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Honoring Your Craft – An alternative to the Four Hour Work Week mindset
- aynsof 6y agoThank you for writing this. I always found the Four Hour Work Week to be offensive to my values, but I couldn't effectively put my objection into words. This has captured exactly how I feel about it. I hope more people begin to follow this mindset than the vapid, soulless Tim Ferris approach.
- oglowo3 6y agoA pre-requisite to automating and finding optimizations in the way Ferris describes, is to first be really good at what you do. Tim Ferris himself is good at what he does.
- tw04 6y agoPlease elaborate on what he's good at. I know nothing about Ferris, but 5 minutes of searching leads me to believe he's good at selling people on things that are at best unsubstantiated. His fortune was made off BrainQUICKEN - a snakeoil supplement to "help the brain" as best I can tell?
- oglowo3 6y agoHe’s a thoughtful person overall. He is an excellent interviewer. There’s also something to be said that creating a brand as large as he has takes some insight into marketing and understanding his audience.
- andi999 6y agoHe is good at selling dreams.
- tailspin2019 6y agoYour quick impression based on your cursory Google search is likely very reasonable. But I think it's important to note that this (unintentionally) does a huge disservice to the person Tim has grown into since writing the Four Hour Work Week. Apart from being an incredibly good, humble and thoughtful interviewer, as others have said, I would also encourage anyone unfamiliar with his more recent work to check out his output in the areas of depression, suicide, childhood abuse, psychedelics research, not to mention his later books and countless fascinating podcast interviews with some incredible people. Whatever you may think of the 4HWW and the almost cult-like following that it inspired, I think that Tim Ferris is a bit of a force for good at this point in time, and quite unique in his ability to tackle any subject head on - even the hardest and most personal ones. He has a vast audience, and his writings about his own deep personal struggles are incredibly valuable, and I'm sure will have done a lot of good for people in similar positions. This sort of material is hugely important, coming from someone with such a broad reach. As an aside, I pre-ordered 4HWW prior to it's launch and did find it a very inspiring read as a 20-something wannabe entrepreneur. Everyone gets something different from that book, but I had read The E-myth prior to it, and saw a lot of it as reenforcement of the idea of trying to free up your time to work "on your business" and not "in your business". In that sense, I saw a lot of value in it. But I also understand the flip-side "outsource everything and go live on a beach" view of the book... It's worth noting that he didn't do the beach thing himself though. He extracted himself quickly out of his day-to-day grind and freed up his time to spend on things that he was interested in, and work hard in high-leverage areas that he wanted to contribute to, on his terms.
- dtawfik1 6y agoI am glad you enjoyed it. I think Tim Ferris is a thoughtful person, but I think people have put too much attention on the hacking part of this particular book, and not enough attention on building mastery.
- oglowo3 6y agoI agree that he is thoughtful. His work on PTSD and psychedelics is interesting.
- cercatrova 6y agoI think anyone who calls Tim Ferriss vapid will have to revisit their opinion from the 4 hour workweek book days. His podcast is one of the most insightful I've found, the questions are incredibly penetrating and detailed. He asks questions in a way that I have not really heard of before from other interviewers, ie "Given circumstances A, and B, and that we could consider or discount C here as well, how would you do X?" I will also note that in 4HWW that he does tell you to delegate and automate only when you've fully understood what to do. And what's wrong with such automation? That's what we programmers do on a daily basis.
- awillen 6y agoI couldn't agree more wholeheartedly like this. At the moment I'm trying to find a digital ad agency, and it's all just "we'll hack your ads to supersize your growth!" Meanwhile I'm over here looking for someone who will spend the time to thoughtfully and methodically test ads, adjust based on the results and then continue to improve over time. Silly me.
- satvikpendem 6y agoHey I'm looking into digital ad work, any way to contact you?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- yuriko_boyko 6y agoI think you miss the point of the four hour work week. The spirit of the book is delegation of things you don't want to do. Tim writes in the book that before an 80/20 analysis you will have to try a lot of things and see what sticks. Considering the fact that Tim writes about proactively researching the market and creating new categories if possible and to test various marketing tools and product ideas it's not the four hour work week mindset that's the problem. It's the people who just read the title and not the book that are hurting its big ideas.
- jan_Inkepa 6y agoThe titular four hour workweek was enabled by selling "herbal supplements" online IIRC. I don't regard that as aspirational. (Though I'm aware people need money to live, and you know, do what you gotta do I guess...but...).
- bergstromm466 6y agoYeah it seems Tim’s journey was about faking it till he ‘made’ it: selling supplements > selling book (about selling supplements + outsourcing) > angel investing
- rpkoven 6y agoDo you think his podcast is interesting though?
- bergstromm466 6y agoSometimes. I think I’ve only listened to a few (like 2 or 3). For me most of it falls under the category of ‘magical voluntarism’. It surprised me in his conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté (who I’m a big fan of) how he was scared to really open up and be honest/real.
- andi999 6y agoThe male Kardashian life cycle.
- abiogenesis 6y agoI think the author is missing the point of the four hour work week mindset. It is not about building a unicorn; it is about freeing as much time for you to pursuit your interests while earning a healthy income. That being said, I don't find the book overly ethical. It simply suggests outsourcing most of the work to developing countries, where people work for less.
- nelsondev 6y agoWhy is outsourcing unethical?
- rpkoven 6y agoI don’t think it’s unethical
- DangitBobby 6y agoIt distributes more wealth to you by taking opportunities from those with less than you and giving them to someone desperate. Ethical actions are "rising tide lifts all boats" situations where either you help everyone make more money, or instead of taking from others, to make an extra buck, give of yourself. Within reason, of course. Then there are the second order effects, such as the dissolution of the middle class in your own country that everyone who outsources and automates is/will be partially responsible for.
- true_religion 6y agoSo as one of those people living in a 3rd world country, let me say we aren’t particularly desperate. Relative purchasing power of money means that even a small amount goes a long way. Ubiquitous poverty means that no one feels particularly downtrodden in comparison to their peers. Also culturally, we tend to share the wealth, so what is one job in America will become 6 jobs here. From what I can see, outsourcing deprives one American of a job, makes one American desperate, and lifts 10 of us into the local middle class.
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- healthspanjeff 6y agoI think there’s a lot of get rich quick mentality or be an influencer in the tech community. I really appreciate this article.
- plexiglas 6y agoThis resonates with me being a product manager. In product work, honing your craft over time is what propels you and your career forward. There's no faster way to do that than working at a startup, or on a product with a burgeoning business around it.
- mightyRodri 6y agoMusk is only the epitome of being borne rich and having the backup financial support to tryout ideas that might fail. Other ppl get one shot.
- ivanmontillam 6y agoWhere can I read this for free? not wanting to cheapskate you, but it's pretty ironic to read a freedom-building post in a non-free medium.
- abiogenesis 6y agoOpening the link in a private/incognito browser window usually works.