TRIBE OF MENTORS

I don’t recall exactly how I was turned on to Time Ferriss, but he’s been a constant in my journey since I began seeking my true self and searching for my purpose. He’s directly or indirectly responsible for a large chunk of my influences and post graduate adult learning. I listen to most podcasts he releases and I own all his books. I haven’t read all the books cover to cover for various reasons, but all of his books aren’t designed to be read cover to cover from page 1 to “The End”. I did however read Tim’s latest book, "Tribe of Mentors", cover to cover. And I did it in a fairly short amount of time (for me) considering it’s 570+ pages. The full title is “Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World”. Copyright 2017. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing New York, New York. I pre-ordered this book and received a 1st Edition Hardcopy. I can’t remember the cost; just shy of $30 probably. My first impression of the book was its familiar size. Very similar to rest of his books approximately 9” tall X 7” wide X 2” thick. It doesn’t weigh as much as it looks like it should. Mostly black and gold colored cover with Carolina Blue highlights. No jacket. The paper is off white, grainy, and kinda sticky. Got that good “new book” smell. (Come to think of it, old books smell good too.) It’s bound in a way to create ridges on the fore-edge so thumbing through the book and quickly flipping pages is easy. As I mentioned, Tim’s books aren’t story books. They more resemble reference books. This particular book is a collection of interviews and the table of contents is the list of 100’ish names of the questionees and where their answers can be found. As a cool twist Tim includes a few of the rejection letters he received from people he’d asked to participate. This addition emphasizes how folks with couth and courtesy say “Thank you but no thank you”. My favorite feature of the book is that all the interviewees were given the same 11 questions to ponder and respond. Tim dissects each question and reveals how and why he crafted them and what he’s looking to get out of them. The feature of repeated questions makes reading the book very rhythmic. The pages go by quickly and the mind switches to auto-pilot. It’s more like to listening to a conversation than reading. The 11 questions are: What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life? What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months or recent memory? How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours? If you could have one gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it—metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions—what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. What is on the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Money, time, energy, etc…) What is an unusual habit or absurd thing that you love? In the last five years, what new belief, or behavior, or habit has most improved your life? What advice would you give a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore? What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips? When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? Only high performers were questioned (some of which I was familiar, some not) and they lead us down a rabbit hole with their answers. They suggest enough books, TED talks, poems, articles, authors, etc. to keep anyone busy for years to come. Tim also lists each interviewee’s social media handle(s) so readers can connect and follow on the interwebz. Tim’s organization of the massive amounts of information in this book is meticulous. He includes a list of recorded conversations from respondents and where to find them online. He includes a mentor index. Not every respondent answered every question so Tim includes an index of questions answered by interviewee. He even includes blank lined pages for readers to use in making their own notes and indexes. Style and substance of “Tribe of Mentors” is lockstep. An amazingly informative book presented in a friendly conversational style. The books organization is on par with everything else TF has done. “Tribe” didn’t call for as many organizational asides as “Tools of Titans” and that was welcome in my opinion. No decoder rings necessary. “Tribe of Mentors” will appeal to anyone who’s looking for more shit to read, learn, and get better. It’s a red pill type book that I personally read through one time, took notes, and now leave lying around in the open to conveniently revisit. As a coffee table book intelligent friends will pick it up to read a few passages and instant meaningful conversation should break out. If not, you may want to re-think the folks you let hang out at your place.

