Tribe of Mentors

Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

By: Tim Ferriss

Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith, Ray Porter, Tim Ferriss, Therese Plummer

Length: 18 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Tim Ferriss, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, shares the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure book - a compilation of tools, tactics, and habits from 130+ of the world's top performers. From iconic entrepreneurs to elite athletes, from artists to billionaire investors, their short profiles can help you answer life's most challenging questions, achieve extraordinary results, and transform your life. 

From the author: 

In 2017, several of my close friends died in rapid succession. It was a very hard year, as it was for many people. 

It was also a stark reminder that time is our scarcest, non-renewable resource. 

With a renewed sense of urgency, I began asking myself many questions: 

• Were my goals my own, or simply what I thought I should want? 
• How much of life had I missed from underplanning or overplanning? 
• How could I be kinder to myself? 
• How could I better say “no” to the trivial many to better say “yes” to the critical few? 
• How could I best reassess my priorities and my purpose in this world? 

To find answers, I reached out to the most impressive world-class performers in the world, ranging from wunderkinds in their 20s to icons in their 70s and 80s. No stone was left unturned. 

This book contains their answers - practical and tactical advice from mentors who have found solutions. Whether you want to 10x your results, get unstuck, or reinvent yourself, someone else has traveled a similar path and taken notes. 

This book, Tribe of Mentors, includes many of the people I grew up viewing as idols or demi-gods. Less than 10% have been on my podcast (The Tim Ferriss Show, more than 200 million downloads), making this a brand-new playbook of playbooks. 

No matter your challenge or opportunity, something in this audiobook can help. 

Among other things, you will learn: 

• More than 50 morning routines - both for the early riser and those who struggle to get out of bed. 
• How TED curator Chris Anderson realized that the best way to get things done is to let go. 
• The best purchases of $100 or less (you'll never have to think about the right gift again). 
• How to overcome failure and bounce back towards success. 
• Why Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton believes that the best art will always be the riskiest. 
• How to meditate and be more mindful (and not just for those that find it easy). 
• Why tennis champion Maria Sharapova believe that “losing makes you think in ways victories can’t.” 
• How to truly achieve work-life balance (and why most people tell you it isn’t realistic). 
• How billionaire Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz transformed the way he engages with difficult situations to reduce suffering. 
• Ways to thrive (and survive) the overwhelming amount of information you process every day. 
• How to achieve clarity on your purpose and assess your priorities. 
• And much more. 

This reference book, which I wrote for myself, has already changed my life. I certainly hope the same for you. 

I wish you luck as you forge your own path. 

All the best,
Tim Ferriss   

Cover design by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2017 Timothy Ferriss (P)2019 Tim Ferriss

Maybe not a good format for an audio-book version

There are a lot of redundancies (repeating the same questions to each person) that become annoying fast on audio, while you will easily look over it on text.

Also the Q&A dialogue style is more confusing on audio, especially when it's the same men reading and answering the questions (He did a good voice acting though).

I tend to listen to audio-book for at least 30 minutes to hours straight, and with this book of dense advice delivered fast it gets overwhelming. So I think I will enjoy it more on paper, to pick up a chapter or two on the fly.

a little repetitive and formulaic.

Struggled to finish. To me it came off as smug and formulaic. "I graduated from an ivy-league college and then went to work for a hedge fund where I made a fortune but felt soul-less and unfulfilled. then I invested in an internet startup, so now I'm a Buddhist, Philanthropist life-coach."

The audiobook would make a good drinking game.

Don't get me wrong, there were a few good pearls of wisdom- but toward the end I started trying to figure out which formula each person would follow when each new chapter started.

Tools For Titans 2?

After just listening to Tools For Titans (which was great) I didn’t really understand the need for this book which really seemed to repeat a lot of the same info. I guess if you are a diehard Tim fan it’s worth picking up, but if you are rationing your credits i suggest just getting Tools For Titans.

Basically a worse version of “Tools of Titans”

I listened to “Tools of Titans” a few months ago and thought it was kind of whatever. It just felt somewhat lazy, too long, and not edited or organized well enough. Well, funny enough, I find myself here again, after reading yet another of Ferriss’ books, thinking the same exact thing.

