I love to listen to podcasts. If you don’t listen to podcasts yet, try the podcasting app on your iPhone or the Stitcher app (which has a much more user friendly interface than the app by Apple). I usually listen to podcasts on my morning runs and during idle time, such as walking to work, cleaning up, driving or biking.

Meet Tim Ferriss

One of my favorite podcasts currently is Tim Ferriss’ radio show I have been an avid follower of Tim ever since he published the 4-Hour Workweek in 2007. His specialty are life ‘hacks’ such as strategies in order to reduce the workload at your job, find a ‘muse’ (business idea that can be automated and generates passive income) and live a less stressful life. For those of you who haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it, if only for certain ideas, such as outsourcing or going on an information diet. He then went on to apply the idea of hacking and shortening your way to success to your body (in the 4-Hour Body book) and cooking / learning (in the 4-Hour Chef).

In his podcast, Tim interviews amazing people, such as billionaires, New York Times bestselling authors and other world-class performers in eclectic disciplines.

Enter Dr. Peter Diamandis

In a recent episode, Tim interviews Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder of 17 different companies with bold ambitions to improve the world and one of the World’s 50 Greatest leaders according to Forbes. His best-known company is probably the X-Prize where he set up a prize fee of 10 million USD for the first company to build a commercial space ship that would take 3 people 100 kilometers into the air and safely back home and repeating this two weeks later. Fun fact: He started the competition before he had the money, and it took him 5 years to get it! Think about boldness!

So his theme is “Thinking Big and Bold” (and his new book to come out in February is called “Bold”). The episode evolves around the topic of the mindset of geniuses like Elon Musk (founder of Tesla), Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com) or Larry Page (founder of Google) and how everyone can 10x their ambition by asking the right questions and focusing on the right topics. The discussion of the episode is highly biased towards issues of ultramodern technology but gave me some good inspiration in how to think about life and business.

Noteworthy Themes from the Episode

• Ask yourself better, bigger, bolder questions:
  • How can you help 1 billion people? (“If you want to make 1 billion Dollars, help 1 billion people.”)
  • How can you disrupt yourself?
  • Are you changing the world? (99.999% of the population aren’t)
• Think about opportunities: 3–4 billion people in the world will soon be getting access to the internet. What do they need? How can you serve them?
• Aim for 10 times the results, not 10% higher results. The competition for 10% higher results is very intense, most people compete in that space. The competition for 10 times the results is very low.
• Think of the brain and its beliefs as our operating system. The skills that you acquire (such as math, or Spanish) are the apps running on our operating system. So we often acquire new apps throughout life. But when do we ever take the time to work on and improve our operating system in order to run all these apps at higher effectiveness? (This leads to the work of people like Tony Robbins who, as you probably know, I admire very much.)
• If you have a bad streak and want to give up or don’t know what to do (with your life), a helpful solution is to connect to your purpose in life and your passions. If you are uncertain about these, three questions can help and point you in the right direction:
  • What were you passionate about when you were a little child, before other people had a strong social influence on you?
  • If someone gave you a billion Dollars, what would you do with that money to improve the world?
  • If money was no object, what would you do with your life?
• “When 99% of people critique your idea you are either gravely wrong or about to make history.”

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” (Mark Twain)

Other episodes of the Tim Ferriss Show that I highly recommend:

• Tony Robbins, the world’s most famous performance coach
• Ramit Sethi of iwillteachyoutoberich.com
• Brendan Moynihan, author of “What I learned losing a million Dollars”
• Neil Strauss, author of The Game and 7 New York Times Bestsellers

Your assignment

• Think about what you could do to 10x your impact in your work or life? Just come up with 10 ideas to train your idea muscle!
• What is one action you can take right now that would take you towards 10xing your results? Share in the comments!

Hope you enjoyed this post!

All the best, and keep learning,

Johannes