Short Version of this review. "Tribe of Mentors" is a book where Tim Ferris collects and shares deep, meaningful, practical and life-changing tips and hacks. These tools give you the power to positively improve or radically upgrade the way you live. Your upgrade will be on a personal, emotional, spiritual and practical level. Tim's teachers include a wide range of amazing people from legendary investor Ray Dalio to Navy Seal Jocko Willink (look him up) to Rabbi Lord Jonothan Sacks. These mentors become your mentors. You can spend decades trying to reinvent the wheel in order to improve your life. Or you can pick up this book and learn from Tim's "Tribe of Mentors" and exponentially accelerate your learning curve. Instead of pushing a stone-age vehicle, drive a Ferrarri! Long Version of the Review I don't write many reviews, but I felt compelled to write this review out of gratitude; gratitude to Tim for writing "Tribe of Mentors", an amazing and valuable book. I'm a big fan of Tim Ferris and his other books. However, due to some of the negative reviews, I considered not purchasing "Tribe of Mentors". Some reviews states that the information in the book was shallow and unorganized, etc....or at least compared to "Tools of Titans". But I am so glad I purchased the book. To understand why, lets look at "Tool of Titans" and compare its purpose to "Tribe of Mentors". "Tools of Titans" was a compilation of Tim's best interviews as well as how he has applied this knowledge in his personal life. "Tribe of Mentors" is Tim choosing his 10 or so best open-ended questions and emailing them to "Mentors" that he's never had the chance to meet in person. Since "Tools of Titans" is culled from podcasts which are off cuff, their spontaneous flow results in many low-hanging juicy nuggets. This contrasts sharply with "Tribe of Mentors" where Tim emails his mentors questions and they take hours or days to write thoughtful and sophisticated answers. Some of these answers are very deep. Many of these answers are very practical and can have an immediate impact on your life. At the same time, since the written answers are more thought out they often make more nuanced points and employ a more sophisticated vocabulary. It follows that "Tribe of Mentors" doesn't give you the same instant gratification feeling imparted by the conversational style of "Tools of Titans". Don't get me wrong, it flows and is easy to read. But at the same time, you need to apply yourself more. There is one aspect of the book that some reviewers criticized and I find fascinating; Tim asks everyone the same questions! While Tim only shares the best answers, the same questions do keep on cropping up over and over again. I completely understand how some can find this tedious. But let me tell you, "I love it". Here is why: Every Mentor gives different answers to the same questions, providing a breadth and range of personality and knowledge on the topics; a range that I have never seen paralleled. It also shows you the strategies and mindset that different leaders and heroes use to defeat failure and thrive. These are real poeple so it follows that some of their strategies contradict each other. To me this shows the authenticity of the human experience as well as gives you a choice of tools to choose from. What strategy works best for you? This diversity and color also opened my mind towards valuing the diverse and sometimes contradictory parts of my personality. (At the same time, even I get tired of the same questions over and over and over and over again! Mix and spice things up!) Some other really fun aspects of the book are that Tim has included links to interviews and other resources from many of the Mentors. He includes an index of the top books these leaders have purchased. There is also an index of best "under $100" purchases Tim's mentors have discovered. I've gained so much from this book. It's fantastic and life-changing. I give it my highest recommendation. If you'd read this far, thank you for joining me on this review. Leave me a reply after you've read the book letting me know what you think.

There's an idea behind this book that not everyone is appreciating, so let me touch on it. The "Tribe" of the title is no accident. Tim is using a sociological idea that human beings can store the identities and relationships of about 150 people, max (read the book Sapiens for more info, Sapiens being a book recommendation highlighted in this book!). The idea is that isolated tribes of primitive humans tend to cluster in groups of about 150 people max, and getting any larger than this requires the tribe to develop the hallmarks of a more advanced society- such as centralized governance. Thus, Tim Ferriss tried to get together the best tribe he could manage by his deadline. He sent out a questionnaire to a dizzying array of people, and tried to cobble together the best distillation of their responses- in their own words- that he could. There's a lot to like about that, and a lot to dislike. But the central idea is accomplished. If you got together the best 150-or-so people you could, and asked them all the same list of top questions, what could you learn? Discover inside. Pros: Hear from some of the best people in the world, in their own words. You get to hear from everyone. People like Terry Crews - actor, known cool person, and abuse survivor. People like Ayan Hirsi Ali - human rights campaigner, escaped to the free world after experiencing genital mutilation in a tribal culture. People like Arianna Huffington - entrepreneur, politician, presidential candidate. People like Ray Dalio - investor and inspiration to some of the biggest movers and shakers in the world. It's all here. Do the Tim Thing. This is exactly how Tim Ferriss got famous in his current form, asking good questions to the world's top performers in a variety of fields then sharing that information with the world. Yes, you're going to see that 80+% of the people responding have a daily meditation practice. Find out firsthand the things Tim learned for himself when he wrote Tools of Titans. This time, you're getting it direct from the source, in case you had any question about Tim's interpretation. There are some brief indexes that pick out common responses, in order to give you some ideas to follow up on. For instance, Tim links to his blog to give you the most common responses to the "most-gifted books" and "best purchase under $100". I wish more of that was in the book, but it's a gigantic tome as it is so it's hard to complain. Tim also gives you some quotes to ponder between chapters, giving you a little bonus between all the responses. Cons: Clearly, Tim didn't get all his first choices. Some of the people, Sorkin and Sharapova being stand-outs, pretty much phoned it in and aren't real mentors in any sense except they're famous and considered quote-unquote "successful". There's not a lot of value-add. Sure, this is a treasure trove of amazing responses from amazing people. This is what Tim does- he grabs people in their own words, and he digests it all to come up with his own take from it. Now you can too. That's hugely valuable stuff. I'd give it 5/5 stars on that alone if this was like an internet blog just republishing other people's words. For a book, I just wish Tim would do his usual trick of digesting more of it for you, highlighting the actionable bits. There's just not a ton of value-add on top of the source material. You kind of wish you could join a mailing list where he'd just email you all these responses. Overall: There's a wealth of information here. Find someone you respect, and read their answers to Tim's top questions. That's golden. Most of us will never get this chance in our lives. How many of us will end up having the chance to ask one question to over 100 of the top performers in the world, let alone more than one? Maybe reading through some of the other names you'll learn about people you never knew, new perspectives you hadn't considered, even great new ideas for toys thanks to the question about "best purchase under $100". The downside a lot of people are complaining about is that this is what Tim does for you, his podcast and his other books do a lot more of the digging for you so all you get are the best golden nuggets with all the fat trimmed off. If you pick up Tools of Titans, or listen to his podcast, you'll get a lot of these same nuggets in a more condensed form with a lot more relation between various speakers and influenced.

