Timothy Ferriss: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9 - 5, Live Anywhere, And Join the New Rich

Tim is a clever marketer and has fully managed to get the blogosphere buzzing about this book. It's easy to see why, it tells people what they want to hear. That working less, earning more and living a satisfying life IS possible.

This book bills itself as a step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design. Luxury lifestyle design is about sitting down and deciding what you want from life. Tim wants to travel, learn languages and fight at a competitive level. From these early decisions you work out how much it will cost, in terms of cash flow. Then you set about finding ways to earn that money.

In short, you don’t need to be a millionaire to live the millionaire lifestyle. You just need to know what you want, and then begin setting step by step goals to getting that. Because by the time you’ve retired, it’s too late.

The Good

This is a very resourceful book. It inspires the idea and belief that people don’t have to be a slave to 9 till 5 labour. It offers alternative and innovative ways of saving money, thinking what you want from life, and getting more work done. The chapters on liberation from the office environment might also work for a lucky few.

For those willing to start their own company this book offers great advice. How to cut corners, source products, test products, marketing, advertising and much more.

It’s also packed with practical and almost instantly applicable advice. For busy managers it could easily save them a lot of time simply by applying the 80/20 rule and considering Parkingson’s law.

The Bad

The argument is suspect. Tim’s own company, Bodyquicken, has a very suspect website and it’s not such great PR for his company, especially the “how to be an expert in 4-weeks” chapter. Also, this book makes several assumptions through Tim’s own perspective. For example, this book presumes that people aren’t content and happy with their current jobs and arrangements. It assumes that everybody reading the book wants to work less, travel more and have “mini-retirements”. The whole purpose of the book is related to achieving those aims. Those that enjoy their jobs and like the social and challenging environments the workplace can create will find this book rather redundant.

Also the world could have lived without Tim’s interpretation of the Meaning of Life. Especially pg284 – 285 where he claims to have received an enlightening e-mail poem written by a terminally ill girl in a New York hospital, titled “Slow Dance”. I hope David Weatherford (who did write the poem) doesn’t press copyright charges.


Worth buying?

This is still a book worth reading, not for the philosophy and overall message of the book, but for the giblets of time-saving ideas and resources Tim offers.