PDF Summary:Tribe of Mentors, by Tim Ferriss

If you want to know how to live your life, who better to ask than people who’ve lived life to its fullest? Tribe of Mentors is distilled life advice from more than 130 world-class experts in a wide variety of fields, such as actor Ben Stiller, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and media mogul Ariana Huffington. Author Tim Ferriss reached out to these experts and compiled their advice after a mild existential crisis left him seeking direction.

In this guide, you’ll learn the experts’ advice on how to identify what matters most to you, how to navigate non-traditional career paths, how to appreciate failure, and more. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Ferriss’s advice with tips for success from other top-performing experts and authors, including Cal Newport, Ryan Holiday, and Laura Vanderkam.

(continued)...

(Shortform note: Pursuing hard work won’t necessarily make you feel joyful right away. Some research has found that painful hard work sometimes lowers happiness while you’re in the midst of it, but reflecting on memories of hard work creates strong feelings of satisfaction. Conversely, the tendency to avoid effortful tasks is significantly correlated with depression.)

Counterpoint: Productivity Requires Rest

Some of Ferriss’s experts offer a caveat to the advice to work hard: Don’t push yourself past your limits. Ultra-marathoner Amelia Boone contends that rest is a necessary part of life, and skipping it only hampers your health and performance. Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington agrees, adding that if you need more rest, it may help to tell yourself that time spent taking care of yourself is work, since you need it to fuel your productivity.

(Shortform note: If you see taking care of yourself as “work,” as Huffington suggests, you may want to know: What’s the most efficient way to do this “work”? In other words, if you want to enhance your performance, avoid pushing yourself too far, and preserve your health, what’s the most efficient way to rest your brain? In Hyperfocus, Chris Bailey recommends intentionally mind-wandering: Engage in a fun activity that’s easy to do without thinking, so you can take a break from forcing yourself to focus. Second, make sure to get enough quality sleep. A good night’s sleep can increase your working memory capacity by almost 60%, allowing you to be vastly more productive than if you tried to work while sleep deprived.)

How to Build a Fulfilling Career

Now that we’ve covered why it’s important to spend as much time as possible on the goals you care about most, let’s apply these ideas to professional work—how do you build a career that you’re happy to spend time on?

In this section, we’ll discuss whether or not passion for the work should be your highest priority when searching for a job. Then, we’ll explore how some experts advise rejecting the traditional path to success and embracing a more risky lifestyle.

Follow Your Passion

Many of Ferriss’s experts agree that a job you’re excited about is the core of a fulfilling life. Political commentator Tommy Vietor argues that true passion should be your number one priority when looking for a career. Record producer Rick Rubin notes that if you follow your passion, you won’t care whether you find success or not since you’ll be doing something you love.

Design expert Debbie Millman takes this idea further, arguing that if you’re truly pursuing your passion, you’ll have no reason to worry about maintaining a work-life balance. The work itself will feel like all you need in life. Fantasy author Neil Gaiman voices a similar opinion, stating that work is there to center his life and make him feel content when nothing else will.

(Shortform note: You may not want to center your entire life and happiness around a career you’re passionate about, as Ferriss’s experts recommend. Some experts argue that if you define yourself entirely by your work, you’ll suffer an identity crisis if you’re laid off or your job is otherwise disrupted. If you can’t feel good about who you are outside of work, losing the chance to work will make you panic. Therefore, make your hobbies and other non-work activities as central to your life as your work so you can cope if something goes wrong professionally.)

Counterpoint: Being Passionate About Your Line of Work Doesn’t Matter

Many of Ferriss’s experts agree that the key to a satisfying career is imagining a job you’d love to do, then going out and getting that job. In So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport challenges that assumption, noting that some people in their self-proclaimed “dream job” still find they dislike many of the tasks they have to do.

Newport argues that job satisfaction has nothing to do with working in a field you’re passionate about. Instead, people are happy and motivated to go to work when they have autonomy on the job, feel like they’re good at their job, and feel emotionally connected to the people they work with.

Counterpoint: Work for Self-Development Before Pursuing Passion

Other experts caution against following your passion, at least at the beginning of your career. Instead, they recommend taking whatever opportunities offer you the most valuable skills and learning experiences. Wired founder Kevin Kelly argues that if you focus on improving your skills, you’ll become valuable enough to pick and choose the opportunities that interest you the most, which lets you live whatever fulfilling life you want. BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen notes that his choice to wait to follow his passion—instead building up skills while working for others—is what made his first venture successful.

