If you want uncommon results you have to Meaning Factcheck Usage

If you want uncommon results, you have to do uncommon things. It’s a simple but powerful truth that separates the dreamers from the achievers. You can’t follow the common path and expect to end up somewhere extraordinary.

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Meaning

The core message is about the direct, non-negotiable link between your actions and your outcomes. Extraordinary success requires a departure from the ordinary, well-trodden path.

Explanation

Look, here’s the thing I’ve seen over and over. Most people operate on autopilot, doing what everyone else is doing. They follow the standard playbook. And they get… standard results. The real magic, the breakthrough growth, happens when you consciously decide to break from that pattern. It’s about identifying the uncommon leverage points—the things that 95% of people aren’t willing to do, whether it’s an extreme work ethic, an unconventional business model, or a radical approach to learning. It’s uncomfortable, for sure. But that discomfort is the price of admission for a result that stands out.

Quote Summary

Context	Attributes
Original Language	English (3668)
Category	Success (341)
Topics	effort (77), innovation (32), risk (54)
Literary Style	assertive (142)
Emotion / Mood	challenging (24)
Overall Quote Score	84 (319)

Origin & Factcheck

This quote comes straight from Tim Ferriss’s 2016 book, Tools of Titans. It’s a distillation of the philosophy he uncovered from interviewing hundreds of top performers. You might sometimes see this idea floating around unattributed, but its modern popularization is firmly rooted in Ferriss’s work.

Attribution Summary

Context	Attributes
Author	Tim Ferriss (49)
Source Type	Book (4032)
Source/Book Name	Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers (49)
Origin Timeperiod	21st Century (1892)
Original Language	English (3668)
Authenticity	Verified (4032)

Where is this quotation located?

Quotation	If you want uncommon results, you have to do uncommon things
Book Details	Publication Year: 2016; ISBN: 9781328683786; Last edition: 2017 Paperback; Number of pages: 707
Where is it?	Part III: Wealthy, Section: High Performance, Approximate page from 2016 edition: 520

Context

In the book, this isn’t just a throwaway line. It’s the underlying thesis. Ferriss spent years deconstructing the habits and tactics of “Titans”—billionaires, icons, and world-class athletes. He found that their success wasn’t about working harder on the same things as everyone else, but about finding entirely different things to work on. They all, in some way, did things that seemed weird or counterintuitive to the average person.

Usage Examples

So how do you actually apply this? It’s not about being weird for weird’s sake. It’s about strategic uncommonness.

For an entrepreneur, maybe it’s ditching the 80-hour work week grind and designing a 4-hour workweek focused only on high-impact tasks—that was Ferriss’s own uncommon approach.

For a marketer, instead of just running another Facebook ad, it could be launching an incredibly personal, high-value handwritten note campaign to your top 50 customers. The impact is massive because no one else is doing it.

For a job seeker, instead of just submitting a resume, you do a deep dive on the company’s biggest problem and present a full solution in the interview. That’s an uncommon action that gets an uncommon result—the job offer.

To whom it appeals?

Context	Attributes
Theme	Advice (652)
Audiences	athletes (279), creators (124), entrepreneurs (1006), students (3111)
Usage Context/Scenario	entrepreneurship programs (9), innovation workshops (14), motivational seminars (59)

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FAQ

Question: Does “uncommon” just mean “risky”?

Answer: Not necessarily. It often means counter-intuitive or unpopular. Sometimes the smartest, least risky move is the one everyone else is too scared to try because it seems too simple or too different.

Question: How do I know which uncommon things to do?

Answer: You reverse-engineer it. Look at the result you want, find people who have already achieved it, and study what they did that was different from the crowd. That’s your starting point.

Question: Isn’t this just another way of saying “work harder”?

Answer: Actually, it’s almost the opposite. It’s about working smarter. It’s about finding the 20% of activities that generate 80% of the results—activities that most people ignore. Hard work on the wrong thing is still a common path to a common result.