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 enlarge | Author: Timothy Ferriss
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.78
You Save: $8.17 (41%)
New (58) Used (33) Collectible (3) from $9.80
Rating:  776 reviews
Sales Rank: 181
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
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:
 Don't Read this Book, Outsource It and Save Yourself 4 Hours October 2, 2008
C. Stark
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
While reading the 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss I kept asking myself: what world does this guy live in?
Then deja vu hit.
I've seen this world and actually lived in it for a few years. It was called a "bubble" and the year was 1999. Everyone was at the center of their own world of self-aggrandization chasing down pre-IPO stock, throwing lavish parties with chocolate fountains, and creating money losing companies at breakneck speed.
It's as if Ferriss had time traveled from 1999 or is some kind of fossil a book publisher dug up trying to cash-in on a perceived market for a 2.0 generation of greed seekers.
Yes, this book is that bad.
It seems like I'm a minority voice, as the average Amazon review is 4 out of 5 stars... if interested you can read entire review here:
[...]
 If you don't have time to read this book you need to read this book. September 30, 2008
John E. Devore (Las Cruces, NM)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Tim Ferris is part entrepreneur part action hero, all energy. I picked up the book having little in common with him other than a bald head and a desire to get control of my life and create time to do the things I've always dreamed of. I first picked up this book more than a year ago and have reread several parts of it since. Mr. Ferrris outlines both a plan and a philosophy which are mind opening to the average person. I ave adapted several of his tactics and a few of his philosophies in my own life and have found myself to be more efficient and productive in both my work and personal life. I have not yet gotten to a four hour week and don't expect I ever will but I've always felt that if you read a book like this and find one or two things to adapt into your own life you have made a great investment in both money and time.
This book has helped me to organize my life in such a way that I have completed two novels (not yet published) found time to help coach my son's soccer team and improved my relationship with my wife. These are priceless life improvements which may not have given me a nicely compartmentalized four hour work week, but have gien me a life balance that has changed my lfe.
From Business Lexington: September 25, 2008
Paul Sanders (Lexington, KY)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The 4-Hour Work Week:
Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
By Timothy Ferriss
Twenty-years ago a young psychologist named Marsha Sinetar helped jumpstart a revolutionary approach to work. With the publication of her best-selling book "Do What You Love, The Money will Follow," Sinetar liberated millions from the idea that working was necessary only to make a living so you could do what you loved.
Since that time, the ideas of discovering your right livelihood, balancing work and life and becoming rich enough to afford retirement have spawned thousands of self-help books. Among these are numerous sterile accounts of how to become a millionaire before you are 30.
Now, a 29-year old suggests what may become the next step in the work revolution. In his book, The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Timothy Ferriss relays to us in his high speed text that change is long-overdue. Instead of the slave/save/retire mentality of most overworked employees today, there are new opportunities for workers that have never existed before.
But The 4-Hour Workweek is not another book on the work-life balance describing the problems we all face. It is about creating solutions by changing not just your workstyle, but your lifestyle. The new currencies, he says, are time and mobility. These should be used in the here and now to create a luxury lifestyle. The author assures us it is not difficult. It simply takes the courage to make a few uncommon decisions and follow them with equally uncommon actions.
There is already a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the "deferred-life" plan and are now distributing retirement throughout life instead of saving it for the end, Ferriss says. He titles this group the New Rich (NR) and states their main goal is to escape the rat race entirely, not win it. The NR believe that traditional one office locations and 9 to 5 workdays are obsolete. Money alone rarely ever solves problems or gives enjoyment.
The desire for more money, the author argues, is often laziness. "If only I had more money is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment--now and not later," he says. "Busy yourself with the routine of the money wheel, pretend it's the fix-all, and you artfully create a constant distraction that prevents you from seeing just how pointless it is."
Ferriss is no poverty guru however. A few years ago, he was a poster boy for the extremely overworked and underpaid cubicle dweller. Using the insights he developed for this book, he went from $40,000 a year and 80 hours a week to $40,000 per month and four hours per week. In part because of his extensive world travel, he now speaks six languages. He is a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, an actor on a hit television series in Hong Kong and holds a world record in tango.
