Timothy Ferriss - 4 Hours a Week.
"Rich and happy working 10 times less."
Timothy Ferriss.
Also this month I want to tell you my about a best-seller by personal growth. For the month of June I have chosen: 4 hours a week di Timothy “Tim” Ferriss.
Just to avoid any doubts, I'll tell you immediately what I think about this book: Ferriss's book is poorly written and translated worse, but the advice the author offers is so good, that if you haven't read this book yet, you're missing out on a 'occasion. But let's get to know Tim and his book better.
The author
Tim Ferriss is such a multifaceted figure that defining him in a few lines is practically impossible. However, I will try to make an effort to synthesize ... let's see what comes out!
Tim was born on July 20, 1977 in East Hampton, New York. In 2001, at the age of 23, Tim founded the BrainQUICKEN, an online company selling food supplements; the same company was sold in 2009 for an unspecified amount to a London Private Equity fund.
In 2007 comes the year of notoriety for Tim: with the publication of 4 Hours a Week, Ferriss reaches world fame, placing his book at the top of numerous charts, including that of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Thanks to his best-seller, Tim takes up the business of business angel, by investing in the likes of Twitter, Posterous, DailyBurn, and many more online companies. But as mentioned Tim Ferriss is an extremely multifaceted figure and can boast in his palmares achievements such as: a Guinness Book of Records for the highest consecutive number of rotations in one minute in the tango dance, a title of Chinese kickboxing world champion in 1999, as well as numerous awards from magazines such as Wired or the Aspen Institute.
Well ... a very interesting character. But as already mentioned, Ferriss is most famous for his best-seller: 4 Hours a Week. Let's see what this book is about and why you should read it, if you haven't already.
The book
Four Hours a Week represented a real breath of fresh air in the personal growth industry (and beyond).
For the first time an (semi-unknown) author was able to grasp the new trends that have established themselves in the world of work and personal development since 2000: themes such as downshifting, passive income, teleworking, virtual assistants, new rich, online businesses, low cost travel around the world, self-marketing and personal branding, represent the pillars of the new lifestyle proposed by Ferriss.
In his book Ferriss deals with dozens of themes and in my opinion he also does so in a chaotic way, but in each of the 350 pages of the book there is a breeze of enthusiasm and novelty that, at least as far as I'm concerned, I haven't perceived for a long time. Ferriss does not propose a simple and linear method, but rather a range of new strategies, extremely practical suggestions and resources that allow us to build the lifestyle we have always dreamed of:
- Less hours of work.
- More time for our passions.
- Greater financial freedom.
- The importance of cultivating selective ignorance by starting a media diet right away (this is where I first heard it!).
- How to apply Parkinson's Law to become the master of your time.
- Find a muse to create your first passive income.
… And many others.
Why you should read it
If you are tired of the lifestyle that our parents taught us, which we all need: graduates, with a steady job that takes us from 9 to 17, a mortgage, then retired and finally dead ... this is the book that makes for you.
Ferriss's book offers dozens of ideas to break the classic patterns and finally stop repeating the typical slave speech.
I have already said, I do not think this book is written well, neither in the original English version, nor in the Spanish one: but its contents are able to inspire to such an extent that one can forgive this and more to the author. Well, I hope I have managed to convince you of the validity of this book and I hope you will leave me a comment once you have read it ;-)
Timothy Ferriss - 4 Hours a Week.
