It'd be beneficial to everyone if you would voice some specific complaints again Tim. I know a lot of people around here don't like him, but I've never seen a criticism longer than "Pff. Tim Ferriss is a load of crap."
The article has some reasonable complaints against him, but I'm interested in why the opinion around HN is the way it is.
Avid, continual self-promotion is inherently distasteful to many people, myself included. I'm tired of Tim Ferriss telling me how great Tim Ferriss is and how I should be more like Tim Ferriss.
And then there's my general beef with all self-help gurus: if you really have it all figured out, why are you still trying to sell me shit?
The general essence of his book was start a dubious internet business which fools gullible people into parting with their money such as selling unregulated herbal supplements. Aside from the impact on your karma it can also be considered fraud to make inflated unsubstantiated claims and a very "success" herbal telemarketer is currently doing time for such an offense.
As far as I can see Tim Ferriss is all about short-cuts, not optimizations. There is a big difference.
No, that was what he did. The essence of the book was to arbitrage the difference in wages between 1st and 3rd world countries by becoming basically a manager and outsourcing all of your own work to Indians. Let others do all the work while you take all the credit.
You use credit in the HN "go change the world!" sense. In this case, it's about cash- the capitalist, the individual who provides capital to an enterprise and pays workers, is the one who receives cash. It's not about who gets credit and getting more gold stars than the next guy, it's about cash. That's capitalism.
Social entrepreneurialism, making a dent in the universe, helping those less fortunate, those are all awesome things. But capitalism, which is the issue at hand when talking about 4HWW, is about the accumulation of capital. Ferriss just talks about some cool ways to make money efficiently and spend money in ways that get you good bang for the buck.
And, with that, I'm going to stop procrastinating and go pack for my trip to Tunisia, paid for by creating an iPhone application, the development of which was made feasible by the savings achieved by moving to a country with low cost of living (Hungary). Cheers :D
Basically, I found few original ideas in his book–it read like a get-rich-quick-scheme aimed at tech-savvy middle managers who are stuck in a cube farm.
I don't want to work 4 hours a week ... because I actually _enjoy_ the things I choose to work on.
it read like a get-rich-quick-scheme aimed at tech-savvy middle managers who are stuck in a cube farm
what's wrong with that?
I'm the same as you in that I love what I do for a living, but to be honest with you, we're rare. Most people are stuck living boring lives, doing jobs that make them miserable.
I gave the book to two friends of mine in 9-to-5 jobs. One of them read the book and told me that she was legitimately blown away by what she read. Fast forward a few years and now she's got a side project going that makes her happy. It's not a "muse" per se because it takes quite a bit of work, but the point is, this book inspired her to start a startup so that she can one day quit her job.
The other friend I gave it to was cynical and echoed a lot of the sentiments I hear around here. It's not original, it'll never work, Tim Ferriss is dishonest. Well, it's been a few years and he's still stuck, stagnating in the same shitty job.
I actually _enjoy_ the things I choose to work on.
That's why Ferriss defines work as the stuff you do primarily for money and would prefer to do less of. Even if you love your job, there is going to be some of that in there.
But he seems to advocate outsourcing your workload to zero. If all of us outsource everything, who's gonna do the actual work in this world? Oh, right ... all the non-Westerners.
I think the anecdote he shares (in 4HWW) about becoming a National Chinese Kickboxing Champion is a nice example; he exploited a little-known loophole in the rules which stated that a combatant who leaves the ring forfeits, and racked up a series of victories by pushing his opponents out of the ring, sumo-style.
In my book, it was a "victory" in name only; it was clearly unsportsmanlike behavior, contrary to the essence of the game, and devoid of any of the skills the sport is based on, and yet he seems pretty damned proud of himself.
He's all about claiming the glory while avoiding the work.
