Product Description Tim Ferriss is an extraordinary young man on a mission. The twenty-eight-year-old serial vagabond and successful entrepreneur has been teaching a wildly popular course at Princeton University for the past four years: a how-to and why-to guide to throwing out the old methods for success (balancing life and work, retiring well, having a great nest egg) and replacing them with an entirely new way of living.
The Four-Hour Work Week explains what a lifestyle entrepreneur is and why you should want to become one. It teaches you how to kill your job and design a life, the 80/20 rule and how it increases productivity, how to replace your dreams with goals, and more. Listeners can lead a rich life by working only four hours a week, freeing up the rest of their time to spend it living the lives they want.
Overall tricky and a let downJanuary 8, 2009 I lost my faith in the author only a few pages into the book. He grabbed my attention early on by saying he became the National Chinese kickboxing champion with only 4 weeks of preparation. I assumed this meant that he must have amazing ability and be able to learn new skills very fast. Being an athlete myself, I was impressed and wanted to learn more.
But then he explained how he did it: By exploiting the loopholes he found in the rules. He did not even try to legitimately fight his opponents, instead he just pushed them out of the ring or something.
I'm a cross country skier, and was a high school champion. If some huckster like Tim managed to win that race by somehow not putting forth any real effort, while the rest of us put in hundreds of hours of training each year, I don't think many of us would respect him. I don't think Tim could get away with this kind of trick in many sports. If he can repeat it in another sport that doesn't have loopholes, I will reconsider listening to what he says. Otherwise, I have to conclude that he took me for a ride early on in the book.
This book seems to largely be built around the 'compelling' personality of the author, and if you take that part away the rest of the book becomes unimpressive, even unnecessary. The advice he gave in the book is not unique. There are dozens of other authors who say the same or similar things as Tim, but don't have to trick you into reading their book.
I agree with what Tim is promoting - a life doing what you want, when you want. But for me, even that life will lose meaning if I don't base it on integrity.
Simplistic at bestDecember 29, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Let me start by saying I'm an entrepreneur, running a profitable internet startup.
The author neglects to mention that the vast majority of people who've achieved a 4 hour work week got there after years of working 70 hour work weeks.
The author's sexism was insufferable. He assumes all his readers are men, and there are many "in jokes" at women's expense. I put the book down when I got to the line: "practice picking up girls in order to build your confidence - even if you're married". Now there's some really bad advice.
Not as great as it's made out to beDecember 16, 2008 4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I really have to wonder if the author has honestly spent enough time on anything to really gauge whether or not he has truly been successful using his mantra. Any new thing, if marketed correctly, will take off, but sooner or later depending on how much of a commodity it is, will fizzle out and die. Outsourcing is fantastic in theory - but does it really work? More than likely only for really huge corporations who can take a hit - the reason why? Nobody cares about your business as much as you do. Well ok, if you're only working 4 hours a week, maybe you don't really care too much about it either!!! Honestly, this dude has shown us how to make bucks while working only 4 hours a day - write some arb book with a catchy title, market it, put on an air of success and Bob's your uncle, he's rich. And you're probably not - rich or working a 4 hour day:) Guys, let's get real here - let's look at the real business people, they did not do it on 4 hours a day, in a hammock with a cocktail, nor did they do it writing some book about it. I bet in 5 years time, he'll be onto the next "big thing". Save your $$.
Great tips and strategies but title misleadingDecember 16, 2008 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Great strategies for optimizing, streamlining, and minimizing the amount time spent producing results. This book is for the business person who wants to produce, produce, produce. The tips in this book give a good framework for defining what you do and why you do it and progress to give the reader the tools for getting maximum results with minimum effort.
While it's a catchy title, don't think that your goal has to be to only work 4 hours a week. In fact, you can still "work" as much as you want to. But you will come to find that this book will help you redefine what it is you call "work" and what it is you call "life" and will even help you merge the two.
This is the first author that I have read that has embraced the new wave of technology and has seamlessly incorporated traditional business goals and metrics with high technology to create an endless capacity of productivity and scalability. The first 100% mobile business model realized.
Read this or you lose.December 15, 2008 1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I read some of the arrogant reviews and have to tell you read this, and if you don't get from it what I did you are not ready for the game. I have read over 100 books on business, personal development and success and this trumps them all combined. please do not be led by the un-successful amazon book reviewers, who have much personal bias in their reviews and no real world experience. I come from the school of hard knocks and I will tell you me and Timothy Ferriss will have beers together one day. Read it no matter what you do or what are your plans, there is "naked" wisdom in there. Take it to heart and enjoy your journey, I have and will. Dan
