I don’t think I can physically stand reading another article about someone hating on Tim Ferriss. Seriously. I guess people just love to bitch and rant about stuff….oh wait, I guess that’s what I’m doing here. Oh well. I’ll make it clear that I’m not some Tim Ferriss fanboy. What I am a fan of is the paradigm that he teaches.
Enough already of ‘The Myth of the Four Hour Workweek’
I mean, come on. Stop stating the obvious. Does anyone out there seriously think that a four hour work week is physically possible? The only way you’re going to achieve a four hour work week is if you’re a spoiled trust fund baby and your four hours of ‘work’ during the week consist of working on your tan.
If you picked up this book and somehow thought that it was going to give you an answer to how you can work four hours a week, then you are a bit naive. It’s marketing. And it’s very good marketing at that. Just look at how the title is broken out to draw you in.
Four Hour Workweek: Ok, this sounds interesting. What the hell is this guy talking about?
Escape 9-5: Oh, he’s talking to me because I sure as hell want to get out of my current 9-5 job.
Live Anywhere: Man, I love to travel, so this definitely sounds interesting.
Join the New Rich: Where do I sign up?
You know what? I want to see this kind of marketing when I’m looking for a book. I want to be drawn in so I can quickly evaluate and see if it’s the right product for me. What’s completely bogus is if the product itself sucks. Personally, I don’t think this product sucks.
I took me all of 2 seconds to realize that I wasn’t being sold a blueprint for how to work four hours a week. What was sold to me was a new paradigm – a new way of looking at the world.
It’s been done before and it will be done again. Someone who I feel is similar to Tim is Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and who has a similar following of people who either love him or hate him.
People Focus on the Wrong Message
In the case of Rich Dad, Poor Dad people were all up in arms because the story of him having a rich dad and a poor dad wasn’t true. Who gives a shit – that’s not the point. The story of having a rich dad and a poor dad is meant to be the vehicle to deliver the overall, larger message of the book. In Robert’s case, it is a new way of looking at money and how ‘rich’ people use it as a tool to achieve what they want in life as opposed to being a slave to money.
Tim Ferriss offers the same message. It’s not about working four hours a week. I have no idea why people say ‘It will be a cold day in hell when Tim Ferriss works four hours in a week.’ That’s not the point. Again, what Tim is offering is a unique (to most people) way of looking at money and how to use it as a tool to achieve what you want.
In both books, the message is crystal clear: Change your mindset. Have money work for you, not the other way around.
There’s no candy coated message in the 4HWW. Tim lays out how he created a business, but became a slave to the business as is the case with many entrepreneurs. They start with the mindset that entrepreneurship is the road to freedom only to have it consume their lives. That’s not the end goal of entrepreneurship. Smart business owners create businesses that work for them. They leverage the power of multiple streams of income. They delegate tedious tasks so that they can focus on continuing their creative endeavors. If you’re not doing that, you’re not a business owner – you’re an employee with a job.
Tim goes on to give you the blueprint for how he broke himself free from a never ending state of work to live the life he wants to live, on his own terms. The thing is, many people think it’s some sort of trick or snake oil being sold to them. It’s far from this though. There’s no get rich quick scheme here. If you’ve read the book you’ll know that it takes a hell of a lot of work to do what Tim has done. I think he genuinely wants you to find an outlet for your creativity and then build a business around that.
Maybe it’s a misunderstanding of who he is. It’s clear from the endeavors that he pursues that he’s someone who is insanely passionate about deconstructing systems. Whether it’s learning a new language, becoming proficient at the tango, winning a fight because of a technicality (yes, I think this was pretty lame too) or building a business, Tim seems to enjoy the process of learning and deconstructing systems. I can easily imagine someone telling him that X + Y = Z and then him spending countless hours trying to find a way to get to Z more easily and efficiently.
Others are put off by his outsourcing of certain tasks to someone across seas, which brings me to my next point.
