This add-on has really helped me get through my current project. In fact I had better finish typing this quickly before my HN/Slashdot/gmail limit runs out.

I found his book to be inspiring and extremely useful from a startup stand point and a "muse" stand point. He was just cover story for Mens Journal:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/08/19/4hww-cover-s...

"Hi Chris, thanks so much for the link. I won't jump into the fray here, but feel free to post this quote on the board. I'm a huge fan of Paul Graham and his blog is one of my top 10 when I speak to media. I also just attended the Y-Combinator demo day this week, where I met Paul. His philosophies and mine do not conflict, best I can tell. If anyone reads the book or even the latest Men's Journal profile, I always emphasize that inactivity ISN'T the goal. I work my ass off on things that are meaningful to me, but 1) they are not primarily financially-driven, and 2) I measure results vs. effort. I suspect Paul wouldn't have an issue with either of these. Keep up the good fight... -Tim"

That said, the book made a lot of sense for side projects. I'd love to have a few sources of income trickling in that don't require much of my time. If nothing else, that would enable me to build the things I want during the rest of my time.

Tim Ferris, on the other hand, is talking about a business asset that generates income with the least amount of personal time in its day-to-day operation. You don't want to sell the asset because it is generating cash into your pocket. Instead the exit strategy involves leaving it running -- exactly like setting up a headless server with background daemons, instead of hooking up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and babysitting it 24/7.

There's also a big misunderstanding about "working less". If you actually read the book, the initial setup still requires patience and effort, particularly if you're coming from a regular 9-5 job background. The other "track" in the book are for people who already own a small business, but they are doing the mom-and-pop thing and need to be owners of the business, and not merely self-employed. These people essentially own their own jobs, often work significantly more hours than regular corporate jobs, and don't have the upside of startup since these people want to keep their small business. This idea, by the way, is not new, and has been written about by other authors, such as Michael E. Gerber in his book, E-Myth.

By the way, once you created one income-generating asset, there's no reason not to go on and create another one. The time that is freed up from one such asset lets you go on to the next asset. The payoff isn't as large, but you only need to generate enough income to meet your expenses. At which point, you are free to pursue anything you want, including a proper startup -- just that you would not have to worry about mortgages and food at that point.

In short, Paul Graham writes about startups and Tim Ferris does not. One strategy is about net worth, the other is about income-generating assets. They are strategies should be used consciously, not blindly.

You see, Tim Ferris does not talk about startups, he talks about what he calls "muses" - small businesses that generate income with as little input of your time as possible. A web-based shop that resells something seems to be the exemplary muse.

Its more about building a business that can be run on autopilot. Its a lot harder to build a business while on autopilot.

I knew about that interpretation of the name going in, but thought it might help. No way of knowing if it has or not, but the site does surprisingly well, so it at least isn't killing it.

They are both easy sells -- not working much and generating tons of money -- but I would like to see examples of businesses that do this in the real world.* I work 60+ hours a week on my app (work I enjoy). I am convinced it is impossible to outsource and not put in the hours without competitors eating your lunch.

*plentyoffish being the only example I can think of.

The other thing is, in the book he plainly admits he worked very long hours while building the business. It was only once it was an established concern that it was possible to remove himself from the picture so much. Well no shit, owners of successful businesses don't need to work all that hard. Who knew? The trick is building the business.

In a startup your work is the biggest part of your life, and many would have said that it should be done only if you are absolutely passionate about your 'work' to not mind its taking over your 'life'.

Specifically incase of a startup:

1. You do need to work long hours. 2. Startups run best with atleast 2 founders. 3. Cannot outsource the most critical parts. More often than not almost nothing at all as money is scarce.

The books is nice though but refers to a different lifestyle. The only things that work for also for a startup life are his thoughts on GTD - handling email etc.

I read some interview with Ferris a while ago where he revealed that he deliberately went around making semi-hyperbolic, controversial blog posts to draw attention to himself and incidentally his book. He sequentially targeted the online tech community, the health business community, and so forth. It worked well.

The guy is just very, very good at marketing and promotion and is worth studying in that respect. The rest of what he has to say is fairly valid and worth reading (minus the hyperbole), but it can be reasonably reduced to very little. It really boils down to an application of good executive management principles to your own time:

-Measure your productivity such that you're carefully considering meaningful outputs as they relate to personal goals/needs and not "work done."

-Track the real marginal returns on time invested and don't throw hours at a low marginal return: minimize time invested appropriately. Focus on the few high return things you do. Consider dropping altogether the low return things.

-Eliminate activities that waste your time or clutter your mind and break flow, e.g. always-on email. Minimize information inputs to that which truly matters.

-Do a proper analysis on the hourly value of your time, consider opportunity costs, and outsource tasks appropriately.

I think all the salient points in the book fit under these bullets. There's also a lot of fluff about international travel and so forth. As I say, the book has merit and is worth a quick read, but the main thing to take away from Tim Ferris is how far good marketing can take you.

Personally I much prefer 37signal's "4 day workweek", where you have plenty of time for yourself but are still working and creating something of value which you care about.

The book itself was also clearly an instance of the theories he was proposing in the book. While clever in a recursive kind of way, this made me like it even less because I kept thinking, "You can't fool me with the slimeyness. I know what you're doing."

Whether you liked it or not, it sounds like you read it and I'll assume paid for it so that's proof that the theory can work. Even with skeptical people! ;)

The title of the book similarly refers to the 4 hours of actual value adding work being done a week - in a startup, you're working 50-80 hours a week because you're adding value all those hours that couldn't come from someone else (or, that you don't want to necessarily for team morale purposes)

Anyways, to provide a real answer and not to just diss the book, I doubt many start-ups work a 4 hour work week. The fact is, there is a lot of work to get done in a start-up. If you only worked 4 hours a week, and you needed 2000 hours to get it done, well, that would take you over 9 years to get done. You can't magically make start-up work go away. Outsourcing only works if you have capital to pay for it. So if you don't have capital, and 9 years is too long, then you might just need to work harder, longer, and with more people to get it done.

I read the book, and it did make sense. Amazing, that!

If you purchased the book, the how should be self explanatory.

Skim less, understand more. :-)

But I found it very conclusory. It never really explained how. It seems like almost everything I read was "I saved more money and did less work, thats how i did this." But there was no explanation exactly how he did it. Most of the examples I read did not fully explain the nuts and bolts of how to do it. Sure, if you want inspiration, go ahead. But you don't need a whole book to say you work less and earn more. He can say that in one line and be done with it. I expected more, and I found it lacking. To me it was the equivalent of writing a book on stocks and filling up 300 pages with "I bought high and sold low, thats how I'm rich."

I'm quite confident my skimming did not result in a lack of understanding, but more. I skimmed a lot, and each part I skimmed lacked substance. If it consistently lacked substance, it told me not to waste my time.

It's admirable that it works for some people (I have read the book, by the way) but the 4-hour workweekers that I've dealt with professionally seem to be out of touch with the industry.

That actually wansn't the original title of the book. It was something like "Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit," but it didn't fly with the publusher.

He's already said that the "4-hour" part of the book is only a portion and is more about focusing on your core work and stripping off all extraneous parts.

It would be interesting to know if his advice is practical. We tend to be the type who prefer to attack hard and risky problems, but if there's a lot of low-hanging fruit out there that we fail to see, it'd be nice to know where it is and how to find it.