through the sense that what I am doing now is tangible and measurable vs. the nebulous engagement with non-productive content on the web.We have all lost hours to aimless browsing so I know I'm not the only one who has struggled with this. And guess what? I finally landed a job. It is remote which is what I wanted for obvious reasons. The position aligns with my values through a philosophy known as the results oriented work environment. This basically gives me the flexibility to design the life I want around experiences instead of hoping I can just fit in the things I love around my schedule. I start next week. The position will pay just enough for me to get by for the time being, and I am banking on Ryan Holiday's advice regarding advancement through service. I am hoping, as I develop efficiency through adding layers of actionable items to my routine, that I will have the flexibility and time required to start learning about how to develop additional streams of income for myself. I have a 3-5 year plan that I think is definitely achievable as long as I am able to stay the course. I may have to get very creative, and that plan will adjust as I learn through action. I will continue to re-read and reference this book as my situation evolves since it has been such a source of inspiration to me during this trying time. Thank you Tim, for condensing the takeaways derived from these influencers in an easy to understand, palatable and actionable manner. I've benefited tremendously from your podcast and from Tools of Titans. ~Monica L.

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