Please don’t do anything stupid and kill yourself. It would make us both quite unhappy. Consult a doctor, lawyer and a common sense specialist before doing anything in this book.”

This is not the most conventional introduction to a book that aims to dispense advice for a better version of you, but then Timothy Ferriss, an author, podcaster, entrepreneur and investor, is anything but conventional. Not content with having one of the most popular podcasts on the internet — his The Tim Ferriss Show was the first business/interview podcast to cross 100 million downloads — he also has several bestselling books under his belt, including The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich; The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman; and Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers.

Ferriss’s new book, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World, is a breath of fresh air in the self-help genre; it is a whole marketplace of ideas bound up in the spine of a single volume. Contained within are not the ramblings of just one person, but a compendium of excellence from a wide spectrum of industry leaders, be it in the field of sports, technology, fitness, film or music. There are some names that readers might already be familiar with, such as author and businesswoman Arianna Huffington, television and radio personality Larry King, film actors Ben Stiller and Ashton Kutcher and tennis player Maria Sharapova. Then there are perhaps somewhat lesser known, but equally interesting people such as investor and philanthropist Raymond Dalio, music producer Rick Rubin and psychotherapist Esther Perel, to name a few. With the distilled wisdom of more than 140 captains of their respective industries, Tribe of Mentors would serve as a guide that can be referred to time and again for good, “actionable advice” that Ferriss has curated with great care.

A self-help book draws on the experiences and insights of over 140 captains of industry

Each interview is presented in the form of answers to 11 questions. This might make the book appear to be merely an elaborate questionnaire, but even within that uniformity there is a great diversity of views and opinions that will keep the reader engaged. Ferriss also intersperses each section with a page of inspirational quotes that are not clichéd in the least bit. Interestingly enough, the book also serves as a portal of sorts for numerous other self-improvement books based on the recommendations of the interviewees, including The War Of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

The interviewees — an eclectic bunch of CEOs, actors, writers, music producers and athletes — provide their own distinct views on how they came to be top class performers, and there certainly are a lot of tiny nuggets of wisdom worthy of emulation.

One of the best things about Ferriss is that instead of preaching from a high pulpit, he opens up to his own episodes of vulnerability. His first book was turned down by publishers 27 times — a lesson in perseverance that aspiring writers can draw from. He writes at length about his depressive episodes. His own fragility, failings and honesty are something the average reader would be able to relate to, more so than to someone claiming to be flawless from the beginning. There are some candid disclosures along the way; the author dedicates an entire section to those personalities who wrote back to him, politely declining his requests for an interview for a variety of reasons. Even from this one can take away a lesson in how to say ‘no’ in a creative, non-offensive way.

When it comes to self-improvement, least of all self-actualisation, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. But exposure to a wide array of prominent voices makes it easier for the reader to stumble upon some habit, regimen or opinion worth emulating in order to become a better version of their selves: As Terry Laughlin, creator of the popular technique-focused swim training system known as Total Immersion, says in the book, “Mastery is a journey, not a destination. True masters never believe they have attained mastery. There is always more to be learned and greater skill to be developed.”

There is no narrative arc to the book. One could flip it open to any page, beginning, middle or end, and read any interview as a standalone piece. As Ferriss has also put up a huge repository of his podcasts on the internet for free, listeners can access audio versions of many of the interviews featured in the book.

Ferriss represents a new breed of tech-savvy, hyper-productive celebrities that are proficient in a variety of mediums and, judging from his success — as well as that of the many interviewees featured in his book — Tribe of Mentors might very well be the self-help book that makes a marked difference in one’s life.

The reviewer has worked as a producer in news media and an analyst in the NGO sector

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from
the Best in the World
By Timothy Ferriss
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, US
ISBN: 978-1328994967
624pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 20th, 2018