Swiss professional tennis player, 1998–2022
Recorded · Reuters · 2022
As many of you know, the past three years have presented me with challenges in the form of injuries and surgeries. I've worked hard to return to full competitive form.
Deciding what to do next
For a fork in the road. People on what they stopped doing and how they knew, what they refuse to make more efficient, and where they think the consensus in their own field has it wrong.
22 people · 155 answers
What made you stop something you were known for, and how did you know it was time?
Jazz tenor saxophonist and composer
Recorded · Academy of Achievement (achievement.org)
I realized I wasn’t sounding as good as my reputation was, so I wanted to kind of get to that point where I wouldn’t be ashamed to go on the bandstand, which happened to me one time on a…
United States professional tennis player, 1995–2022
Recorded · Vogue · 2022
I have never liked the word retirement. It doesn't feel like a modern word to me.
United States basketball player, Los Angeles Lakers, 1996–2016
Recorded · The Players' Tribune · 2015
You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream And I'll always love you for it. But I can't love you obsessively for much longer. This season is all I have left to give.
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2004
I stopped being a teacher when the South African Government introduced a deliberately inferior education for blacks called Bantu education, and I felt I wasn’t ready to collaborate with…
Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2023
I read that at a key fork in the road moment for me where I just sold CD Baby and had a ton of money.
What does everyone in your world seem to agree on that you think is wrong?
First Lady of the United States 1933–1945; United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly 1945–1952; Chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights 1946–1951
Recorded · Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, The George Washington University · 1963
Our trouble is that we do not demand enough of the people who represent us.
Palaeoanthropologist; University of the Witwatersrand
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2012
There was very much a real feel that we probably pretty much discovered every major fossil field in Africa. And in fact, some scientists even wrote that down at the turn of the millennia.
Mathematician and computer scientist; Turing Award, 1968
Recorded · Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (transcription hosted by the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science) · 1986
When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error.
Painter, draughtsman, printmaker and photographer
Recorded · The Guardian · 2015
I thought I was a hedonist at the time, but when I look back I was always working. I am always working. I work every day. I never give parties; I never gave them.
President of the Philippines, 1986–1992
Recorded · AmericanRhetoric.com · 1986
My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than 500. Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it with hammer and tongs.
Essayist and novelist
Recorded · The Guardian · 2010
Don’t write in public places. In the early 1990s I went to live in Paris.
What are you unwilling to optimise?
Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023
Recorded · Speakola · 2007
The highest form that civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust. Not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another.
Operatic soprano and recitalist
Recorded · Academy of Achievement (achievement.org)
I want to be able to express, I want to be able to communicate, and I want to be able to understand what it is I’m doing, and I want the people whose language it is to understand what I’m…
Film director and screenwriter
Recorded · Polygon · 2019
There were times when I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist. If I weren’t a film director, I think cartoons would have been a good alternative.
Film director, screenwriter and opera director
Recorded · National Geographic · 2020
It’s how we are made as homo sapiens. We are biologically organized to cover distances on foot.
Co-founder of Auður Capital; President of Iceland from 2024
Recorded · TED · 2010
We also believe in straight-talking, telling it as it is, using simple language that people understand, telling people about the downsides as well as the potential upsides, and even telling…
Chef, restaurateur and food activist
Recorded · Earth Island Journal · 2015
There’s no such thing as cheap food. It can be affordable, but it can never be cheap.
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?
United States artistic gymnast
Recorded · Rev · 2021
I just felt like it would be a little bit better to take a back seat, work on my mindfulness.
Novelist and essayist
Recorded · The Guardian · 2010
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar
Recorded · Fortune · 2008
We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all.
Novelist and essayist
Recorded · The Guardian · 2010
Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect. […] Take no notice of anyone with a gender agenda. A lot of men still think that women lack imagination of the fiery kind.
Japanese professional tennis player
Recorded · Time · 2021
I communicated that I wanted to skip press conferences at Roland Garros to exercise self-care and preservation of my mental health. I stand by that. Athletes are humans.
United States sprinter, 2003–2022
Recorded · The New York Times · 2019
What I'm not willing to accept is the enduring status quo around maternity.
Whose work makes you envious?
Film director; Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2018
I think I’ve always been jealous of musicians. You hear the story where Bob Dylan wrote a song in the afternoon and it became the anthem for a generation.
Prime Minister of New Zealand, 2017–2023; Leader of the Labour Party 2017–2023
Recorded · Harvard Magazine · 2022
Recently I had the privilege of joining ex German Chancellor, Angela Merkel on a panel. I have long been in awe of her leadership, not least for her endurance. She was in power for 16 years.
Actor and film-maker; host of the Armchair Expert podcast
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2020
I would always be tempted to take a movie I liked less if the payday was twice as much, and I’ve interviewed a couple people that grew up with wealth and I’ve watched them navigate their…
Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 1995
I felt at the time that Eric was much more successful than I, he was extremely productive during his time in Zurich, and worked on many very original projects, germ line, cell lineage, sex…
Mathematician and computer scientist; Turing Award, 1968
Recorded · Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (transcription hosted by the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science) · 1986
I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was.
Neuroscientist; professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2023
there were a group of scientists from the University of Geneva who conducted a brilliant study.
Everyone here · A–Z
Aung San Suu Kyi, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Charlie Munger, Chris Hoy, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, David Vélez, Derek Sivers, Desmond Tutu, Edmund Hillary, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Mario Molina, Mellody Hobson, Mohamed ElBaradei, Oliver Sacks, Richard Feynman, Serena Williams, Shinya Yamanaka, Simone Biles, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Winston Churchill