In Doug Adam's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" there is a super computer named "Deep Thought " that humans want to learn the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything". We learn later that the computer's answer is the number 42. The Deep Thought super computer rightfully points out that the answer seems meaningless as we don't know what the "Question" is. In this book, Tim has reverse-engineered and demonstrated the value of asking good open ended questions to some of the most interesting and inspiring people on the planet. I think it really works well! I have found some answers super short and concise and others a much longer form, but I have already learned so much from both types of answers! When I see some of the negative reviews, I'm a little taken back. I know books are personal and speak to people in different ways, so everyone who reads the book is entitled to their own impression of the work. Here is a list of what I specifically like about this book: 1. The questions are an algorithm for success and result in interesting and though-provoking answers. I love the diversity and similarities of answers. It shows that Tim didn't choose an echo chamber of interviewees, yet there are still themes that ring true throughout. 2. I really like the format. The small nuggets of wisdom can be consumed quickly, yet digested over a longer period of time. It seems to be a unique and very useful technique. Sometimes I prefer to just reflect and go deep in on one quote versus having a firehose of many disparate concepts as the longer form interviews in Tools of Titans could sometimes do (I still consider Tools one of my favorite books). 3. I really enjoyed the fact that the majority of interviewees were new to me, meaning not covered on Tim's podcast, or were on the podcast at some point, yet provided new material that was not previously heard by most. 4. I really enjoyed the last section "Some Closing Thoughts" written by Tim. Not only is the story good, the supporting poem deep and the conclusion simple. It's a profound end to everything that I think should be read first. it's a perfect complement to everything else you read in the book. "Don't try so hard", read the book piece by piece, enjoy it, ponder it, meditate on it and allow intuition to guide you. One personal example, I decided to just randomly open to a page and the person I selected was someone I never heard of before. She happened to recommend a book I heard on the Ray Dalio podcast and have been contemplating buying, yet haven't yet for some reason. The fact that it showed up again, when I wasn't thinking about it at all leads me to think it's even more important for me to read. The section was Esther Dyson on pages 243-245 and the book is "From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds" by Daniel C. Dennett. 5. The book question is a great question. The recommendations and the thought processes alone is hugely valuable to anyone who wants to learn and be mentored from the best. Reading good books is an essential ingredient to a well seasoned life and all the book recommendations are invaluable in my opinion. 6. This book was less than $20, which makes it a steal! 7. The quotes throughout the book and the nice aesthetic design elements throughout makes it an enjoyable experience to read. 8. The repeat and reflective value this book offers, including the note section and Tim's personal note taking tips really shows his heart is to help people, not just recycle and take shortcuts to make money like some reviewers have suggested. Thank you Tim for putting together this gem of a book. I'm sure you will hear of the lives it's helped improve many years from now!

