Tools of Titans

Ferriss compiled this from more than two hundred podcast interviews, organised into three sections covering health, wealth and wisdom. Each entry profiles a subject with their routines, tools, recommended books, and answers to questions Ferriss asks repeatedly across interviews.

The recurring questions produce the book's comparative value, since the same questions asked of many high performers reveal both convergence and disagreement. They include what purchase under one hundred dollars has most improved your life, what advice would you give your younger self, what do you believe that most people would disagree with, and what does the first hour of your day look like.

The health section covers training protocols, fasting, cold exposure, sleep, and a range of supplement regimens, much of it from people with commercial interests in what they recommend. The wealth section covers investing, negotiation, marketing and business building. The wisdom section covers Stoicism, meditation, psychedelics, failure and habit. The format is deliberately non-linear and Ferriss instructs readers to skip.

The main problem is evidential. The subjects are selected for success and asked what they do, which produces survivorship bias throughout, and the health protocols in particular are anecdote rather than evidence. Several recommendations, especially in supplements and in fasting, are stated with more confidence than the research supports. The book is long and much of it is transcription. Its value is as a reference of practices to test individually rather than as a set of validated methods, and Ferriss says as much in the introduction.