News Flash: You Are that Outsourced Person
First, let’s make it clear that Tim is trying to reach out to those in 9-5 jobs who don’t like what they’re doing. Even if you’re happy with your job, which you’re probably not if you read the book, you should realize that you are the outsourced, cheap labor.
The average CEO makes 262 times what the average worker makes (source). It makes me sick to my stomach. The distribution of wealth in this nation has taken on such a dramatic shift over the last 50 years.
The middle class working group are today’s version of indentured servants, lured into jobs with supposedly great benefit packages while the masters running the corporations keep all the profits. The 4HWW provides a rough blueprint for how you can turn this model on its head. How you should be the CEO of your own personal corporation so you can live the life you want to live.
The Lifestyle Design Revolution
There are countless blogs out there that focus on lifestyle design and creating ‘muses,’ which are both terms coined by Tim. He didn’t actually create the term muse, but most of the people who speak of this refer to it the way that Tim does, which is really just a fancy term for creating a business that can generate automatic streams of income once it’s set up.
People might go about doing this in different ways, which is great. The point is his book opened up people to the idea of living life a different way. You don’t have to follow the traditional life path of school – work – retirement – die. There’s no need to toil away today to defer living for tomorrow. If people take nothing more away from this book than that, then it has done its job in my opinion.
Finally, maybe it’s not a bad thing that some people hate him. I distinctly remember my high school Political Science teacher telling our class that if you please everyone you must be doing something wrong. Good point. Good point indeed.
I’m Nate, a writer, mindfulness practitioner and student of the inner workings of the mind.
What up Nate!
The ideas in the 4 Hour WorkWeek are definitely ones that have changed my life. The paradigm that working less yet having more time is just something I wish I had known earlier in life.
Insightful analysis of the cover! I never looked it at it that way.
I think that’s the main message here and the benefit I got out of 4HWW along with Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It offers an alternative way of doing things and obviously the book had a tremendous impact on many people. How many blogs do you see out there today that talk about lifestyle design? It’s all because of Tim Ferriss. Now, people may have had these thoughts, but he really put it out there with the book.
It’s symptomatic of what we’ve become, to a large extent, in this society Nate. We want someone or something to solve our problems, preferably quickly, and without much effort. We want so damn bad to believe there’s a switch out there, and all we have to do is flip it and our worries will disappear, that we’re willing to buy anything that seems to suggest we’re right. Of course, it doesn’t work and, of course, we have to blame someone for that.
The real problem – one I don’t have a solution for – is that the Tim Ferrises of the world know this. They are well aware that through the use of good marketing, they can sell the promise of a better life to more than enough people to line their own pockets. Is there good information in the book? I’m sure. I don’t want to suggest it’s without value, I’m sure it isn’t. But if you know that the vast majority of your customers will end up on the short end of that stick – that is, receiving less value than they give for the product – are you feeding into the paradigm you claim to want to change? Reinforcing for millions what they are pretty damn sure is true anyway…that the 4 hour work week (or any number of other wild claims) is only for those select few ‘special’ people, and not for them. So they better go back to the only choice they have…the 9-5 grind.
This is my beef with the popularization of the self-help industry. So many promises, so many secrets, so many gurus claiming to have the answer if only you’ll fork over your $19.95 (or $99.95 or whatever). All these people want to help you change your life, yet they all know full well that change must come from within. They know 95% of the people who purchase their product/service won’t benefit from it. And so the cycle is perpetuated. Reinforced.
A vicious cycle indeed. Perhaps I’m being a bit too cynical on the matter. I hope so, actually.
I think I kind of see it as more of personal responsibility. I think what Tim conveys, and some lifestyle design bloggers convey even better, is that there doesn’t have to be a prescribed path to live your life. The problem that many people have is that they don’t even think what he did is possible and they don’t even make the effort to put it into practice and try. Then, they just complain about it.
I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m saying it because I am that person. For too long I haven’t done anything. I’ve just read books or blog posts. What people need to realize is that none of that is going to bring about change. If you want change in your life it has to come from within.
