Tim Ferriss - 5-Bullet Friday — May 12, 2023

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of 5-Bullet Friday, a list of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward this along to friends. Don’t miss the P.S. and P.P.S.

What I’m reading

“How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Choosing Presence Over Productivity” by Maria Popova (@brainpicker).

Tool I’m really enjoying

​Finally started playing with Procreate. This is my first attempt at a quick, original piece. My old friend Bacchus was kind enough to pose. I still have a LOT to learn, and I’m awkward with the tools, but it makes me really happy to start sketching again. Anyone have any favorite video tutorials for Procreate out there? If so, please do let me know in the comments here.

Comic book series I’m loving

​Tokyo Ghost, written by Rick Remender, drawn by Sean Murphy, and colored by Matt Hollingsworth. Lazarus #1, written by Greg Rucka, drawn by Michael Lark, and colored by Santi Arcas. Reckless, written by Ed Brubaker, illustrated by Sean Phillips, and colored by Jacob Phillips. I posted the covers on Instagram for those who’d like to take a gander.

​​Coffee gadgets I’m using daily

​Jura ENA 4 (Cost: $999). This was gifted to me by my friend Brad L. He is a die-hard coffee nerd and swore it was the best cup of coffee you could have without a professional barista. Just feed it whole beans, and it handles the rest. This attractive machine also imbues the coffee with a creamy texture that is hard to describe.
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​AeroPress Original (Cost: <$40). This is an incredible, and affordable, little gem. As I wrote in The 4-Hour Chef: “This is now, bar none, my favorite brewing method. Remember the Aerobie, the amazing UFO-like disc that you could throw farther than a football field, 20 times farther than a standard Frisbee? Alan Adler, a mechanical engineer and Stanford University lecturer, created it. After conquering the 1980s toy market, he began to obsess over coffee. The result was the AeroPress, which debuted in 2006. Quickly adopted by the specialty coffee community, it offers a simple way to prepare a small amount of excellent coffee, and it’s great for travel. Armed with an AeroPress and a tiny manual hand grinder like the Hario MSS-1B Mini Mill [or the more recently recommended Comandante], you can even make world-class coffee on an airplane meal tray! No mess and no fuss.” If you want to use a beefier and automated burr grinder at home, I now use the Baratza Encore.

Quote I’m pondering

“If you can’t read and write, you can’t think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don’t know how to read and write. You’ve got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.”​
— Ray Bradbury​
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You can complement this edition of 5-Bullet Friday with my coffee-making appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, my short video on journaling and taking notes, and some of my comic book posters that I’ve kept to this day.
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And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @tferriss and put #5BulletFriday at the end so I can find it.
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Have a wonderful weekend, all.
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Much love to you and yours,
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Tim

P.S. Deal of the Week — 80,000 Hours! Read this P.S. and you’ll thank me.

You have roughly 80,000 hours in your career—that’s 40 hours a week x 50 weeks a year x 40 years—and it’s your biggest opportunity to make a positive impact on the world. Most career advice is vague or one-size-fits-all and doesn’t spell out how you can truly make a difference that matters. But I do know of one great source: 80,000 Hours. Some of the best strategies, best research, and best tactical career advice I’ve seen comes from 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit that provides free research and advice to help you find a career that tackles one of the world’s most pressing problems. The team at 80,000 Hours has put a lot of work and dedication into providing carefully researched, evidence-based career advice, and they provide it all for free. Right now, as a 5-Bullet Friday subscriber, you can also get a free book sent to you in the mail (they’ll even cover shipping). They’ve chosen some fascinating books to help you make a positive impact with your career. Join their free email newsletter and get your book sent to you for free.

P.P.S.

Roughly five months ago, I held an AI art competition related to the fantasy world I’ve been building. I was trying to peek around corners, as I often do with new technologies. This brand-new blog post will share some learnings, art winners, and more. If you have favorite AI and AI art resources, please share them in the blog post’s comments.