In print, this atlas is 624 pages, and there’s really no good reason for it to be that long. To write this one, Ferriss essentially sent out an email to about 100 of his famous colleagues and got them to fill out a questionnaire about success, growth, and all that good stuff. He then took the responses, compiled them into a book, and hit publish.

I mean I guess that process is not all that surprising for the author of “The Four Hour Workweek.” I don’t say that disparagingly, just matter-of-factly. After all, in that one, he did tell us to outsource pretty much everything we do and focus on the few tasks in our businesses that we really love. In essence, this book is the epitome of that logic; Ferriss had his email friends write the book for him.

At least in my eyes, this comes off as lazy and lends itself to a lack of cohesiveness. As the author, I think you have a duty to organize things properly and present your own special creation to the reader. Just like I wouldn’t cook a complex, deconstructed meal for someone and ask them to rebuild it themselves, I also wouldn’t throw everything I can think of into a manuscript and ask the reader to wade through it all.

I’m the chef, after all, and the guest wants me to cook them a great dish — not have them do all the work or figure out what my intentions with the meal were. The same goes here — “Tribe” suffers from a lack of direction from its author. It’s literally just a bunch of emails chained together. It’s missing Tim’s awesome voice and wisdom.

Okay, so that’s enough for the negativity. After all, it’s not all bad here. On the good side, there are so many guests that each reader is bound to find some folks they really admire. Moreover, there’s so much wisdom that there’s also bound to be some that resonates with each reader. I found that to be the case for myself as well, it just takes a lot of digging to find that personalized wisdom.

So, in closing, I’ll say this: this book is a good coffee table read. It’s one that you can pick up, jump to a specific guest’s chapter, read it, enjoy it, and walk away. It’s not a cohesive book or creative endeavor, however — it’s just the printed version of an email inbox.

In a lot of ways, it’s really “Tools of Titans” 2.0, albeit probably worse. It will leave you with way too many other book recommendations to check out despite the 600+ pages of wisdom that you just sorted through.

That sheer information overload is one of the main reasons I suggest you check out Ferriss’ other works instead, namely “The Four Hour Workweek.” In my mind, that one is much more well-written and edited. It’s a borderline masterpiece, and it’s exactly why I keep giving Ferriss’ subsequent books a try despite not loving very many of them in the end.

-Brian Sachetta
Author of “Get Out of Your Head”

Wow

I don't usually write reviews. One of the worst books I've read on awhile. Adds absolutely no value. Same boring questions to every guest. Tim literally just sent an email template to every guest and published their responses. Was hoping for wisdom from great mentors and instead it's a cash grab.

Interesting Book, Could Use Less Poker Players & Athletes

I found this book to be very interesting. It posed a lot of good questions that have caused me to consider how I’d answer. It might be better to read than listen to. Since each section is narrated by one of two people, it’s easy to forget you’re listening to a new person or who you’re listening to responses from. I could’ve also done with fewer interviews with poker players, cross fit/strength athletes.

INSPIRED

This was an amazing one Tim! Great initiative to help us tap into the beautiful minds of trailblazers and achievers.
Great insight and am recommending to all m friends! Do keep up with your great work 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

Not good for Tim

We get some politics on here with some of these people. Jesse William sucks. Screw getting work. That stuff is loserthink.

Each "Mentor" is a crap shoot

There are some really interesting people in this book and there are some really crazy people in this book. Too bad the crazies outnumber the interesting ones.

Amazing book which helps you see the important points, exercise, diet, and time are what matter

Amazing book which helps you see the important points; exercise, diet, and time are what will make your career, physical health, mental health, and relationships better.

Thanks,

[e-mail]

Dissapointing in audiobook

I've been wanting this book for a while so was happy to see it come up as a planned Audible title and pre-ordered it.

It's a meaty book, a long book, so I was looking forward to many hours of valuable advice, thoughts and ponderings from some influential people.

But ultimately I'm left feeling very dissatisfied... the power of the messages within are eroded by rather monotonous and robotic narration. It carries no empathy or sentiment and is just painful to listen to for 18 mins, let alone 18 hours.

