Revisiting “The 4-Hour Workweek”
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
Newport (the "author" of the above fluff piece) himself is no slouch either. He implements the same Ferris modus operandi you describe. As I noted it more than two years ago here[1][2], he has been on a multi-book contract on the same theme with minor tweaks. So Newport will drum up attention about them in all subtle ways possible. Same story with the intolerable Ryan Holiday -- he repackages the Greek/Roman originals into breathless "books".
The alternative to the empty books by the above people is to read the original classics, and the actual scholars who did the work (Csikszentmihalyi, Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Timothy Wilson and many others).
Every Cal Newport article is riddled with links. Links to his podcast. Links to his books. Links to his fucking newsletter, and old posts and time block planner and on and on. Ridiculous from a self professed authority on deep work and focus.
Ryan Holiday meanwhile is the classic American success story isn't he? A sort of Ray Kroc-like entity. The kind of gold-rush chasing huckster in a sea of other hucksters, all alike, but one who just happened to make it big. Nothing about Holiday suggests to me that he's had a single original thougt in his life. Just repackaging with lipstick.
I'll be sure to check out your recommendations.
ETA: Ahh fuck it. Feel like ranting more. Maciej Ceglowski famously called Newport's and Holiday's style books "wooly business books" at airports (Lexus and the Olive Tree). Things that should be blogposts, or better still, an animated dinner party conversation, but are instead padded on and on with plodding, insufferable writing lacking any clarity of thought or lucidity in expression. Gah!
ETA2: Also Maciej: Ferriss is the author of the Four Hour Workweek, the Four Hour Body, the Four Hour Orgasm. Basically if you can't do it in four hours Tim Ferriss doesn't want to talk to you.
I just hope people make a little bit more time when picking books to separate the wheat from the chaff.
So many authors reference their Podcast, they want you to download a PDF on their website and so on.
I just want to read a book and start go to a f*ing website.
Yes, some of Kahneman's work doesn't replicate, as he himself admitted. But he's not a "hack". An incredibly hard worker, and an equally fallible human like the rest of us.
From Thinking, Fast and Slow:
> The idea you should focus on, however, is that disbelief is not an option. The results are not made up, nor are they statistical flukes. You have no choice but to accept that the major conclusions of these studies are true.
These sentences alone put Kahnemann at bottom of the list of people anyone should listen to. This is the opposite of how you do science especially when we talk new research in something as difficult to measure as human behaviour. Not surprisingly, a lot of the studies in Thinking, Fast and Slow don't replicate.
Kahneman has acknowledged this and admitted it was a mistake[1] while simultaneously saying:
> I am still attached to every study that I cited, and have not unbelieved them
And the book is still sold with the paragraph saying that disbelief is not an option.
[1] https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...
I'm no Kahneman "defender", but you have to read any of this kind of behaviour research as "advanced opinion pieces" by biased humans.
And also bear in mind: it is a 40-year synthesis of his and Tversky's work. Yes, priming-related studies and a few others don't replicate. And that "disbelief is not an option" is of course terribly distasteful and overconfident. That doesn't mean everything in that book is bunkum!
Just waiting for an NFT drop now.
Okay.
What are some your recommended reads from Csikszentmihalyi, Wilson, or Thaler [1], and why? I am part way through Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahnemann, and it's both more idea-filled and harder to read than a Tim Ferriss book – which I agree is good.
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[1] As an attempt to prove good intent, here are some guesses based on Googling: Flow: The Psychology of Happiness, Misbehaving and Nudge by Thaler, and Strangers to Ourselves by Wilson.
Your guesses are all good (and by "classics" I meant the works of Seneca, Cicero et al). You'll also find many gems in the bibliography section of any book with real substance. A good author will share their sources. On why I recommend these: Many of these researchers spent years grappling with the said topics. They are "invested" in it, and to be charitable, were/are trying to arrive at truth, however imperfectly. Even when they get things wrong, these books are more likely to make us think than the vapid "books" by charlatans.
On Thinking, Fast and slow being hard to read: it is a hard read. For Pete's sake, the book asks you to grapple with probabilities, which we humans are terrible at. If you're trying to read Prospect Theory (a key idea from the book) in bed when tired, or in a noisy train station, you will be frustrated. Read it when you are fresh and are able to concentrate well.
Note though, none of these books are "perfect"; there will be things in them that might irritate you. Read them anyway, for the mental nourishment they provide.