If you liked "Tools of Titans", this book is a worthy successor. Tim Ferriss interviews high-achieving professionals in various fields and asks them for their advice on what to do when they get overwhelmed, what failure they've learned from the most, and what investment they made that was the most valuable, amongst a few other standard questions. Unlike "Tools of Titans", which was very specific to each individual and expounded a lot on specific attributes and advice pertaining to their field, "Mentors" focuses on big-picture, philosophical advice. It's the what, how, and the why - not the who or where. I did really enjoy this book, perhaps even more than "Tools", because in my particular field (medicine), I didn't really benefit much from the venture capitalist tips or how to bodybuild (I'm a petite female who does yoga and barre, a far cry from a lifter) that were offered up in "Tools"- whereas "Mentors" has more broadly-reaching, how-I-tackle-the-big-questions tips. Some advice is very specific (Robert Rodriguez on how he tackles distractions) and others is much more abstract, but most of it is very good. One striking thing I realized was that the same few books tended to receive mention several times over by different individuals, most prominently "Tao Te Ching" and "Man's Search for Meaning" (the latter of which is by Victor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor who wrote this book about finding meaning despite the horrors and atrocities that were being committed around him). I have not read these yet, but have moved them high up on my to-read list as a result of the recommendations. I did find a lot of actionable advice here: keeping a gratitude journal, daily meditation, working out daily, and making monthly rather than yearly resolutions (these were my favorite, I think everyone who reads this will come away with their own favorites). Some overarching themes that could be translated into actionable advice were: utilizing and cultivating a flow state, feeding the inner child in you as well as the responsible adult (or, how to make room for play and joy), learning how to say no and avoid overcommitment, living below your means, and ignoring sunk-cost fallacies. I came away with a few tips I plan to implement into my own life, a lot of books I'd like to read as a result of reading this one, and an appreciation for some of the universal aphorisms we could all learn from. If you like Tim Ferriss' blog, podcasts, or last book (Tools of Titans), I do think that this book was in line with his previous work. Two bits of critique here - I do agree with other posters that a better index would have been helpful, especially for those of us who prefer hard copies that we can't electronically word-find, and i thought the Larry King stories didn't fit in with the rest of the advice being offered. (Sidenote - I listened to the Larry King podcast awhile ago, and highly recommend it, as he is a phenomenal storyteller - I just didn't think reprinting the stories in this book was really the right forum nor really did King's audio justice). But I did thoroughly love this book, and earmarked many pages that I'll likely return to in the future.

I'm an educator with the entire week of Thanksgiving break off from school, and since the day I learned this book's release occurred during our break, I planned to spend most of the break reading (and re-reading) it. I've done just that. What I love most about this book is that I have heard of so few of the people profiled. This has helped me really pay attention to their answers to the questionnaire-- since I don't know who they are, I don't know the rhythms of their speech or their areas of expertise or anything, so I'm reading with genuine ignorance and interest. Another thing I love is that this book isn't a chapter book. I can start reading from any page, at any point in the book, and the message still coheres. Tools of Titans was the same way. Both books will help the reader to be a more productive worker and a happier human who more mindful of how much time he or she wastes. These are important lessons for me, and for anyone else employed: we all struggle against burnout and depression (both real and existential). We all have more to do than there are hours in the day. But if we pay attention to how we work, how we construct our lives around our work, and what we say "yes" to (this comes up over and over again in the book), we figure out what we need to stop doing, and then by default we're doing mostly what we need/want to do. Revelatory. I also really like Tim's quotes he's pondering that are interjected throughout the book, because they aren't quotes I've seen before even though those quoted are people whose work is well-known. After you see enough quotes you get quote fatigue because people tend to repeat the same ones. Not Tim. I genuinely disliked two things about the book. One: every instance of the F word has an asterisk in it in place of the U. I think of George Carlin's old bit about censorship and how if the listener knows the word that was intended, what is the point in trying to obscure it? Two: The feel of the front cover. The teal foil imprint around "Short Life Advice From The Best In The World" is a different type of paper than everything else on the cover, and I found myself constantly shifting my hands to avoid touching that part of the cover. This was sort of a beating since the book is nearly 600 pages and already kind of cumbersome to hold. Really happy with the book and I learned so much from it. I'm planning to gift it to several people for Christmas.

Tim, I’m writing to you because I just read 5 bullet-friday and you said you are reading the amazon reviews, so I figured I could share with you and others my opinion of Tribe and what you, in general, have done for me. I am only halfway through Tribe it is just as amazing as when I first read Tools, just as amazing as when I first listened to a podcast episode of your show. Before hearing about you and what you do, which was exactly 1 year ago, I would have never in a million years dared to write an online review for the public to see. I understand that you want to hear honest feedback on the book, which could help you improve and write an even better book in the future. But please don’t beat yourself up for not even one single bad review. If a person is writing a bad review, he or she, through no fault of his own, does not “get” what you are trying to accomplish. My honest feedback is that Tribes is very similar to Tools and I feel it is at times somewhat redundant. But I don’t believe your intention was to do something different, but a continuation, a refinement of your Q&A model as a way to get those life-changing nuggets out there to the people who need them. Even if similar advice/tips come up, it is helping me reinforce them, strength my beliefs, and enhance my perspective. I don’t agree with 100% of what you say and do, but I don’t have to. I shouldn’t. That would be wrong. You made me realize the importance of understanding other people perspective, thoughts, and way of thinking. This book, your work, is priceless. You are truly saving lives. Please never stop inspiring others and helping them to find their way. I am eternally grateful for having found you, your books, and podcasts. You not only opened me to your world but to other people’s worlds through your recommendations of books, podcasts, movies/documentaries, which all combined have radically changed my life for the better. You have given me a new life, and want to thank you for that. This book could sell just 1 copy and it should be a massive success for you, because you believed in it, because you created it and should proud of it, no matter if others don’t approve. You showed me this and this why I am not scared anymore of failure, of taking risks, stepping outside my comfort zone. What others think shouldn’t matter. What matters is what you believe in, and being true to that. I look forward to your next project. Me encantaría invitarte un día a Puerto Rico para que inspires a miles de jóvenes a crear un nuevo y mejor Puerto Rico. Pura Vida Amigo, Marco Teixidor

