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Comment by cgore | Hacker News Reader

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. He is some weird combination of crazy person, scummy used-car salesman, and genius. The best idea from the book is his "dreamline" idea, and I have been doing it since around 2009. It really helps you focus your effort, and get rid of tasks that don't accomplish your goals.

[And from your Jahreslisten: the Bible.]

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I know you mentioned that he's part scummy, used car salesman, but when does that part go away? You really shouldn't open a book that you actually want people to finish with 50 pages of boasting about how naturally awesome you are at literally everything, and how your life is a perpetual cycle of falling ass-backwards into giant piles of money and women. There are actually a ton of books that start like this and most of them don't contain anything of value, so I assumed that this one was the same.

Seriously though, does it get any better?

I don't read nonfiction the same way most people do. I do multi-pass. I first read the table of contents, then skim the intro pages for each chapter, then skim the whole book, and then finally actually "read" the book. It is weird to people who are used to only the last part, but it lets you see the whole picture beforehand and most importantly it lets you know where to pay attention the most.

Ferriss does that stuff because he wanted to sell books as much as possible. He even chose the name of the book by a/b testing. That stuff is line noise, and I am sure he knows that it is, but it sells millions more copies because of it.

So I would say try the reading approach I mentioned. There is a lot of filler, but there is a lot of good content. I would say the most useful thing is the dreamline idea, it a good approach to goal definition, a lot better than any sort of bucket list and such. I do it somewhat differently than he outlines in the book, but I still do it every month, and it has helped me accomplish a lot more.

"Four-Hour Body" is also very much worth a read. Both the methodology he uses and the ideas themselves are useful - and our bodies are a pretty big part of our lives.

Haven't read "Four-Hour Chef" yet, but people have recommended it for the stuff on learning.

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