* * *
• Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio
• Neuroscience: Exploring the brain by Bear, Connors, and Paradiso (this is a fantastic illustrated text book with great explanations; fully worth the 72 euros I paid for it)
• Behave and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Sapolsky (I wrote my "why" for Behave here[1])
• Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene
• The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
• Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal
• Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
• Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
• Becoming Human by Michael Tomasello
• For Stoicism, I wrote a detailed guide here[2] on good quality English translations by foremost scholars
• Not least of all, read some of Plato's dialogues—they're immensely fun, even if you don't agree with anything he says. Here's[3] a few recommended English translations.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25559890
I took the time to write constructive recommendations of people who have spent decades thinking about the said topics. Most of these books have stood the test of time.
Your comment and comparison doesn't make sense. If you do your research, you might grasp it better. But what I wrote is plain and clear as it is. (And judging by the off-thread responses I've gotten, many people appreciated it as I intended.)
Assuming someone who points this out hasn’t read the thread, done research or read many of the same books feels good, I’m sure.
I am sure it is more me, than the content/author that has changed. But the original comment is so right in saying "You pay to be inspired".
A lot of books that I routinely recommend are like this. Other popular books are like this. Books on communication, persuasion, sales, negotiation etc. come to mind. The Black Swan is like this. The Innovator’s Dilemma is like this. Non-violent Communication couldn’t fill more than one slide in a slide deck if you distilled it down… it’s basically a notecard’s worth of information stretched across a book with repetition, discussion, and examples.
The non-fiction books which aren’t like this are things like history books (it can be deeply unsatisfying that there is no unifying narrative for a particular topic in history), textbooks, and guides.
That said, I tried an experiment - I read half the book, and read a summary of the second half. After all, it was getting repetitive. I remember the first half of the book, but not the second. (I should probably go back and read it at some point now.) That repetition, the stories and examples, really helped drive the points home, even if they felt excessive at the time.
Throught my years, I have moved from fiction books to popular science (also "non-fiction"). Nowadays I like to read textbooks and research papers. Once you get used to that level of information density, it's hard to go back.
I guess it can be summarized by "Human behavior is influenced by various factors."
But the breath of these factors and their interaction makes for an interesting read. Robert Sapolsky is an excellent educator.
I only remember one concrete piece of advice from the book. In those days, the shipping and handling fee was where your profit was, but if a customer forgot to add it, send them the book anyway. You're not losing any money, so it's free advertising.
It did make me realize what I really needed to do. Unfortunately, I only got as far as the title, but I was proud of this title:
How to Get Rich Quick by Selling Get Rich Quick Books
I decided not to, mostly because of how blantantly wasteful it is (I guess blank pages which no information is less wasteful than filled pages with useless information, at least your not wasting ink, but its more blatant)
https://boingboing.net/2017/07/31/buy-the-book-how-i-made-29...
TL;DR: read the end of the first paragraph.
He was nowhere near rich before the 4-hour workweek success.
When Elon Musk was interviewed at SpaceX about Starship, he said the same thing actually: they are launching non-optimized vehicles and iterating by simplifying the design. Also Tesla almost went bankrupt through the Model 3 ramp up phase because he was trying to make manufacturing more efficient instead of simplifying it.
Or in Knuth’s words: early optimization is the root of all evil.
To most people, the fact that the title "4 hour work week" is a bit of attention-grabbing hyperbole is completely obvious, including those who actually read it and got some value from it. If you think anyone who reads a book like that must be some kind of idiot who takes a literal interpretation of an obviously hyperbolic title, then you probably have a cynical and incomplete understanding of how smart most people are. The truth is, identifying the most literal possible description for something is usually just an aspy trick we engineers like to pull when we are confused by something nuanced.
For example Robinson Crusoe’s title was:
“ The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates ”
When I read the 4HWW (probably close to 10 years ago now... time flies) what I got from it was a story of someone who went from his business owning his time to him owning his business. I agree there's nothing particularly "complicated" in the book but all in all it left my life in a net positive. E.g. the first time I even considered hiring a virtual assistant was from reading the book.
I was a lot younger than I was now when I read it, but since then I regularly listen to Ferris's podcast and generally enjoy the content he produces.
Likewise his podcast is generally excellent. I now have to be more judicious in which guests I listen to, but he has amazing people, and really does get in to detail, not just glib highlights.
