Review of The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss

The 4-Hour Work Week is a must read, better than Getting Things Done and the complete works of Anthony Robbins combined (to give you an idea of the subject matter that this book covers). It brims with high level philosophical ideas as well as lots of practical gems. Its scope is amazing. In which other book does the author not only explain the purpose of life (to travel) but also the means to get both money and time to do so, and even include a few pointers to web sites that sell cheap tickets?

What fascinated me most was the section about product development and related market research. As I see it this is the core of the book and the author obviously knows his stuff in this area.

Naturally even this book has its weak points. In particular it pretends that everyone could have a life like this, but upon further reading it appears that the author himself is a marketing wizard and that you need extensive training in this and related areas (sales, small business management) to succeed in the same way.

Even so, it can't hurt to try the full recipe that's presented (at most it will cost a few days and a few hundred dollars / euros to find out it won't fly) and even if it doesn't completely work out you will find some new ideas that could have a big impact on your life.

Most controversial is the concept of virtual assistants (outsourcing for the masses). Besides the obvious ethical considerations - which I'm personally not very much troubled by - there is also the obvious matter of practicality. You and your assistant will need a lot of practice to compensate for the communication overhead. Luckily it seems to me that the core premises of the book don't hinge on this off-shoring aspect. If you have a successful mail order business it shouldn't be too hard to find fulfillment parties willing to do most of the grunt work, leaving you to counting money. If.

The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss was reviewed by T&T on Jun 10, rated a 5 out of 5.