I recently had the privilege of previewing Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, the soon-to-be monster on the best-selling lists. This book has tons of solid information on how to completely transform the way you think about work. From the top down.
The 4-Hour Workweek‘s main premise is this: You can do more, by doing less. Much less. It is this core thesis that Ferriss walks us through many different ways to simplify our lives, in order to do more.
A champion of the low-information lifestyle, Ferriss is the poster boy of productivity. But he would argue that even being more efficient still isn’t as good as being more effective. What a great point, especially for this audience.
The entire premise of this blog is built upon the fact that people desire finding better methods for running their lives, and a big part of it is through tools.
Possibly the best thing I ever learned playing the trumpet in my sch
ool band was how to create killer dynamics. My instructor Mr. Cooper made it very clear that if a section or individual instrument had the most important part and it needed to be louder, everyone else was supposed to play softer.
This could easily be a parallel to how we work. Tim points out that no matter how many hours are in our days, we’ll still feel compelled to fill them with unimportant work. It isn’t until you start to take away what you don’t need that you’ll be more productive in less time. We need to constantly evaluate and remove the things that get in the way of the important stuff.
But if there’s one thing that I appreciate most about the book is that Tim has walked the walk. Anyone can give advice and tips (including yours truly), without having any real experience. Not so with Mr. Ferriss. In a very narrow perspective, the book is a case study of his short life of 29 years. In that short of time the man has accomplished things unheard of. His feats include:
- a world-record holder in tango
- a national champion in kickboxing
- an actor
- a lecturer at Princeton
and for the icing on the cake: Tim has done this all while running a multinational firm from a wireless location at many points throughout the world.
Uhhhh…. yeah.
I don’t know about you, but when someone as accomplished as this man puts something down on paper, I’m going to read it. Intently. And I recommend you do the same.
Oh, and Tim’s got a great Experiments in LifeStyle Design.
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