Tim Ferriss on tolerable mediocrity, and the advice he gives startups | Hacker News Reader

Tim Ferriss on tolerable mediocrity, and the advice he gives startups

37signals.com

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Tim Ferriss meets 37 Signals, creating a perfect storm of self promotion.

"Hi Tim. Some folks doubt that you're as awesome as you say you are, because they can't believe anyone can be so awesome. However, we're also that awesome, so we can totally believe it ourselves."

"I don’t know anything about Tim Ferris’s exercise regime. He came through our Sport and Fitness Evaluation Program for some testing a number of years ago. He did not provide any information about his purpose. In fact, I only found out that he put my name on his website after receiving an inquiry from someone who had seen the website and asked if I could confirm his results. I cannot — he signed a consent form that states that individual results will not be disclosed. Although he contacted me about being retested, I am not willing to do that because he is apparently using my name and San Jose State University for his commercial purposes, without asking for permission or notifying me of this."

The above quotation is allegedly from the doctor that Ferriss sites at the beginning of The 4 Hour Body. I have not verified that the quotation is legitimate, but I found it within this review of the book: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=337...

I found the review when I was researching some of the claims he makes within the book, claims which, to me, seemed to be obviously fraudulent. Assuming it's true, I have a hard time understanding why anyone should seek him out for advice on any matter.

This runs the other way for me, suggesting that Ferris at least made a good faith effort to get supporting data. No-one is claiming the data is wrong here. It's the "fitness evaluation expert" who is refusing to confirm or even retest the guy. And her scorn about "commercial purposes" rings particularly hollow given she is taking salary from a publicly-funded university.

Reminds me of the time I paid a US university hospital for various STD tests for visa purposes, and then the hospital refused to give me the resulting paperwork citing patient confidentiality. Totally ridiculous.

I think there's a difference between getting "supporting data" (or your own medical test results) and using a physician (and a university's name) without their express permission to both:

1. promote a commercial work, and 2. espouse an exercise regime that may be harmful.

Tim has responded to my comment on that original post:

"Matt,

To be clear: - Dr. Plato took most of the measurements in one chapter titled “Geek to Freak” - As she noted, I’ve contacted her several times (phone and email) in the desire to confirm data and even repeat tests. My last email to her was in March of 2009 and read:

“Dear Dr. Plato,

It has been some time since we last spoke, and I hope this finds you well! We did a number of hydrostatic weighings and circumference measurements back in 2005/2006, when I was gaining a lot of muscular weight as an experiment.

Are you still working at the Human Performance Laboratory? I will be writing a new book about physical optimization and will need to track things well. Do you have any availability for a visit from me and one other person anytime soon?”

If I wanted to falsify data, I wouldn’t include a specific person’s name. Too much headache for everyone. I hoped to actually work with Dr. Plato to present things, but she didn’t respond to my email/phone.

That is. Nothing sinister about it.

All the best,

Tim Ferriss"

I don't know if I'm missing the point here, but I don't see anything wrong with getting tests done and letting people know who did the testing and where.

Unless Ferris is claiming a personal endorsement of his program that does not exist, this is a non-issue. The university and physician seem to have been given ample opportunity to divorce themselves from the published results and/or retest. The refusal to do either because Ferriss doesn't work for the civil service is churlish.

This has nothing to do with Ferris not working for the civil service.

The physician is refusing to confirm the results b/c Ferris signed an NDA prohibiting the university from releasing the results. Ferris, obviously, was not bound by that NDA.

The problem is using a physician's name to lend authority to a physical regimen that might be harmful without that physician's approval. He's clearly attempting to mislead his readers.

> It's the "fitness evaluation expert" who is refusing to confirm or even retest the guy. And her scorn about "commercial purposes" rings particularly hollow given she is taking salary from a publicly-funded university.

I'm also amused by their NDA. It reminds me of the EULAs that try to forbid you from posting reviews or benchmarks or basically anything that might be informative.

You're missing the point.

TF is attempting to bolster his bulls#$& by claiming that this doctor at San Jose State can verify his results. Of course, TF also took steps to make sure that nobody could actually check with the doctor, b/c he refuses to allow the doctor to release the results.

The only time people do that is when they're deliberately misrepresenting the facts but want to prevent people from finding out.

That's the way I read it at first, too--but look carefully:

> I cannot - he signed a consent form that states that individual results will not be disclosed. Although he contacted me about being retested, I am not willing to do that...

It's the university's consent form that says they can't release the results; not Tim Ferriss. Ferriss wanted to be retested, presumably without that consent form, and the doctor refused.

Hold on - isn't HN the same crowd that says "Don't ask permission, ask forgiveness"? Though it was against the doctor's wishes, I don't think what Tim did was out of line (assuming it's the truth). If it were libel, he'd be seeing a lawsuit. He was just telling people what happened.

Its easier to take down a website than to remove a book from someone's bookshelf. It might be easier to copy a website, but, content gets lost from the web all the time.

