The 4-hour workweek: a manual for new productivity or a guide to cheating?

Timothy Ferriss seems to have dominated the life of leisure and delegation. Your product, brainQUICKEN, runs without your direct intervention. He travels the world and has had fascinating experiences. But many would not call it successful, they would call it useless.

In The four-hour workweek, Ferriss shares her life story and the lessons she believes will help her become someone who works the minimum necessary to maintain her lifestyle. It provides tips and tricks for getting out of the office and into, well, whatever you want.

Be creative

But not all lessons are very practical. The story of how he won a kickboxing title sums up his philosophy: Ferriss read the rules very carefully and found that if one opponent falls off the platform three times in a match, the other opponent wins by default. Instead of training and working to become the best kickboxer, he struggled to knock down every opponent off the platform three times. His adherence to the letter of the rules, not the intent of the sport, earned him a title. But he openly admits that it was a grudging title given by the judges.

Work from home

It suggests that employees who want to use their time more wisely, but continue to cash a paycheck, force their employer to allow them to telecommute. When you telecommute, he argues, you can take the time to get the work done and the rest to do what you want. One of the techniques to get your boss to accept telecommuting is to artificially reduce your productivity on the days you are in the office. This may not be the most ethical way to get your boss to agree to a telecommuting agreement, but it will likely work. Most employees would be reluctant to engage in seemingly unethical behavior.

A quick Google search or a visit to the book’s customer reviews on Amazon will show bloggers and readers that they have pointed out a lack of ethics inherent in Ferriss’s recommendations, but the lack of ethics is not entirely evident in the book. . Ferriss takes an interesting way of looking at the rules of the game and uses them to his advantage. He doesn’t screw people to get what he wants; it just takes advantage of system glitches to do it.

Will it work for you?

The value in The 4 hour work week it doesn’t lie in the specific examples. Instead, you must read the book to be surprised and think differently about the world around you. How can you take advantage of the gaps to make your life better and happier? And how can you do it in a way that doesn’t violate your personal ethics?

The 4 hour work week it’s a difficult read if you prefer a book with a solid linear flow. However, if you are a foodie who picks and chooses sections based on your needs, you will love the book.