I love documentaries. I really do. I think documentaries – I’m much more interested in non-fiction than fiction; just the way that I think about things. I can’t remember a documentary that I said, “That’s a bad documentary.” ... But as far as titles of documentaries? You know what was good was Amy. ... It was really good. The beauty and tragedy of an artistic genius.
What is your favourite documentary, and what did it change for you?
Question
What is your favourite side project?
Craft & work
Question
When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Change of mind
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Failure & regret
Question
What problem are you still trying to solve?
Craft & work
I don’t know. Not particularly, I guess. I mean, my movie tastes run sort of just straight like Hollywood action movie like total fluff, you know, like Gladiator or something.
Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, 1 January 2018 source ↗
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Michael Gervais
Performance psychologist; host of the Finding Mastery podcast
Jim Loehr
Performance psychologist; co-founder of the Human Performance Institute
I love ESPN’s 30 for 30. I adored the one on Andre Agassi. I love the story, the documentary on Ray Mancini’s life. This is food for my soul. I love the inside story because that’s kind of the world I live in. And a lot of the stories I can’t tell, but I have such deep appreciation when the honesty and authenticity of an athlete is out there.
Pete Adeney
Writer of the early-retirement blog Mr. Money Mustache
I’ve actually got a huge, huge list of documentaries that I’ve been meaning to watch, many of them collected from the guests in your Tools of Titans book. The one I did watch and enjoy is actually a series rather than a documentary; the remake of Cosmos. ... The topics he covered in those episodes was so stunning, and it was a great education for my son who is very, very into science himself. So that’s the documentary that stands out in my mind, probably the most interesting thing in the last five years, anyway.
Alex Hallford
professional skateboarder
My favourite documentary, that’s lovely and everyone should watch, is called Water: The Great Mystery. It changed my perception of the whole planet more than maybe anything ever. Dr Masaru Emoto’s water research is very profound.
More from Alex Honnold
View profile →Thanks for asking, this is a bit of a cool side project for me. The main thing that motivated me to start it was just a general feeling that I had more than I needed and that I should give back. I donate money through a charitable foundation (rather than just through personal checks) in the hope that it will inspire others to consider supporting causes that they believe in.
I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is like in high school I was reading a bunch of Ayn Rand, like objectivist, all super black and white, basically like f the poor, people should work harder, they should try harder. And now as a 30-year-old I’m basically like all about trying to help the poor or trying to help the planet in different ways. Trying to make the world a better place. It’s like a full 180 from the black and white that I was into in high school.
Recorded
Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, 1 January 2018
source ↗
Well, 20 is still slightly too old, but like my 18-year-old self, I would just tell to – I would say to just not bother going to college at all. Because like the year that I spent at Berkeley was a total waste of my time, basically. Not because there’s anything wrong with Berkeley, but because I just wasn’t passionate about what I was studying, and there’s no – there was no point in me like grinding out a year of studies that I didn’t care about.
Recorded
Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, 1 January 2018
source ↗
I mean, definitely my van.
Recorded
Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, 1 January 2018
source ↗
Yeah. I, I think an interesting thing with that is that like, is it even failure if you've learned from it and you've taken those lessons onto your next project or the next thing that you're working on? And it's like, that's not necessarily a failure. It's all just part of a long-term learning process.
Anyway, it's very much a work in progress, but I'm basically just hoping to do something useful in the world besides just climbing rocks...
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