Additional inspirational content coming soon:

Napolean Hill, "Code and Get Rich"

Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Data and Influence Google"

Norman Vincent Peale, "The Power of Positive Customer Feedback"

Jack Canfield, "Chicken Soup for the Ruby Programmer"

Stephen Covey, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Founders"

Ken Blanchard, "The One Minute Start-Up"

Harold Kushner, "When Bad Data Happens to Good Web Sites"

Tony Robbins, "Awaken the Coder Within"

Zig Zigler, "See You at the IPO"

Robert Kiyosaki, "Rich Angel, Poor Angel"

Wayne Dyer, "You'll See It When You Click It"

David Allen, "Getting Apps Done"

Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned at 37signals"

  Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned at 37signals"

HAHA I wonder, due to age, if the average HNer might not get that reference. Regardless, I can't help but feel that would be a hilarious book.

A few possibilities:

  Warm cookies and great design are good for you

  Wash your hands before you code

  Say you're sorry when you have downtime

Share everything, preferably on github.

Play fair and deploy an API.

Don't hit people with bait-and-switch privacy policies.

Put things back where you found them or use garbage collection.

Clean up your own mess by refactoring, documenting and commenting with a full test suite.

Sanitize your inputs before you insert.

Flush your input buffer.

Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and hack and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

When you send data out into the world, watch out for packet sniffers, hold hands, and stick together.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and processes and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.

You forgot:

Spencer Johnson, Who moved my VC?

Pretty damn funny, but don't forget how Ferriss got to where he is in the first place: making a lot of money in a business.

(Just to make sure, you're saying he doesn't have a lot of experience with tech startups, right?)

I for one would read at least half of these. I bet if you went to a book summary site & read them, then wrote each of those up as a blog post (or a guest post from someone -- i.e. Jason Calacanis on "How to Win Data and Influence Google" or pg on "Rich Angel, Poor Angel"), you'd have the seed of a healthy blog following.

Why specifically is it that Tim Ferriss brings out the absolute worst in HN? Most of these comments would not be tolerated on any other thread, yet when it's Tim Ferris, all of a sudden random "LOL TIM SUXX!!!" comments get 20+ points?

Furthermore, I continue to be confused and amazed that someone who is clearly a hacker and a damn good salesman is vilified around here, a place for hackers trying to be good salesmen.

It's a very strange outlier.

People get upset that they toil away at their jobs all day and he gets rich from seemingly nothing. Even though the truth is that he's a fantastic salesman and a really smart guy who works hard selling his admittedly mediocre books and himself.

Because smooth-talking salesmen are exactly the opposite of what I idolize.

Because communities like this are vulnerable to astroturfing.

Because when someone is trying to sell me something, that inspires distrust.

Because self help books are a dime a dozen and offer more hope than help.

Because someone offering improvements to my sex life sets off all my bullshit alarms.

Saying he is "villified around here" is both false and casts him as a victim. In fact he has been on the front page of HN many times.

I think a chrome extension to block all HN links about Tim Ferriss is in order, but leaves the HN comments (which are the actual interesting bits).

While I am genuinely impressed and shocked at his ability to self-promote, the content is ALWAYS a waste of time. Meta-lessons about self promotion and marketing are interesting...wish I could extract those without actually reading the content as when TF speaks, I just seem to get more and more angry.

Asking a genuine question: What is a good hack to get over the feeling that self-promotion is slimy? Not that I want to go all out like TF, but it would be interesting to have it in ones bag of tricks that you can turn to when needed.

Could be a couple of reasons. In some cultures, to talk about one's own achievements just isn't done. To get over that you have to recognize that what makes sense for a family or group of friends isn't appropriate in business, where people have to make quick decisions about whom to listen to or associate with.

You also feel slimy if you don't actually believe what you're saying. Start with the attitude of 'how can I help the other person'. If you think you have something of value to give them, what's wrong with that?

Tell the truth, maybe even also your shortcomings. You don't have to dwell on them. Look at how Pinboard.in lists the reasons a customer might not want their product.

What's so intolerable about Tim Ferriss? Just this month, I read portions of his two books, and have found them quite interesting... he's not 100% correct, but is able to generate new ideas or inspire. But maybe that just me here.

Not a very interesting article in general - I say that as someone who hates Tim Feriss, but this part was genuinely interesting and novel at least to me:

He uses A/B testing for finding the best book title (and subtitle) and cover.

“Ferriss famously used Google AdWords and in-store A/B testing to come up with the title to his first book [Full title: "The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich"].

His experimentation didn’t stop there, he decided to test various covers by printing them on high quality paper and placing them on existing similar sized books in the new non-fiction rack at Borders, Palo Alto. He sat with a coffee and observed, learning which cover really was most appealing.”

I have a HN litmus test: if the comment section hates it, then pay attention. Other themes that persist are google, facebook, twitter, zynga, dhh, ebooks, mba, and pretty much anything that's acquired.