(Shortform note: Here, Ferriss’s experts frame skill acquisition as an early stage in your career that lets you claim (or, in Cohen’s case, create) the opportunities you want later. However, the authors of The Startup of You note that in today’s world, you should never move out of the skill acquisition stage of your career. Rapidly advancing technology and globalization have eliminated the valuable careers you could retain over decades with the same set of skills—now, you must continuously acquire new skills to reliably create value in the rapidly-changing world.)

Don’t Follow the Traditional Path to Success

Many people follow the traditional path to success—slowly ascending from one secure job to a slightly better-paying one. However, some of Ferriss’s experts note that constricting yourself to this path may keep you from building a career you’re passionate about.

Actress Richa Chadha notes that the education system typically sets everyone up to follow the same path to success, but this comfortable, low-risk life can be a trap for people with bigger ambitions. If you want to leave a field you’re not excited about, throw yourself into a new pursuit completely; otherwise, it’ll be too tempting to go back to that comfortable life.

(Shortform note: Some research supports Chadha’s assertion that the temptation to fall back to a safer life path can harm your chances of career success. Specifically, the act of formulating a backup plan makes you less motivated to succeed with the initial plan. In one study, researchers offered participants rewards for solving word puzzles, including money and food. However, when they asked participants to come up with backup plans to earn those same rewards on their own, those participants were less motivated to complete the puzzles and performed poorly.)

Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt describes one way to commit to an untraditional life path: Get used to poor, cheap living conditions so you don’t have anything to lose and the risks necessary for an untraditional career don’t scare you away. Entrepreneur Jérôme Jarre took this idea to the extreme, secretly living out of an office building in New York City for several months until his startup began earning profits.

(Shortform note: Arguably, it’s easier to commit to risky life decisions if you’re poor, desperate, and don’t have much to lose—like Jarre was when he lived out of an office building. But what if you’ve already established a comfortable life for yourself and therefore do have something to lose? In this case, you can overcome the fear of total financial failure by temporarily “practicing poverty.” The ancient Greek philosopher Seneca conquered such fears by intentionally setting aside days to practice living below his means, eating less, wearing ragged clothes, and sleeping in a less comfortable home.)

Cryptocurrency pioneer Nick Szabo also advocates for non-traditional career paths, noting that you shouldn’t feel the need to jump constantly from job to job. Unemployment can give you the space and freedom to devote your full attention to the creative ideas that seem the most promising to you.

(Shortform note: Employers may ask you to explain gaps in your résumé in future job interviews. Be prepared to talk about your time off, offering employers an honest explanation of why you were unemployed and any relevant experience you picked up in that time. Alternatively, if you only took a few months off between jobs, you may be able to subtly hide the gaps in your employment history on your résumé by listing the years you worked at each job instead of specifying which months you were hired.)

How to Fail Well

If you choose to pursue work you’re passionate about, you’re likely to experience some failure along the way. What’s the best way to handle these failures? Ferriss’s experts explain that to push through failure, you just need to focus on the following upsides:

• Upside #1: Failure Teaches You
• Upside #2: Failure Pushes You to Get Creative
• Upside #3: Failure Gives You Freedom

Let’s discuss each of these upsides in more detail.

Upside #1: Failure Teaches You

Physician Gabor Maté (When the Body Says No) asserts that failure shows you how to improve yourself. Being fired from his job as a medical coordinator helped him discover that he was far more self-absorbed and less personable than he had realized. This prompted him to improve himself and find success in his next job. Similarly, CrossFit athlete Mathew Fraser lost a championship that he was certain he would dominate, which taught him he was prideful and complacent. This motivated him to work harder, allowing him to win the championship the next year.

(Shortform note: In Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday describes a common trap that prevents people from learning how to improve themselves. If the outcome of their effort is positive overall, people often overlook the mistakes they made along the way—little failures that didn’t cause severe consequences initially, but could easily sabotage future efforts if repeated. To prevent this, Holiday recommends looking for room for improvement in your victories as much as your failures. If Maté had been looking for ways to do his job better before being fired, or if Fraser had sought ways to improve during his successful training before the championship, they could have averted their failures.)

Upside #2: Failure Pushes You to Get Creative

Some of Ferriss’s experts assert that failure is valuable because it forces you to respond in creative ways. These creative solutions often yield unique results since other people likely haven’t tried them before. Bodybuilder and acrobat Jon Call recounts how a severe ankle sprain caused him to train in ways that didn’t rely on his legs—specifically, using gymnastic rings. This gave him unique experience and pushed his skills in new directions he otherwise wouldn’t have chosen.

