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| The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich | 
 enlarge | Author: Timothy Ferriss
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.14
You Save: $8.81 (44%)
New (61) Used (32) Collectible (3) from $6.13
Avg. Customer Rating:  773 reviews
Sales Rank: 140
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307353133
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.1
EAN: 9780307353139
ASIN: 0307353133
Publication Date: April 24, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Other than VA discussion, utterly unrealistic August 10, 2007
73 out of 78 found this review helpful
I ordered this book the moment I heard about it, and read the entire thing in three days. Strengths: 1) I laughed hard reading his descriptions of his failed businesses and of his Judo championship fight; 2) The sections on hiring a Virtual Assistant are brilliant; and 3) Good idea about testing paid search effectiveness. Weaknesses: 1) His entire assumption--that you can run a business by doing two hours of email a week and outsourcing the rest--is utterly unrealistic. 2) The book ignores the reality that small businesses selling T-shirts (or commodity items) need competitive separation from someone with more money--there is little or no discussion about how to create barriers to entry to protect your small biz, at least temporarily; 3) I found the book to be rambling in nature--it just didn't seem organized to me.
Apply the Pareto Principle to this book January 24, 2008
54 out of 60 found this review helpful
One of the main points to the 4-Hour Workweek is the application of the Pareto (or 80/20) principle to your life. Assuming that 20% of your work provides you with 80% of your productivity, Ferriss argues that you should do everything possible to eliminate the less productive 80% of your time and spend that time doing things you really want to do. Some of his tips include: outsourcing as much of your life as possible through virtual assistants, ignoring communication methods like email, television, newspapers, meetings, phone calls, etc., using back-office companies to automate all aspects of a company while marking up products by 10x in order to live the life you want.
Interestingly enough, the 80/20 principle also applies to this book. Twenty percent of the book contains 80% of the good ideas. The other 80% is basically tripe about the author hyping himself up and giving unethical advice on how to do business.
I suggest going to your local bookstore and flipping through the book to see if any of it can apply to you instead of buying it. If you're a single person with no real responsibilities, then much more of the book may be helpful.
My rating is based on the amount of comparative usefulness I derived from reading the book (20%).
 A great new perspective on business and life ... April 24, 2007
53 out of 66 found this review helpful
Tim Ferriss has traveled the world, started a successful business, appeared on national television shows, won elite fighting competitions, and set world records. All of this by the age of 30.
To add to these accomplishments, Tim Ferriss has now written a great new book on business and life. The title of the book is unfortunate. It is about much more than creating a 4-hour work week (although it delivers on that promise as well). I want to discuss briefly my favorite parts of the book: motivation and focus, business planning, and life planning.
Motivation and focus - Tim has a lot of great advice for getting motivated and focusing on important tasks. He makes use of the 80/20 principle and Parkinson's law. Both of these ideas have been written about before, but Tim takes them to the next level. He gives specific advice on how to get moving and get the most out of your time.
In this section, Tim also points out why big goals are often easier to reach than smaller ones. This was an "Aha!" moment for me. Tim says that smaller goals are often harder to reach because there are a lot of people competing for them (think middle management positions at most large companies). However, big goals often have less competition and are easier to motivate yourself towards achieving.
Business planning - Tim goes into detail on how to create a low-maintenance business. Tim takes you through the entire process - from idea creation, to testing, to order fulfillment. It is a process that has worked for him and several of his friends, and Tim gives real-life examples for each of the steps. Tim also includes contact information for companies and organizations that can help you every step of the way. In my opinion, the most important part of this section is the low-cost method of testing business ideas before making large investments of time or money.
I also really liked Tim's advice on automating a business. Tim has successfully used a network of associates and outsourcers to put his business on autopilot. With this support network, Tim only has to spend a few hours a week working in his business. He includes website and phone numbers of many of these organizations and also gives advice on how to deal with outsourcers. In this section of the book, Tim also includes a few pages written by some of his "Virtual Assistants" giving their perspective on outsourcing.
I am a bit more conservative than Tim. I would personally want to have a significant amount in savings or be generating income well in excess of my monthly expenses before relying solely on the business income to cover my expenses. However, Tim seems to have done well and profited nicely from his BrainQuicken supplement.