I dont like Ferris. I read Tim Ferris 4 hour work week a while back. While he has some valid points, overall i think its a big scam. Hes a genius in marketing himself and his mediocre books that make things all so simple, but thats about it.

Call me cynical, but I have a hard time reading any piece on Tim without thinking of it as a lure to buy something. It's not that he isn't good, it's that he's either selling something, or not talking at all, and I don't trust his intent.

Hm. The people that hate/don't like T. Ferriss: Can you summarize in one sentence why?

(I understand that we sometimes just don't like people for no conscious reason, perhaps some of you failed following his book, but there must be more?)

I think the main reason is that he sells books about how to be successful, but his only success is in selling those books. It's a scam. And the 'advice' is ridiculous.

Most 'self help gurus' just prey on the stupid.

You know he sold his previous company, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Ferriss#cite_ref-7

Did you bother to look into his previous company at all?

As do most nutritional supplement vendors.

Because if you dig into biographies of these self-promotional gurus, you'll see that they only succeeded in writing books about success. They are just frauds.

He's an investor in Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. That alone seems to be a measure of success well beyond "writing books about success".

That's just a matter of having money to invest and connections.

I frankly speaking didn't know about this. But reading Wikipedia article about Tim Ferriss I got the impression that it might be his book (4HWW) that earned him money that he began to invest in these companies. The timeframes match perfectly. I don't know, may be I am wrong here.

Still I fill very allergic to all this positive thinking, self-help, goal-achieving and motivation literature. The skeptic in me just cannot stand it, everybody who writes it automatically gets "scam" mark from me. I'd rather suggest reading something like "Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America" by Barbara Ehrenreich instead.

He's artful in the worst way.

His business is convincing people that his luck can be replicated on purpose.

Because most of his ideas and recommendations don't scale - i.e. if everyone who competed in taekwondo tournaments won by pushing their opponents out of the ring, then they would change the rules to prevent that from happening. Similarly, if everyone launches their own business selling high margin nutritional products, the margins would get squeezed and the business would cease to be profitable (thereby forcing nutritional supplement providers to find new businesses, like self help books.)

Encouraging large volumes of people to buy books with ideas which don't scale is pretty selfish, because with each additional book sale, while you make money, the value of the ideas contained in the book become less valuable. Lots of business self help books are pyramid like in that sense...

I think one of his core ideas is not about taekwondo tournaments or nutritional products, but about how to find hacks to get ahead quickly and make your life easier.

EDIT: it seems Ferris is helping people figure out how to "Skip the Water": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2099453

Could it be that people are just so blown away by his god-like awesomeness that they are humbled? I mean, we are talking about a man so awesome that he has the ability to simultaneously teach himself how to swim while inventing ways to cheat in martial arts championships.

He's obsessed with ego achievements and self aggrandization and is unabashedly arrogant.

I am not a big fan of Tim Ferriss - he argues for a 4 hour work week, but in one sample day of his I saw, he worked 4 hours on one article for the Economist alone.

That said, this article is surprisingly interesting/useful.

> he argues for a 4 hour work week, but

You're missing his message.

> In the second category, you have people who don’t love what they do. It comes back to that comfortable mediocrity. And for them, it’s about replacement. It’s not about reduction. For them, the goal is to get to the point where they’re doing what they love. And that is the objective of everything that I teach. _It’s not to be idle_, but it’s to get to the point where you control your time and allocate it to the things that will give you the most joy and also provide the greatest impact. For each person, that will be very individual.

Emphasis mine.

tl;dr;

Advert for his new 'self help' book.

An advert for Sarah Palins book would be more relevant to HN IMHO.

Don't forget the part where he pays lip service to 37signals by speaking against feature creep.

Ferris gets to use 37signals as a (completely uncritical) sales platform, and in return he gives them a back rub. Quid pro quo I guess.

Logrolling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logrolling

Never heard that word before. Definitely going into my vocabulary.

Wow, not what I was expecting at all.

First, hating your job is not better than merely tolerating it.

Yes, it'll spur you to change... Just enough to bring it to mediocrity. Hating your job never turns into a job that is awesome.

If you have the energy to make it from hate to love, you have more than enough energy to make it from mediocrity to love and sustain it.

From the title, I was hoping for an article about getting things done, even if they aren't the best way. Aim for perfection, but don't insist on it. Get it working and start earning money, and then make it better.

Oh well.

Why would anyone in this industry care what Timothy Ferriss thinks?

Have all the VCs, angels, entrepreneurs, programmers, and software PMs died?

He may be selling snake oil, but that doesn't mean we have nothing to gain by learning how he sells.

If there are people here who want to follow Tim Ferriss' business plan (being a false ubermensch to impress a gullible public into buying his books), I don't want to be on this board.

He is an angel and entrepreneur. A pretty good one from the looks of it. Not only that, but he openly shares information, has plenty of data to back it up, and is an effective marketer.

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