Similarly, burlesque performer and entrepreneur Dita Von Teese describes how her failure to become a ballerina forced her to forge an alternate path to the lifestyle she wanted. She had to think of a way into the elegant side of show business that didn’t require memorizing and executing intricate choreography—a limitation that inspired her to start performing burlesque. Von Teese contends that this adaptation made her unique and allowed her to have a greater impact on the world.

(Shortform note: Although failure can put you on a unique path to success, some say that you don’t need to be one-of-a-kind to be a success. In Girl, Stop Apologizing, Rachel Hollis argues that treading a similar path to people who came before you is a respectable way to impact the world, too. Even if you’re the second—or five hundredth—person to accomplish something, you’re doing something good for the world that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. If Call was a less acrobatic bodybuilder and Von Teese only danced in the backgrounds of ballets, they still would have made a difference in the world. Instead of using the success of others as an excuse not to try, use their success as a roadmap to guide yourself.)

Upside #3: Failure Gives You Freedom

Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt argues that devastating failure is valuable because it gives you freedom from fear. After you fail, time passes and you realize that almost no failure has major permanent consequences. This reveals that there’s nothing to be afraid of, giving you the courage to risk failure again and improve your skills.

(Shortform note: In The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss argues that by rationally considering beforehand how specific failures won’t have permanent consequences, you can reduce your fear of failure and gain the courage to act without needing to experience that failure firsthand. To this end, he recommends an exercise he calls “fear-setting”: Identify the worst-case scenario of a failure, make a plan for how you would fix it, and estimate how likely a negative outcome would be. After reflecting, you’ll often find that the worst-case scenario you’re afraid of is easily fixable and is less likely to come to pass than you think.)

Additionally, filmmaker David Lynch contends that failure gives you freedom from all creative constraints. After a massive failure, you have nothing more to lose, allowing you to create whatever your heart desires. This creative freedom is a source of pure joy.

(Shortform note: On the other hand, some experts argue that creating art without any constraints is undesirable. When you’re allowed to create anything, you often lack the inspiration to make anything at all, as you have too many options to pick from and become paralyzed by this overwhelming choice. In contrast, trying to create something that fits within certain parameters—for instance, a filmmaker trying to convey deep philosophical thoughts in a form that’s appealing to mass audiences—can be a fun challenge. You may find it even more enjoyable than exercising total creative freedom.)

How to Say No

As you build a fulfilling career, learn from failure, and attain valuable skills, people will likely begin to put more demands on your time. Many of Ferriss’s experts agree that if you want to devote your life to the priorities you care about the most, you have to aggressively defend your time against these requests.

Actress Aisha Tyler acknowledges that it’s difficult to deny people asking you for help; however, every distraction you allow into your life takes you further from your meaningful goals. Chef Samin Nosrat agrees, adding that the clearer your personal goals are in your mind, the easier you’ll find it to deny people making requests.

Overly Strict Boundaries Push People Away

In Set Boundaries, Find Peace, Nedra Glover Tawwab agrees with Tyler that it’s difficult to set boundaries. She adds that when you’re denying requests on your time, you should avoid setting boundaries that are too strict. People who’ve frequently been taken advantage of often overcompensate by refusing to forgive small impositions or by cutting good people out of their lives. This can disconnect you from loved ones as they come to believe you don’t care about them. For instance, if an aspiring lawyer studying for the bar exam has overly strict boundaries and their significant other asks them to cuddle and watch a movie during their designated study time, they may angrily refuse, creating an emotional rift.

How can you avoid this mistake? Tyler and Nosrat suggest focusing on the personal goals you want to accomplish to help you deny the requests of others, but you can use this same strategy to motivate yourself to set more lenient boundaries. If you clarify that maintaining relationships is one of your important personal goals, you’ll be willing to spend some time away from other personal goals without feeling like you’re compromising your needs.

Counterpoint: Say Yes to Random Opportunities

While entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk (Crush It!) acknowledges the importance of saying no to the majority of demands on your time, he also recommends accepting a small number of random opportunities that cross your path, even if they don’t seem remarkable or perfectly align with your personal goals. This measured chaos in your schedule keeps you open to unexpectedly valuable unplanned experiences.

