Such a long diatribe about nothing... How these writers get such a platform? Tim Ferriss's book is one of the most cleverest implementation of popular saying: "If you want to become rich, write a book about how to become rich". Nothing more, nothing less. Ferriss himself never implemented 4-hour work week. The title was invented purely by A/B testing. He is master presenter and his writing can swept you away with confidence but has no real impact or information. His modus operandi is to take few clever counter-intutive bits and expand into 100s of pages of book. This has made him in tune of 10s of millions of dollars. You pay the price to be inspired and that's about it.
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).
> His modus operandi is to take few clever counter-intutive bits and expand into 100s of pages of book.
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.
When I was a kid more than a half-century ago, I always used to see magazine ads for get-rich-quick books. I picked one that sounded promising, saved up a few dollars, and stuffed the cash in an envelope with the order form.
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
“The author didn’t actually work for four hours” is the most tired argument and seems to come up repeatedly. The point of the book is getting you back as much time from work as possible so you can then focus it on things you enjoy - which could be leisure or some other type of work. The point is efficiency. It also has nothing to do with getting rich. Sure Ferriss got rich from the book but he was running a successful business before hand. The book is quite clear that “getting rich”’should never be a goal you should look at the things you want (inc. material things) and figure out how much money you need to achieve those (usually it’s less that you think - e.g. you don’t need $250k to buy a Ferrari when you can lease one monthly).
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.
He has a super positive vibe about fixing things that irritate you.
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.
Have you actually read the book? Or are you responding to the title and the hype that's grown up around the book? Because the book itself is full of specific, actionable advice.
You are super harsh and low key condescending to the people who like the book.
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.
Most self help books just make me anxious that I'm not doing something. I've become sick of the genre. There are a few that are worth while though. (Four hour week is shit though, I gave up reading it it)
> His modus operandi is to take few clever counter-intutive bits and expand into 100s of pages of book
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.
That's the problem with self-help today - inspiration/consumption is overrepresented and action is underrepresented. The problem stems from misaligned incentives - creators make money through engagement, regardless of actual change created.
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.
I've spent about 7 years being "digital nomad" and while I've never read the book I've met many very successful "nomad" entrepreneurs with 7-8 figure businesses (usually also physically fit) who credited their journey and even foundation of their business to this book. Maybe anecdotal or perhaps they took away something others fail to spot in it?
The 4HWW book changed my life when i picked it up randomly while waiting for my flight at the airport nearly 13 years ago and it's not just because of the remote working bits (i've been working fully remote for the past 7 years) or the parts on creating an income autopilot muse (i have a handful of content sites) but because of the journey it took me on to eventually discover the financial independence crowd, which strangely, intersects very prominently with the people that are into 4HWW. I've met loads of people in the FIRE community where the 4HWW concepts being always the common ground that brings us all together.
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.
I think in a world so focused on working hard, or at least sitting at a desk for long enough to make it look like hard work; The 4 hour work week resonates with so many people because it is possibly their first exposure to the idea that there might be another way to live (even if very little in the book is actionable as a means of achieving that).
When I first read his first two books was when I had just left university and moved to a big city and gotten a 'proper' job, and I didn't get how you were supposed to organise your time in an office and what you were supposed to pay attention to and what you should ignore, what you should worry about and what you should not care about at all, and I recall that my second job where I applied his advice about not reading or responding to emails, and searching to automate and avoid meetings as much as possible resulted in better performance and reviews and relationships with my manager, such that I ended up able to save enough money to quit and backpack around the world for ~two years.
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 think this is the best take on it. It's actually full of specific actionable advice, it's just very little of it is stuff I'd actually use (IIRC there's a fair bit of "how to outsource technical bits of having a web presence" which probably isn't recommendations the HN crowd's looking for). And if I was convinced my mailbox was busy enough to benefit from a personal assistant in the Philippines, the advice on where to find them is probably a bit out of date, though IIRC the advice on evaluating freelancers is solid enough.
But it's core thesis is "Pick a side project in a niche you know and like. Charge money for stuff in it. Value your time. You don't need hockey stick growth followed by a seven figure exit to have most of the tangible lifestyle benefits of being rich if you have low-maintenance recurring revenue" which is actually much better advice than the "how I quit my job to work twice as many hours for less money building a loss-making business propped up by VC money" blogs for many of the people browsing HN. But it's written by a pill-selling huckster with some dubious anecdotes, and somehow the four hour claim gets more attention than PG's even more exaggreated claim that startups are about compressing your entire working life down to four years!
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.
As much as people deride it, and I'm not trying to defend the book or Tim on what's on the page - but it definitely started a little ember in my head on thinking about WLB more seriously. I guess I'd be happy with a 4-day work week as a first step. I'd be happy to give up the salary for that day if that's what it takes.
Firstly, I would bet many people who trash on the book haven't actually read it.
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).
Writing a self-help books is extraordinarily lucarative business. They are like drug which makes you feel really good about that you are improving while you read them but then effect stangely wears off and after a while you will have no memory of what the book even said.
Do assembly line workers also get to leave after four hours? Of course not. Even if there was a untapped ten fold productivity increase, the work force would be reduced or the output increased ten fold, not the hourly wage increased ten fold. If you can live from four hours of work, that just means you are heavily overcharging your time. And if the market works, you will just go out of business.
Your comment doesn't really make sense in the context of the book; the advice offered in the book boils down to 'hire some dude in India to do your work for $5 an hour'
Irrespective of the book, might we have reach a point where our productivity is so high that we are not fully occupying the operational needs of a 9-5?
Thus allowing time for a side-hustle ?
I.e., We work salaried for 30+ ours per week and have time to spend on other activities for the remainder.
I thought the article would concern the results of 4 hour workweeks in companies or some sort of data to back it up. But it's just another ego massage piece filled with enterpreneur buzzwords and get-rich-quick schemes.
[+] [-] sytelus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kashyapc|4 years ago|reply
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).
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20082125
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19047303
[+] [-] klodolph|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Stratoscope|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] basisword|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jameshush|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] fxtentacle|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Zanni|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mam4|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bennysomething|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|4 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] suketk|4 years ago|reply
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.
[0] https://themoai.org
[1] https://themoai.org/intentional-technology
[+] [-] michalu|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kinkora|4 years ago|reply
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. :)
[+] [-] VBprogrammer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TekMol|4 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] vector_rotcev|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] notahacker|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hayksaakian|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] redisman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blunte|4 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] sydthrowaway|4 years ago|reply
Has made a successful career talking about the dangers of distraction.
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