I guess what I don’t like is when people just look at the book on its face and say ‘oh, he never works four hours a week,’ or ‘that’s not possible.’ It’s that kind of thinking right there that’s going to keep you in the same patterns. I’ll be honest, I still have these thoughts a lot and I struggle to overcome them myself.
My main takeaway from the book is that there are different ways to go about doing things. It doesn’t have to be exactly how Tim did it, although I think he offers up a very interesting model.
I have sympathy with Jeb’s point… but (as I wrote a few days ago over at Sarah‘s place: http://sarahdawley.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/mad-mascara-musings/) I also think that people nowadays just don’t care too much about exaggerated marketing. They know about it. So yes, in this sense, people just shouldn’t believe the hype and get up for themselves doing stuff. That’s the only solution. If they haven’t grasped that yet, they’ll better do it fast…
Yeah, I would certainly agree with that….although I have to say that I don’t really have anything against marketing per se. Ramit Sethi has a blog called ‘I Will Teach You To Be Rich,’ which seems like quite a promise…and I don’t think you can take it a face value, just like I don’t think you can take the 4HWW title at face value.
Ramit offers EXCELLENT personal finance advice. He very much shuns get rich quick schemes and risk investments. Instead he focuses on setting goals and automating your finances to get results. Boring stuff to most, but he presents it in such an excellent way.
So, in a way I think it kind of relates to 4HWW. Are the titles examples of exaggerated marketing…well, sure, it’s hard to discount that. However, I personally feel that book itself offers a unique paradigm for how one doesn’t have to follow the traditional corporate path.
hey Nate,
raelly on point that you’re not being sold a blueprint but a new paradigm – which is often more important and effective in effecting change. liked that insight. a lot.
also really liked the “you are that outsourced person”.
there are ample sites about this, about lifestyle design, and about the 4hww, but this article was one of the few that wasn’t entirely rehashed meh.
so respect
keep well and in touch mate
alex – unleash reality
Alex – Good to meet you and thanks for the comment! You know, I really firmly believe that Tim’s book is not a bad one and it’s not a trick or marketing scam…..although he heavily uses marketing techniques.
He took something that he did – going from building a business that consumed every waking hour of his day and destroyed personal relationships and then turned that on its head. He became a business owner instead of an employee. He used techniques to delegate work while still maintaining his business. He even talks about very basic business techniques such as firing some of your customers (those producing little revenue but taking up the majority of your time). It’s not like the 80/20 rule is something new…he just re-introduced it to everyone and showed them how it can work from them.
I’m saying this and I actually don’t have anything against 9-5 per se. Really it’s all about finding work you love, whatever that is. 9-5 is just a mentality. The goal isn’t to get rid of doing work. It’s to focus on work that you like to do, which Tim has done.
Good post Nate!
Tim Ferriss is definitely a brilliant marketer. I agree that he has almost single handedly inspired the world to a different way to to look at work and life. I personally have read the book three times and continue to find nuggets of information.
He certainly isn’t the first. People have been ‘designing their lifestyles’ for centuries. However, he is the first to bring the concept mainstream and that deserves notice. Everyone looking at short cuts and an easy way out will love his approach to life.
I think the best lesson that Ferriss offers are his spin techniques. The most turns in one minute, gets translated into “world record holder in tango.” Getting invited back to speak to an old professors class, “guest speaker at Princeton.” Three months teaching English for Berlitz, “linguist.”
I think we can all learn resume padding techniques from his example.
Tim Ferriss proved to the world that good old fashioned B.S. still works wonders.
My favorite is his claim to making $40,000 per month. Why would someone making that much money be worried about spending money traveling abroad? He never mentions if it is revenues or profits but the assumption is definitely net income. Misleading? Definitely! Marketing brilliance? Absolutely! The proof is in his world wide success.
Now if only I could lie that well.