Act Randomly to Get Unstuck

In Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths further explain why some randomness is necessary to discover the best opportunities in life. Generally, you’ll choose the most promising opportunity that’s available to you at a given time. However, this can cause you to get stuck with an opportunity that’s better than any other opportunities you can see, but far worse than the available options you can’t see. Breaking up your routine and doing something random may be unpleasant at first, but it might help you find new opportunities that you couldn’t see before.

For example, you might feel stuck at an unfulfilling job. You feel like you would be even more miserable if you had to hunt for a new job or move to a new city, so you do nothing and stay put. One weekend, you decide to randomly attend the first open community event you see on Facebook—a group litter cleanup at the local park. Eventually, one of the people you met at this event offers you a job running events at the local community center, which you find much more fulfilling than your old job.

How to Recenter Yourself

Sometimes, even after you’ve identified what matters most to you and are happily pursuing it, you’ll feel too tired or scattered to focus and do the work. Ferriss’s experts offer a few options for putting yourself back into a positive, productive mindset:

• Option #1: Take a Break
• Option #2: Engage the Body
• Option #3: Meditate
• Option #4: Shift Your Perspective

Option #1: Take a Break

Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky contends that you should never feel guilty about taking a break from work when you need it. When you’re having an off day and feel stuck, just go do something else—anything that allows your mind to wander and rest. Even if you’re not thinking about the problem, you’ll be unconsciously working through it in the back of your mind.

(Shortform note: Even if your unconscious mind works on problems while you’re taking a break, you may not want to spend all your breaks away from work idly daydreaming. Consider practicing what Cal Newport calls “productive meditation” in Deep Work: When doing a mindless physical task such as mowing the lawn or vacuuming the floor, continually refocus your mind on a single problem you’re trying to solve. He asserts that doing this regularly will strengthen your ability to focus. That said, Newport emphasizes that this isn’t a replacement for your time spent away from work, as your unconscious mind does solve problems when wandering—it’s just a way to increase your productivity in a life that already includes a healthy amount of rest.)

Similarly to Aronofsky, author and former skier Kristen Ulmer argues that when your body and mind start to resist the work, the best course of action is to stop working and listen to them. Do nothing but live in the moment, allowing yourself to get distracted and paying attention to how it feels. After living mindfully for long enough, your motivation to tackle the work will return—whether it takes a few minutes or a few days.

(Shortform note: In The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal agrees that it’s helpful to accept the impulse to take a break, elaborating that trying to resist cravings and distractions only makes them grow stronger. However, surrendering to them allows your brain to express its desires rather than resisting them, which weakens the strength of the craving. This makes it easier for you to eventually move past the craving and accomplish your goals rather than letting a strong craving perpetually distract you while you’re trying to work.)

Option #2: Engage Your Body

Many of Ferriss’s experts note that any activity that gets you out of your mind and into your body is an effective way to recenter yourself. Entrepreneur and author Marie Forleo (Everything Is Figureoutable) states that strenuous physical exercise allows you to thoroughly clear your mind and access a deep, unconscious intelligence in the body that helps you solve problems. Martial artist and chess master Josh Waitzkin (The Art of Learning) also advocates exercise as a mental tool, contending that engaging the body fundamentally changes how your mind runs.

(Shortform note: In The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul elaborates on this idea, arguing that different types of exercise enhance your thinking in different ways. Mild exercise such as standing or fidgeting while working improves your focus and quality of thought because forcing yourself to sit still takes up mental energy. Moderate exercise such as a brisk walk provides a stronger version of the same mental boost that lasts for up to two hours after you stop exercising. Heavy exercise sustained for 40 minutes or more has a very different effect—it clears your mind in a way that makes it harder to think logically, but easier to make creative connections and come up with new ideas.)

Option #3: Meditate

Many of Ferriss’s experts advocate for routine meditation as a productivity tool. Musician Mike D (of the Beastie Boys) finds that a short meditation session gives him renewed focus for hours. Similarly, DJ Steve Aoki uses meditation to clear his mind and prepare to enter the flow state at work: an egoless, focused, creative state of mind conducive to maximum productivity.

(Shortform note: Although many artists practice meditation for increased focus, productivity, and clarity, some stay away, claiming that they need to be in touch with their suffering to create good art. They assume that if meditation makes them feel at peace, it’ll take away their creative spark. Dan Harris argues in 10% Happier that this isn’t the case—on the contrary, meditation allows you to explore your negative emotions in a deeper and more complex way, unlocking new insights that you can communicate through your art.)

