Book Review: The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss
This is a new bit I’d like to do to add to my other posts, a book review of some excellent books that I’ve read and think my readers will benefit from. The first one is titled “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss. So here we go.
Published in April 2007 by Random House, The 4-Hour Workweek, made Timothy famous as it hit number one on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller list. This transformed Ferriss, an unknown Princeton graduate, into a sort of celebrity. The success of his book is attributed to his heavy marketing through his blogs, a marketing technique that has since been adopted by many in the trade.
The 4-Hour Workweek has attracted a lot of attention, mainly because of the intriguing title, and has received different kinds of reactions ranging from adulation to scorn. While some considers his ideas too outlandish, others regard them as very practical and timely. Of course, Ferriss wants people to take notice of his book, hence the title, although he does not actually mean to really reduce the workweek to only 4 hours. The main idea of Ferris is to cut down one’s workweek dramatically to give oneself much time for other life’s activities. As he claimed in his book, Ferriss spent more than 50 hours a week working with software and nutritional supplement business. Realizing that he might end up forever in front of his computer, he felt that he has to change his life and the way he works, coming up with the ideas for The 4-Hour Workweek.
Ferriss is a believer and ardent follower of the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, or the principle of factor sparsity, which states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The principle was an offshoot of the idea of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who observed at the turn of the 20th century that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by only 20% of the population. In business, it is observed that 80% of the sales come from 20% of the clients. While 80% – 20% sharing is not absolute, many real systems have percentages somewhere around this region in their imbalance of distribution.
Ferriss’ idea is to apply automation to business so that only a minimal time will be required to produce the maximum result. By investing 20% of time/effort, he hopes to get around 80% of the expected results. This could be done by using more efficient practices such as hiring virtual assistants from overseas who can do one’s job for a meager $5 or less per hour. While this idea is just an offshoot of the widespread practice of business outsourcing, Ferriss utilized this to benefit not only large businesses but also small and mid-sized businesses or even start-up businessmen who operate business by themselves. Even an overworked employee can hire overseas assistants to help him do his job and get a lot of free hours for other activities. What Ferriss advocates is actually outsourcing one’s life and to enjoy the freed hours for other activities that are not normally available for someone who is trapped in the 9-5 rat race.
While the idea could sound attractive, especially with the success of business process outsourcing employed by large corporations, it does not sound as feasible as Ferriss wants to put it. You cannot outsource that much function of business and let it run on autopilot as successful business outsourcing will require a close supervision and strict control. Doing otherwise could have the business spiral out of control because the outsourced employees can do only as much as they were told to do, bereft of the necessary leeway and freedom of action to make decision on their own. Not every businessman can be as lucky as Ferriss who took a one year hiatus from his business only to find that he made more money while he was gone. He must have stumbled on some geniuses who ran his business while he was away!
Ferriss’ discussion on information overload and his proposed solutions are also suspect. While it is true that most people are overburden by too much information that they have to digest on a daily basis, we cannot just ignore information that we feel are eating much of our time, leading us to go below our money-earning potential. Ferriss proposed Extreme Selective Ignorance as an answer to the information overload but this is not likely to work with most businesses. Businesses today are global and are grounded on an intricate web of interrelationship where even a minor incident or event in a remote part of the globe could have repercussions on the economy in general and to a certain type of business in particular. Businessmen therefore must be keenly aware of everything that is going on around them to make them prepare to take actions or make adjustments in their business plans as unfolding events may demand. While Ferriss speaks of distractions the internet offers, we have to be reminded that his book The 4-Hour Workweek became a best seller because of the internet, specifically the blogs.
The book is also a step-by-step guide to designing a luxury lifestyle. All an individual needs is to sit down and decide what he wants from life. This is a bold attempt to define life’s philosophy as each person is enjoined to make early decisions and determine a way of finding money necessary to make such decisions work. The assumption is that people can be happy only by working less, traveling more and enjoying a bacchanalian life, while counting all the money he made while his outsourced personnel ran the show. He considers people who enjoy their jobs and the challenges that go with them as rather outmoded.
The success of Ferriss’ book can mainly be attributed to the fact that it caters to what people want to hear, giving hope, with himself as the example, that working less, earning more and living a full and satisfying life is really possible. It gives people ideas on how to cut corners and be successful (whatever it means) right away. The book is rich in time-saving ideas and resources which can be applied in many instances and is therefore worth reading but it falls short in philosophy and over-all message. This is not a good read for people who find enjoyment in the long hours they work, especially those who touch other people’s lives every single minute they spend in the workplace, regardless of the amount of money they receive. This book is not for the healthcare workers who brave the risks of infectious diseases, not for the firefighters who spend days battling forest fires or members of the armed services who stay in the battlefield for months; they have different philosophies in life.
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