The 4 Hour Work Week

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Timothy Ferriss

I was in a rush to get some reading material for a recent trip and I sadly hadn't heard about Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex until it was too late so I somewhat randomly picked up this number with my Birthday Barnes and Noble Card.  (Thanks Erkan and Deena.  I also used it to buy my first yoga block).  I highly recommend it if you want to test your ability to ignore poor writing and some disturbing success stories while at the same time getting some reminders about how one can be live more efficiently and purposefully.  Here are some of the worst bits.

• One of the author's proudest accomplishments is winning a kick boxing world championship after only 4 months of training.  An impressive feat no doubt, but less so when the author explains his secret to success was severely dehydrating himself for the weigh-in the day before the competition so that he could be in the lighter weight class.  Then, after the weigh-in, he just drank some water and presto, he's 30 pounds heavier than all his competitors.  I hope the fighting organization has since changed their weigh-in policies and now do something like holding a second weigh in right before the first match to disqualify anyone who's more than 3 lbs heavier.  I'm pretty sure they didn't intend to hold a dehydration championship.
  
• The author's incredibly successful company produces BrainQUICKEN, a wonder-drug for improving both your physical and mental stamina.  According to their website, the ingredients in this crap have been studied in over 4,050 publications.  What the results of these trials were, what quality journals these trials were published in, or where one can actually find published reports of these trials is left to the imagination, but there are all sorts of great testimonials.  As far as I can tell, it's not even possible to contact the company to ask them questions, though you can contact one of their distributors who refer you back to the manufacturer who you tried to contact in the first place.  It all makes sense since BrainQUICKEN has been streamlined to make as much money as it can while requiring as little work as possible and things like transparency and scientific validation don't move product.  By the way, if anyone happens to know why things like this don't need FDA approval, I'd love an explanation.
  

Over all, the author does have a talent for succeeding and for making things happen and his tips on improving efficiency and traveling are sensible.  And the idea of hiring a personal assistant in India for $4-15/hr to do some of your work for you is intriguing.  Before I spend hours formatting a paper to meet a particular journal's standards, I'll definitely at least think about trying this out.  What's uninspiring though, is that the author's life philosophy is limited to trying to get as many thrills as he possibly can.  Morals, virtues, higher principles, who needs those.  But then, that's not in the title, so it's not as if I was mislead or anything.  Still it's good to be reminded now and again that 1) we spend our time really inefficiently and should continually have our goals in mind and cut or change things that are not helpful or fun and 2) traveling is awesome and can be done cheaply.

Comments

[writebrained]

[this is good] I'm really glad you wrote about this, and I enjoyed your review.  I've seen this book, read the synopses floating around, and even browsed around his blog.  He seems to be everywhere right now.

I've even run into a woman who said her friend wrote to him to ask him out on a date.... I can't imagine he'd be that nice in person (and that's sort of what she said too).  It takes a tremendous amount of hubris to try all these things.

It's good that his concept is so thought-provoking -- it really does make you think about how you can retool your life to make it work better for you.  Think outside the box and all that.  But I'm disappointed to hear that some of his methods are so unorthodox, ahem, dishonest....?  That definitely sounds like cheating, above, to me. Glad you pointed it out.  I think this sort of confirms my initial impression of him.

Thanks for posting! :-)

[Andy]

Ha, your acquaintance's friend sounds hilarious.  He actually did have "gorgeous girlfriend" listed in his "dreamline," which I'm now thinking must have been a calculated decision.  Which reminds me that I completely neglected to mention all the terminology he decided to make up.  The most painful I think, is in referring to BrainQUICKEN, or any company that gets you lots of money with minimal work as a "muse."