Tim Ferriss Revisited

This is a sign of prosperity not a lack of hard work. We also don't cut our own trees, build our own furniture, use printing presses or churn our own butter. Instead, we've been able to reassign our time and talents to more productive or fulfilling tasks while leaving or paying for tasks such as these to machines or to a lesser amount of people.

One caveat, in TFHWW, Ferriss often comes off as sort of a douche, but that doesn't mean there aren't great concrete ideas and references throughout the book - the key is knowing which ones are applicable to your life. The book is by no means perfect, but it's certainly better than the self-improvement fluff and vapor proliferating itself all over the Amazon best seller lists.

The blog post author seems to confuse working hard and working smart.

He takes the example of one person who has ruined his life. Ruined how? The guy is no longer a customer. He hides from the people he is working with. Therefore, he disvalues building lasting relationship.

Unfortunately, he assumes that a professional life necessarily encompasses a personal life. He seems to be implying that if your professional life tanks, then you no longer have a personal life ... whereas the main thing I get out of Tim Ferris's book is giving priority to your personal life. Since the blog post author only knows his example by through his professional life, he has no way of knowing if his former client has ruined his personal life.

I keep seeing so much hate in those comments. I saw the hate in the reviews on Amazon. Particularly, people keep coming back to the idea that if everyone follows Ferris's strategy, no one would be left to do the work. Why are people waving that around as if they were waving a flag to make a last stand against a charging horde of barbarians?

It seems to me that this blog author reacts violently to the idea that a person can benefit from someone else's "hard honest work", to the point that he may be taking it personally: reacting unconsciously to the idea of "Tim Ferris is taking advantage of MY hard honest work." It is as if Ferris's ideas threatens all those years of struggle with putting in long hours to put food on the table. These are responsibilities as an adult, that one had to give up personal things as a child to become an adult ... and here comes Ferris who seems to advocate extending your childhood ... So he tells himself, "If everyone follows Ferris's ideas, who is actually going to do the work" While this is mathematically true, it serves more as an emotional security blanket validating that all the "sacrifices" he had made was not for naught.

In his book, Ferris himself claimed to have worked extremely hard in his early days, before dropping everything to go to Europe. There, with nothing to do, and no "hard work" to validate himself as a person, he had to either fill it up with something (usually hard work) or come to some sort of a realization about himself. Ferris by no means the first person who has espoused this idea. In my studies of Lao Tzu's ancient text, Tao Te Ching, these very same ideas are already there. In fact, Ferris does not really escape the whole Protestant Work Ethic -- he's turning his entire drive and passions towards doing the things he wants to do (whatever those "wants" are), whereas Taoists of Lao Tzu's ilk tame those fires and retire into a contemplative life away from the material world. Ferris still works hard, he just doesn't work hard in what the mainstream American society considers "productive".

That's a paraphrase, Wilde or Shaw I think, but this post is a perfect example.

I think the idea that "hard work is an end unto itself" is pretty dumb.

I'd also like to address his comment about "who will do the work?" if everyone implemented Ferriss methods. Well, obviously some people are going to lack the initiative, brains, risk-tolerance, information, or opportunity to do so, and will be stuck manning the refineries or stuffing the boxes. But you can't really blame Ferriss for that, as he wrote a best-selling book trying to show how and why to do it, even without having much money or "qualifications"!

I think that distinction probably goes to their slaves.

1) your time is very valuable; you only live once

2) it is stupid to spend all your time working so you collect and hoard expensive toys that you won't have time to play with. instead use your money to expand your free time and freedom to do cool stuff

3) you can delegate some of your work to expand your free time

4) there are unconventional solutions to conventional problems

It takes a lot of effort and focus to get to that point, though.

Tim Ferriss is hardly a snake-oil vendor. The marketing of the book might suggest otherwise, but to me he seems like a guy who found a novel way to structure his business and wrote the book as a "here's how I did it".

The book's worth picking up if you're reading this site, though comments along the lines of programmers being a dime a dozen (or words to that effect) might put you off.

From what I've seen in reviews and when I skimmed the book it's not about working 4 hours a week, it's about working less on mundane tasks and doing what you love in your free time (traveling, golfing, whatever)

This is why if you have 50 students in a class who have been taught by the same lecturer using the same books . They dont all get A's

If everyone one in America is given $1 Million most would be broke in less than 3 years . Money will be pissed away on Alchohol, Drugs, Women, Gambling, Bad Biz choices, etc

There is never a time when 100% of the people will get it right 100% of the time .

So saying who will wash the dishes if everyone is a chef makes no sense because life is designed there to be winners and losers . A lot of people that bought the book wont even finish reading the book if they start at all .

Life is meant to be enjoyed . Your not meant to spend your life working hard till you drop dead .

Your meant to utilize you talents to get ahead and finishe early .