Option #4: Shift Your Perspective

If you’re in an unproductive emotional state, some of Ferriss’s experts recommend using thought experiments to get yourself thinking in new terms.

Thought Experiment #1: Detaching From a Situation

To let go of a painful emotion caused by an upsetting situation, actress Richa Chadha recommends repeatedly asking yourself “So what?” in response to what happened, and to continue asking “So what?” until you’ve gained enough of a distant, big-picture perspective to no longer feel so upset. For example, if a coworker takes credit for your project at work, you might ask “So what?” and respond that “Our boss is going to think better of them than they deserve.” Ask again: So what? “They might get a bigger bonus than me.” So what? “I guess money isn’t very important.” Eventually, you reach a view of the situation that seems less threatening.

When Not to Ask “So What?”

Although Chadha’s exercise is likely to be helpful for everyday upsetting situations, it may be unhealthy to try to apply it to a major tragedy in your life. In Bittersweet, Susan Cain argues that people in modern Western culture tend to hide and suppress feelings of loss and grief, making it more difficult for us to comfort one another and cope with tragedy. Trying to apply a big-picture, dispassionate perspective to tragedy may exacerbate these problems. For instance, asking yourself “So what?” after a good friend dies may be a means of suppressing your grief, preventing you from accepting the pain and working through it.

Instead, Cain recommends embracing whatever messy, complex mix of feelings you have, not only recognizing the heartbreak but also the joy and love you still feel toward whoever or whatever you lost.

Thought Experiment #2: Creating Gratitude

To cultivate gratitude and motivate yourself to live in the present moment, computer scientist Muneeb Ali suggests a thought experiment: Imagine the future in which you’re old, nearing death. Ask yourself how much you’d be willing to spend on a time machine that lets you relive this moment. This ideally will help you slow down and enjoy the priceless moments that you’d otherwise ruin by worrying about the past or future.

(Shortform note: Ali’s time machine scenario assumes that there’s something positive going on in your life that you’d be willing to pay to experience. But how do you practice gratitude at times when everything in life seems miserable? Start small; intentionally recognizing every little joy or pleasure in your life will help you feel better. You may want to try visually representing everything you have to be grateful for—for instance, whenever you feel grateful for something, add it to a list or write it down and put it in a jar you can fill up over time. These practices will help you build your gratitude muscle, making it easier to use Ali’s thought experiment and recognize exceptionally great moments when they happen.)

How to Be Kind to Yourself

While you may feel pressured to follow all this advice to the letter, many of Ferriss’s experts acknowledge that this is an extremely difficult task. Be kind to yourself and don’t feel the need to try too hard, these experts advise.

Activist and businesswoman Muna AbuSulayman asserts that it’s easy to feel like you have to be perfect and achieve wild success in every area of your life every day. However, this unrealistic expectation will cause you to suffer. Instead, try your best, then quit worrying. This peaceful acceptance of any outcome helps you enjoy life and ensures that instead of getting discouraged and quitting if things don’t go to plan, you’ll be happy to try your best again next time.

(Shortform note: You may worry that practicing self-acceptance by embracing your imperfections and taking it easy will prevent you from pushing yourself to your full potential. Not necessarily: In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor argues that self-acceptance makes you feel happier, and happier people are more productive and therefore enjoy greater professional success. One reason for this is that the neurochemicals your brain releases when you’re happy also make it easier for you to think quickly and creatively, solve problems, and learn new ideas.)

Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez argues that it’s possible to maintain a playful mindset even in the most stressful situations. When Rodriguez faces tasks that seem impossible to accomplish with the time and resources he has, he makes it a habit to loudly proclaim “Fácil!”—Spanish for “easy”—to everyone around him. This mantra is half-joking and half-serious. It helps Rodriguez and his collaborators maintain a sense of humor as they work and gives them the optimism they need to accomplish much more than they thought was possible.

(Shortform note: Even if you don’t feel enthusiastic during stressful situations, repeatedly acting as if you are may make it easier to turn stress into excitement in the future. According to a psychological theory called the Hebbian Principle, when two parts of the brain activate simultaneously, they form a connection: In the future, when one activates, the other will, too. This means that if you make yourself feel excited whenever you’re in a high-pressure situation, similar situations later will automatically make you feel excited. Acting enthusiastic activates the same parts of your brain as actually feeling enthusiastic, so you can form these neural connections just by pretending.)