If you aren't interested in starting a business, Tim gives some great advice on how to get time away from the office (with pay). I have personally seen several of these techniques work, and I am glad Tim included this section for those who aren't entrepreneurially inclined.
Life planning - Once your income needs are met, now what? If you were able to successfully create a business following Tim's instructions, you probably have a lot of extra time on your hands. Tim talks a lot in this section about what to do with that extra time. Tim seems to prefer traveling, and he gives readers a good bit of advice on working and traveling abroad. His personal preference is to spend a month or so intensely working and then spend a couple of months traveling. Of course, you could just as easily use your time to grow other businesses or spend time at home with your family.
Working for yourself, you may become socially isolated or bored. Or, you may start to ask The Big Questions (like "What is the meaning of life?"). Tim gives some great advice for all of these situations.
I don't know Tim, nor do I have any financial connection to this book. I only found out about the book by reading a blog from someone who listened to Tim's talk at this year's South by Southwest festival in Austin. I have never written a review on Amazon before, but this book compelled me to write my first. I highly recommend you get it, and I guarantee it will get you thinking about making changes in your life.
Shameless. October 25, 2007
51 out of 55 found this review helpful
Mix a handful of shopworn business truisms ("20% of customers provide 80% of profits," "Work always fills the time alloted") with a jaw-slackening disregard for basic ethics and you get Tim Ferriss's "lifestyle design" plan. The premise: somewhere along the globalization superhighway, luxuriating in pleasure and whim for all but four hours of each week became the calling of the "new rich" (an awkwardly invented designation Ferriss no doubt dreams will replace "tipping point" as the zeitgeist's latest catchphrase). It became the calling of Ferriss, at least, through a crafty scheme of pulling in profits from online nutritional supplement sales and outsourcing to grossly underpaid Indian virtual assistants such tiresome tasks as communicating with a significant other.
Where Ferriss's concept most obviously breaks down is in the aggregate: society would collapse if everyone who bought this book successfully implemented his scheme, because its very lifeblood is the slew of suckers who actually work. How can you tango dance on a beach in Argentina when Akshay, your virtual assistant, is also busy tango dancing on a beach in Argentina?
More disturbingly, it is hard to listen to or read this book without turning queasy at this undoubtedly intelligent and talented Princeton graduate's near-oblivion to the possibility that, ultimately, life may be less about 'beating the system' to escape work and more about finding a paid vocation that both energizes oneself and services the world at large. The end chapter on service comes off unsettlingly as a last-minute tack-on by editors suddenly faced with a manuscript of stunning superficiality and self-absorption.
Save your money. Less book sales means less pesky bookkeeping work for Ferriss to outsource to Akshay.
The author wants your money and that's it December 14, 2007
51 out of 56 found this review helpful
As one who is interested in the ideas of simplified living and of the "Take Back Your Time" movement (http://www.timeday.org/), I was intrigued by the idea of a shorter workweek and greater satisfaction in life. Seeing that this book had so many 5-star reviews, I decided to check it out. What I'm most thankful for: The fact that I checked it out from the library rather than buying it.
By page 16, I had lost respect for the author, when he quotes himself in a discussion with an employer: "I ask him in the most tactful way possible why we are doing it like retards." In the next paragraph we discover he's made his money by starting a dietary supplement company. A little later, when he is discussing how you can get your boss to agree to your working from home, he recommends minimizing your productivity on the days you're in the office, and maximizing them when you're at home. Other examples are cited in other reviews. Tim's suggestions strike me as basically unethical, and not the way I want to interact with the world. Unlike him, I don't see the rest of the people in the world as pawns in my game to do as little as possible. I don't think that stretching rules for my own needs makes me a better person. The reviewer who described this author as a snake-oil salesman is right - and if you buy this book, you'll do nothing to help yourself. The only thing you'll do is help fund Tim's further exploits.
I remain interested in the idea of leading a richer life, finding passion in my work, and working smarter, not longer and harder, but I plan to do so in a way that fits with my values and morals - and this book is not a part of that plan.
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