The author offers four steps and strategies to reinvent yourself, whether as an entrepreneur or in your current job. The first letters of each step form the acronym of "DEAL" The manifesto of the "dealmaker" is simple: Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken. Here's the four steps for reinventing yourself:
* Definition: Define what you want to be doing.
* Elimination: Ask yourself three times a day "am I being productive, or am I being busy?" Eliminate interruptions. Stop checking e-mail more than once a day.
* Automation: Delegate or automate the remaining tasks, even sending personal tasks overseas. If you're a writer, outsource your research the night before to a virtual assistant in India. Have it ready the next morning. Cost: $4. Per hour.
* Liberation: Enjoy your mobility and use the time you create. Surround yourself with positive people who have nothing to do with your work.
This is a book about challenging assumptions. For example, the New Rich credo is not to strive to buy all the things you want, but to do all the things you want to do. The NR goal is not to have more, but to have more quality and less clutter and of course, the time to do what matters.
Can you have it all--by working 4 hours a week? Tim Ferriss's belief-blasting, fast-paced, book makes you want to believe it. It's an exciting, mind-expanding declaration about how our lives don't have to be all about work. If Ferriss' book is the ticket to the workplace of the future, you definitely want to get on board.
 Great Pointers, But Book Mediocre September 23, 2008
Conor Neu
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Finally completing a journey began a couple of months ago, I finished The 4-Hour Workweek while travelling this week. This is a must-read, but not because the book is so spectacular. Rather because the book offers many insightful business and entrepreneurial tactics that will help anyone improve their personal lifestyle, small, or even large business they are a part of or run completely. I did not find the book was written directly for me, or for everyone, although that seems to be Ferriss' intention.
I am very impressed with Ferriss' experience within the business world thus far in his career. It is not that he has extensive knowledge on mergers and acquisitions or on large-scale management. But he does have a broad amount of tips for organizing a small operation or a young employee's lifestyle. Ferriss is an organizer and type-A personality and thus this broad array of tips are also well organized throughout the book. But in my opinion, a full read is necessary to get the solid ideas on how to improve your life and work.
Having taken High-Tech Entrepreneurship from Professor Ed Zschau in my final year of Princeton, and probably just a year or two after Ferriss, I do understand his inspiration for many of his life and work decisions since then. Professor Zschau's class changed my life. First, he opened my eyes to first the world of business in general. Princeton offers very few real-life business courses and this one gave me the opportunity see how interesting business decisions can be by working through HBR case-studies and his past experiences. Beyond that, he inspires his students to not only take these decision making skills into the workforce, but also to create a workforce on our own through entrepreneurial ventures within this high-tech world. He preaches thinking outside the box and taking action on those thoughts and he is a real life example of his words. Ferriss and his book is not the first of Professor Zschau's students to succeed in ventures and lifestyle inspired by his teachings, but he may now me the most influential with this widely popular book.
Within the book, Ferriss pushes many buttons of mine that individually are too many to debate. In general, however, I feel he unsuccessfully tried to combine two books into one. First, he wrote a book about efficiently starting up a new business venture and organizing and optimizing the effort the entrepreneur must put into this new business. This half of the book I found extremely useful, although not perfect. Secondly, he wrote a book about travel and lifestyle for these entrepreneurs. I feel he incorrectly assumes that everyone has these same desires as he implies. While he does begin by suggesting the lifestyle can be whatever your dreams may be, in the end he uses far too many of his personal choices for this lifestyle to be as broad reaching as he intends. I think he spends too much time discussing the strategy for quitting your current job. He even dabbles into the "meaning of life", a topic I feel is a bit ridiculous for this type of book. This other half of the book offers some great travel tips and ideas for expanding the culture of your life, but in my opinion fails to offer broad reaching lessons that one can take away for improving one's life. Thus the combining of these two sections makes for an awkward all-encompassing book.
The good part about this book is that is really can help almost everyone...at least everyone under the age of 50. I doubt there are many who would read this book and not be able to take away at least a few pointers. Unfortunately, I think he understands this mass-market potential and dumbed down the book a bit to appeal to a broader range of readers. He succeeded in that regard and will surely get paid for it, but it also prevented him from creating a solid masterpiece of entrepreneurial and literary work.
 Therapy in itself! September 21, 2008
Gilly (Ireland)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is full of quirky but practical ideas, I love the style of writing and even if you don't get to put all the ideas into action reading it is a therapy in itself!
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