It seemed every other episode was about microdosing with LSD or taking some kind of mushroom. Just things I've no inclination to get involved in.
You said it yourself: "You pay the price to be inspired"
For me, that was the whole point of reading the book. I enjoyed how it affected my mood. It's the same reason why I spend so much time with the Discworld books. In a similar vain, that's why I avoid depressing "everyone will die" horror movies.
$10 for the ebook is a great price for 4 hours of feeling good.
There are a lot of good things in the book. One food example is when he tells you to write done what would be your ideal life and how much it would cost to get there and what step you could take. Its a really good exercise that helps you project yourself and write down / organise random thoughts you've had along the years. It helped me so much have a macro vision of what i want in my life
The has the value you make of it. If you feel its not good for you then too bad but its not the case for everyone.
I felt like that reading “the subtle art of not giving a fuck”. Great first chapter, and the rest feels like fillers. Is tim ferris book like that? I was really looking forward to read it.
1. Build a highly profitable and cashflow rich business (no tips on how to do that)
2. Instead of doing all the work yourself, hire people.
He realised that most of readers probably have a job so he chucked in something for the wagies:
Find someone in Philippines to do your job and pocket the difference!
Ha ha! Guess he has never had a job? They mostly pay you to communicate not work! Also IP issues!
I created a platform [0] to solve this problem - for creators to develop programs (example [1]) that are aligned with their audience's best interests.
Not sure if Tim reads comments on HN but he really should acknowledge the FIRE bit more and the impact his book has brought to that community. Most critics of the book focus too much on the outsourcing endeavours, the remote work shift, the digital nomadism culture, the income muse pursuits, etc but it is the FIRE component where most readers ultimately end up at and i, will vehemently argue, has the most impact to his readers.
IMHO of course. :)
I think he described a lot of tools and approaches about leading an effective work life?
I remember that while I was reading it, I thought "Hmm.. I like this book even though I think it is all fake".
Why did I like it? Because Ferris has such a positive vibe about living life consciously and taking matters in your own hands.
Did anybody get anything else out of the book? An approach or a tool you really used?
Looking back now, I have a similar feeling that I can't recall anything specific (apart from only checking email at 10:00 and 16:00), but I do seem to have absorbed by osmosis some of his approach of almost obsessive application of 80/20 analysis on everything, and I think that's had a significant positive effect on my life of habituating the regular identification and shedding of negative things (I still use Twitter and Instagram, but on on the PC - the apps are removed from my phone). I've actually just realised while writing this that I also still do a weekly 80/20 review, which is where I identify that kind of thing.
I think I also found his super positive vibe about taking matters into your own hands to be great, and it was the first time I'd encountered the idea that you could have that much control over your own life. The thought-space of being able to change whatever aspect of life you want didn't exist before then.
I get the feeling if instead of being a bestselling book written by a guy with a background in the shadier areas of ecommerce it was a series of Medium blogs written by a web developer, it'd be a lot more popular here for its messaging, even if nobody purchased a single service from his long list of recommendations.
I learned about the concept of hiring people on freelancing websites.
I learned about the power of delegation.
I'm sure in hindsight Tim didn't discover any of this stuff, but I don't think that's the point.
It was a great "101" book for someone without a clue about how business works.
Beyond that, I imagine many people who did read it thought that simply reading it would magically make them have the idyllic life of travel, few hours worked, and good income. It still takes a lot of work to setup an income system, and it probably takes multiple attempts and variations before finding some success.
For me, the most valuable section of the book was about worst case scenarios. The author also had a TED talk, "Why you should define your fears instead of your goals", which basically gives you an exercise in a series of "what if?"s.
What if I quit my job and try to do my idea? What if that fails? What if I run out of money? ...
Eventually you arrive at the bottom, where the only two paths are death (which I don't think he goes into :P) or getting back up. And this is where the illumination comes - once the fears are defined, and recovery is imagined in some detail, it becomes clear that the fears are probably way overblown and scary. In reality, especially if you have some talent which you can convert to some kind of income (even working a regular job), then you can recover. It's not the end of the world if you fail.
There are other nuggets in the book, just as there are in many of his other books. Just don't expect that reading one of his books makes you him (or some other successful figure).
Has made a successful career talking about the dangers of distraction.
In the past, I'd never read books like this. What changed? E-readers! I can now read these books without being embarrassed because other people will see the covers. (I'm old -- 58 -- so eBooks are still fairly "new" )