Book review: The 4 hour work week

Book review of The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

The 4 hour work week by Tim Ferris was first published in 2009 and promises an escape from the 9 to 5 day job.

In my defense, I picked this book up at the Euro-train station in London, after being delayed for two days. I needed something to read.

Summary

“Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, or earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.”

The above blurp is borrowed from an online retail description of the book.

Verdict

I’ll try to keep this one short as it really didn’t sit well with me. It took me ages to go through because it felt so scammy just reading the book. I’m a virgo and we love getting things done effectively in as little time as possible. So I gave it a chance. I’ve read a lot of theories about being productive and effective with your time. I was curious to see what the hype was about.

I was so disappointed. From one end to the other, it’s basically a recipe for creating web-based companies that rely on drop shipping, virtual or overseas personal assistants and a few guidelines on how to tackle it. All hopefully resulting in a company running fine without you, the entrepreneur. Well, okay, if that’s your goal in life, fine. But for someone who actually likes their job, this was useless advice galore.

Truth or scam?

I won’t even get into the whole matter of handing over personal information to an overseas personal assistant. Ferris has a lot of examples of people who’ve successfully used his methods. He constantly tells incredible tales of his own, amazing and exotic life. Well, good for you buddy. But I am having a really hard time believing such statements in books that already seem scammy.

Most of the tangible advice in the book are links to websites, where most of these are really only relevant for US readers. Again, not really valuable reading as such, as it didn’t provide new ideas, just a list of websites, which I’m guessing if you go through Ferris’ website, are all affiliate links.

As mentioned, I will keep this short as I really have very little to say on the positive side for The 4 hour work week. Not a re-read for me and I won’t say I recommend it.

Was it that bad?

In all fairness, the book does have a few valid points about the process of your work, that you can actually use. The most notable being the following idea: Eliminate tasks that doesn’t add value. Automate what you can, after eliminating. Delegate to others what can’t be automated. Now you’ve hopefully freed up some time for other things and tasks you enjoy more. There you go, now you don’t have to buy the book.

1/6 stars for The 4 hour work week from me. The one star is because it had those (very) few points on how to optimize your working time, that actually seem legit.