MM#94--A Notetaker's Dream

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I'm David and welcome back to another Mojo minute. So back some three or four Christmases ago, my brother bought me a gift, a wonderful book that I at the time fully intended to read. And just like most of the world, and most folks, we get these books and they collect dust on our bookshelves, even though, like I said, we had the greatest of intentions to fully read them. So recently, I pulled that book off the bookshelf, and dusted it off. Whoa, there's a lot of dust on the top of that book. And is one of the most read books, I would say in the last five years. And it comes to us from one of the most recognized names in the personal development space. His name, Tim Ferriss, and his very thick notebook, put into book form is the Tools of Titans, the tactics, routines, and habits of billionaires, icons and world class performers. Now, it was written back in 2017. And this book was a super hit when it came out. 

And as I scanned the book, I came across this special page in the beginning of the book titled, quote on the shoulders of giants. And allow me to read this short piece quote, I'm not the expert. I'm the experimenter, the scribe in the guide, if you have anything amazing if you find anything amazing in this book, it's thanks to the brilliant minds who acted as teachers, resources, critics, contributors, proofreaders no references. If you find anything ridiculous in the in this book, it is because I didn't heed their advice and made a mistake, unquote. Tim men list over 100 Different compute contributors in the book. And I had to mention that because I just love when a famous author gets the humility part right in the beginning. Let's face it, all of us are standing on the shoulders of giants, no matter our job, our vocation, our connections, or our lack of connections, we have all been very blessed to live in this time, at this place in this country. And to come out from a humble perspective, like Tim did, is frankly just great to see. It often doesn't happen. So when I see it, I love to reword it, or at least make mention of it. 

After all, in a culture that completely has lost its humility, to see it displayed is frankly, like I said, quite rewarding. It's just a small piece and restoring the right order of things in our culture. So again, you might probably never hear this, as I say that humbly. But thank you Tim Ferriss for exercising the virtue of humility in the beginning of this book. Now, the super cool thing, again, in this book is we have covered so many of the author's in previous Mojo minutes. As I scan through the contributors, we have Scott Adams, we've covered him and Joe de Sena. Got him Seth Godin. Yep, Jocko Willink. Certainly got him. And so it's very cool to see the same authors covered. Oh, and there's Robert Greene's book on mastery, which we're going to have to cover in a future Mojo minute because that's a very good one. Now the book is broken into three parts part one, the healthy part to the wealthy, and part three, the wise. 

So let's go back to the book for quote. My original intention with the four hour workweek, The Four Hour Body in the four hour shift. By the way, these are the previous books that Tim has written. It was to create a trilogy themed after Ben Franklin's famous quote, Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. People are constantly asking me, what would you put in the four hour workweek? If you were to write it again? How would you update it and ditto for The Four Hour Body? In the four hour shift? Tim's answer, the Tools of Titans contains most of the answers for all three unquote.

So in each section, Tim has collected notes from his Uber popular podcast, where most of these interviews had taken place. And by the way, Tim, like me is a super diligent note taker, or I guess I should say, like, Tim, I am a super diligent note taker. I take tons of notes, and so you get a feel of the book. Let me share an actual profile just so you understand how the book works. And let's stay with Joe de Sena since I'm on his profile page in the book right now, and let me read from his bio. Joe de Sena is the co founder of the Death Race, Spartan Race, more than 1 million competitors and more. He has completed the famous ruling. I did arrive dogsledding race by foot. He has also finished the Badwater ultramarathon, which is 135 miles at over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. He's completed the Vermont 100 in the Lake Placid, Iron Man all in the same week. Unbelievable. The man is a maniac. And he is a very strategic businessman. I first met him through the Summit Series summit.co. And he keeps inviting me to visit him in Vermont. And I refuse because I'm afraid. So now let's go to the book for the or the profile. Rather, Tim will ask three very good questions of the profile, ie, in this case, Joe de Sena. And I'm going to read these three questions to fill out how the book actually works. Question one, why he started tackling insane events while working on Wall Street. Quote, you make and lose 30,000 40,000 A minute screwing up an order or having customers tell you that they no longer are going to deal with you. It was a very stressful business. And I wanted to get back to the core of life. And a friend said, Well, you could die. There is this one, you know, the I did a ride in Alaska. And they do it in the middle of winter. And it's by foot and it's like 30 Blue. And you have to sign me up. I have to do it. I have to get back to this place where you just want water, food and shelter. And all the craziness of my life, this wall street life I had taken on would just go away, it would just melt away, unquote. 

Is that now pretty cool. Bye, Joe, with that answer. In the question on the origins of the Death Race, quote, and what if I created with a buddy of mine this race that purposely broke these people, not the way the races I had done or a marathon does but where I would actually drive the participants crazy. Not tell them when it is starting not tell them when it is ending, not giving them water, giving them buses, not giving them buses during the middle of the race and saying you quit here. You can get on the bus. This is not for you your two week. That was the beginning of the race business. Unquote. Tim asks, How do you break people? Joe? Why don't think they knew what they were getting into because we had never done it before. One guy I remember specifically started crying and he was like, I'm a really good runner. I just do not know how to chop wood broken because no one knew. We did not tell them. So Doug Lewis, who was an Olympic level downhill skier is 1518 hours into this thing and he is cracking. He is broken. And he turns to me and says, I made the Olympics. I trained my whole life. I'm a pretty tough guy. He goes this, this thing is effing crazy. That moment, we knew we had a winner on quote.

So there's a funny anecdote from Amelia Boone Amelia she had finished the Death Race three times. And she sent this to Tim quote, Hurricane Irene washed out a bridge on his property. A one ton metal Ibeam had been stuck in the water for a few years. The state was going to find him some obscene amount. If he didn't remove it. It would have cost him 10s Of have 1000s of dollars to have it removed. So instead, he had his winter death racers get in the river in January and remove it for him. It took us probably eight hours. I came away with second degree frostbite in most of my toes, as did others. And the hilarious part, people paid him Joe de Sena to experience that the race fee and he avoided fines and the cost of removal. effing genius, unquote. So says Amelia, Amelia, Amelia Boone, so random tidbits from following up conversations. Joe like Jocko Willink, which is on page 414 12 believes you shouldn't need caffeine or alcohol. He also thinks you should sweat like you're being chased by the police daily unquote. And another anecdote from or another random tidbit about Joe when people tell Joe to stop and smell the roses, his first response is, quote, who's maintaining the roses? Unquote. When asked, Does Joe have any quotes he lives by or he thinks of often? He says quote, it could always be worse, unquote. 

So that's a very cool profile Joe dissenter from the Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. And, and this book is kind of like Mojo minutes in written form, I guess. It's a note takers dream. So today's Mojo minute and in our nugget of wisdom, it's twofold. Number one, get this book if you want a great collection of super inspiring people in written form. And number two, always, always take good notes. taking good notes is what you have to learn from the past, and which will help you to build and live a flourishing life.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at T Mojo academy.com where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on