.-= John Bardos – JetSetCitizen´s last blog ..Interview with Pat Flynn, $200,000 per year in 15 minutes a day! =-.
John – Thanks for stopping by!
Yeah, the dude is a brilliant marketer, there’s no question about it. The KEY in my opinion is that he’s doing what he loves. He loves marketing. He loves deconstructing systems. That’s what he’s doing with his life now. So, yeah, he’s definitely done a brilliant job of finding his passion and pursuing it.
I had to laugh at your comment of “My favorite is his claim to making $40,000 per month. Why would someone making that much money be worried about spending money traveling abroad?”
Very true, very true indeed. With that kind of money geo-arbitrage is probably the least of your worries. Kind of along with my comment on his being a fight champion. Is the statement true? Yes, he is a champion. It’s how he got there that’s a little shady….and that rubs some people the wrong way. But again, a lot of people think it’s him scamming the system, where I guess I see it as his insane passion for breaking down systems and finding more efficient ways to get things done. Just a different perspective I guess.
But, hey, maybe I’m completely naive and he is a total a-hole
It seems like writing a post stating a position on the 4HWW is a requirement for LD bloggers. They’re all over the place and most of them are reduced to “yeah, but he works way more than 4 hours a week so the book is stupid”.
Thanks for a thoughtful post on the matter. This sentence in particular is great: “Even if you’re happy with your job, which you’re probably not if you read the book, you should realize that you are the outsourced, cheap labor.” I love it.
.-= Andrew MacPherson´s last blog ..My Favorite Irreverently Enticing Blogs =-.
Yeah, I guess what I don’t like is people taking a stand against the book just to take a stand against the book. You know…it’s kind of like ‘you don’t always need to be a contrarian.’
What makes it worse is if the person who is doing the critique uses the term lifestyle design in their blog, because that is a term that was literally made up by Ferriss. Having said that, I have nothing against the term or those who use it in their blogs. It just speaks to the power and influence that the book has had on others.
Hey again Nate
This is great. I really enjoyed the 4HWW, but I remember writing about how great it was on a forum and getting a real backlash from another reader. Now I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, but this guy hadn’t read the book and just googled Tim Ferriss and then rehashed alot of bad stuff people had written about it. I liked your distinction about this being a new paradigm. It’s showing people what’s possible and as you said, we are the outsourced! Nothing wrong with that, but are we fulfilling our potential? The point is the 4HWW is possible (there are plenty of real life examples on the web) but it takes some work to get there, which Tim put in. I think sometimes, people just can’t get there heads around the fact that this is possible, so have to bring it down! Kudos for another really good post.
Jen
.-= Jen´s last blog ..Make Fast Decisions =-.
Yeah, I totally agree Jen. I don’t think we necessarily have to follow Tim’s approach to a ‘T.’ What it gives us though, is a new way of looking at things. Most people think that there’s only one way to live your life: school, work for someone else for 50 years, retire. It just doesn’t have to be that way. Also, it is possible. You’re 100% correct in saying that people just can’t get their heads around the fact that it is possible. Well, IT IS POSSIBLE. The thing is, you’ll never know if unless you try. Also, it’s definitely not easy and there may be failures along the way. You have to keep with it though if you want to succeed. Most peopl unfortunately give up.
Nate,
I agree with you! I don’t think the title was meant to be taken literally. The book opened me upto the possibility of another type of life.
I don’t want to spend my life working 9-5 every day rotting away. I want flexibility, I want to travel the world. I can’t wait till I’m 50 to do all these things.
I’m eagerly waiting for the revised edition.
-Moon
.-= Moon Hussain´s last blog ..How Outsourcing Projects Can Help You Get On Track =-.
[...] Are you quick to idolize someone you read about? Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk come to mind when I think of people that others have recently idolized. I actually find both individuals quite impressive and they both have their unique lessons to share. I even shared my thoughts on whether or not people actually get the The Four Hour Work Week. [...]