I get that it would have been impossible to expect the original contributors to voice their own chapters but some variety in tone is needed!

I'm not sure why the author insists on reading out all of the Twitter handles, Instagram account and website addresses either? Surely better to have these as an attachment and save 6 hours or so of narration? Plus it breaks up the flow of the book too much. And hearing the same questions repeated over and over again is frustrating too.

So sorry, it's a no from me, I'll be returning this one amd hoping that Tools of Titans is better!

Disappointing

Although there were undoubtedly a few nuggets in the part of the book I listened to, overall I found the negatives outweighed the positives.

To me at least, the question format became very irritating very quickly, particularly as the narrator seemed to adopt such an angry tone of voice! The excessive detailing of social media accounts at the beginning of each segment was weird, and a surprisingly number of interviewees managed to intersperse f bombs into whatever it was they were saying. I am not a prude but I did not think this was necessary.

As a big fan of the 4 hour work week, I was disappointed by this book.

Appalling narrators

Some gems of advice but mainly lots of advice for west coast snowflake millennial types and tonnes of repetition - it could have been one third the length if the info was properly curated. And don’t get me started on the appalling voices of the narrators particularly the woman. The whole thing needs to be properly edited and abridged my life is too short to listen repetition and corny interludes by ferris with his meme-like sayings of wisdom which seem like him dictating self indulgent therapy sessions or a teenage diary ... please

More life hacks, this time from the B list

This is a follow on book to Tools of Titans in which American author of self help books Tim Ferris conducts standard form interviews asking (but not following up) questions such as "what is your favourite failure?", "what is your best recent purchase for less than $100?" and "what advice would you give to an ambitious college student about to enter the real world?".

It seem that Mr Ferris had exhausted the best contacts in his address book with Tools of Titans and, on the whole, the calibre of the people interviewed for Tribe of Mentors is not quite as high as his earlier show and tell listing book. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage" is a maxim that is repeated by a few of Tim's Mentors and, in the same way, it seems that the marginal benefits from this type of book are inversely proportional to the number of hedge fund managers, private equity investors and obscure sports people who agree to participate in this strange study.

This book is not without its moments of amusement though. I can see some of the quotes here going straight into Private Eye's "Pseud's Corner" such as veteran golfer Greg Norman whose sageful life advice to the readers is that he brushes his teeth standing on one leg; poker player Liv Bearee who plucks the hairs on her legs rather than shave them and American record producer Rick Rubin who advises you can improve your quality of life by the use of a saline nasal syringe. Reknowned addiction expert Dr Gabor Maté declares that he was "deeply moved" by Winnie the Pooh and American actress and podcaster Whitney Cummings leads her life on the basis that "if you lay down in the dirt and get dirty, you don't have the worry about getting dirty".

The recommended exercise regimes in this book are not quite as extreme as in the previous book and, similarly, the diets, whether that be completely plant based or completely plant free are not quite as strict. Maybe that is why the people in this book are only Mentors and have not reached Titan.

The main thing, is, of course,to make sure that the main thing is the main thing. And if you want to go fast you should go alone and if you want to go far you should go together. I am not too sure what that means either. Maybe that is why I have a long way to go to reach the levels set by the insecure over-achievers who are interviewed in this book.

Monotonal performances

The idea behind the book is interesting but listening is ruined by the monotonal performances. They sound bored.

Take it easy

Brilliant book with some brilliant advices. Highly recommended and in the end take it easy and don't forget to sleep.

Addictive insight into the minds of amazing people

Like Tools of Titans, Tribe of Mentors is a modern-day bible of sorts for making incremental changes to just about every aspect of your life you can think of!

Tribalism at its best

Tapping into the great minds and all their insights is simply a wondetful way to pass the time, yes you maybe inspired by some nugget of information that sparks you into a new path or success but I think most will benefit from the shear positiveness that is steeped into every second of this book.

Well done Tim Ferris for creating an inspirational book that delivers the hearts and minds of some of the most successful people to have ever lived to us all.

Very inspirational. Thanks

Great mix of people and skills sets. Kept hitting the bookmark button every few minutes

Serious!

An impressive undertaking that's packed with so much wisdom, that I suspect I'll still be unpacking for years to come.