It's a "good" book, no doubt about this, but I am highly disappointed by Tim because the potential of such a book is ENORMOUS, yet was wasted and we end up with only 33% of the greatness it could have had. Tim asks the same questions to over a hundred quite successful to massively successful people, mostly writers, CEOs, athletes, and philanthropists. This in itself has colossal potential for incredible insights. The problem is that the level of insight of the answers cannot possibly exceed the questions. Some questions are even totally silly, such as What great purchase of $100 or less have you made.. which obviously leads to silly answers 75% of the time (my iPhone charger, headphones, etc.) and us wasting time going through 600 pages of decent content with 2/3 being just noise. Another questions is What advice would you give to smart/driven college student... This results in the person talking to a young kid in school, while Tim's readers of such a book are probably well passed their 20s and school is way behind. Two SIMPLE and SHORT questions should have been asked IMHO: 1. What is success to you? 2. If you had three rules to success, what would they be? The more broad the questions, the more freedom brilliant people have to express their insights. Tim seriously restricted the context, making it often silly or useless. Another problem is that once you asked someone popular their time, you don't have choice but to publish their answers, even if they are silly and will waste the reader's time. That made me so frustrated to waste such a massive potential, and my time. That said, sure there's some good content and insights, but far less than the potential there was. The most useful thing of the book IMO is the book recommendations and mostly how so many folks recommend the same books. These books should be must read. Don't miss Adam Robinson's pages, this is the best part IMO. CONCLUSION: only read if you have some time available. Do not read if you already have 20 phenomenal books waiting for you on the shelf, 250 pages each. PS: your must read the Four-Hour Workweek because this one is truly great for both entrepreneurs and employees.

A collection of so much wisdom and experience provided in easy to read chapters. It makes you feel a bit more optimistic about your future, present and past, as all big minds share their personal paths to success from a very human point of view. It seems like you get to know the person him/herself and the stories they share are plain amazing (and many are just simple stories).

Livro lindo!!!!!

Quality product and timely delivery. The product used for self improvement

Tim asks in this book which book each person gifts the most. For me, it has been Tim’s previous book, Tools of Titans. When I give the book I usually suggest they read the third section first (wisdom) which is where I think the gold is (unless of course you are a health or wealth nut). One of these gifts was to my son’s gymnastics coach who, in addition to being wise beyond his years, is also a health nut. His reading mainly consists of gymnastics related articles and technical manuals. I suspected this Tools of Titans might grab his interest given one of the first guests in the book is a gymnastics coach. Sure enough, he was hooked taking it with him on the boy’s gymnastics meet in Hungary this past June as well as he and his wife’s Caribbean vacation. He mentioned a couple of months ago that Tim had another book coming out and I told him not to buy it…because I had two on order ready to be shipped when released. My son had the pleasure of gifting Tribe of Mentors to his coach. When his coach sent me a text of gratitude, I said it was an easy investment that will pay huge dividends. Often my son comes home quoting something his coach said that I recognize from Tools of Titans so no doubt I will see the same from Tribe of Mentors, especially because the whole book is on wisdom. He's a world class coach creating world class athletes shaping both our boy's bodies and their minds. I’m writing this review in India after having read the first couple hundred pages on the flight. So far it is proving to be even better than Tools of Titans. It might be done before I return home to Canada. Looks like I have a new favourite book to gift – with a bonus when given to those who influence loved ones!

Esté libro nos ayuda a ver por medio de 11 preguntas como es que diferentes personalidades han llegado al éxito en sus distintas ramas, creo que es de suma importancia tener el libro ya que nunca podríamos tener al alcance a estas personalidades juntas en un solo libro y que mejor que contándonos sus formas de llegar al éxito de manera breve y amena.