9 ms·
Such a long diatribe about nothing... How these writers get such a platform? Tim Ferriss's book is one of the most cleverest implementation of popular saying: "
by sytelus 5y ago
Such a long diatribe about nothing... How these writers get such a platform? Tim Ferriss's book is one of the most cleverest implementation of popular saying: "If you want to become rich, write a book about how to become rich". Nothing more, nothing less. Ferriss himself never implemented 4-hour work week. The title was invented purely by A/B testing. He is master presenter and his writing can swept you away with confidence but has no real impact or information. His modus operandi is to take few clever counter-intutive bits and expand into 100s of pages of book. This has made him in tune of 10s of millions of dollars. You pay the price to be inspired and that's about it.
- baby 5y ago> His modus operandi is to take few clever counter-intutive bits and expand into 100s of pages of book I felt like that reading “the subtle art of not giving a fuck”. Great first chapter, and the rest feels like fillers. Is tim ferris book like that? I was really looking forward to read it.
- Zanni 5y agoHave you actually read the book? Or are you responding to the title and the hype that's grown up around the book? Because the book itself is full of specific, actionable advice.
- truthwhisperer 5y agoexactly spot on. Very good comment. Just like the books for woman. Boot your confidence or loose your weight. We all know in most cases it won't happen but the readers get the feeling they are going to benefit
- michalu 5y agoI've spent about 7 years being "digital nomad" and while I've never read the book I've met many very successful "nomad" entrepreneurs with 7-8 figure businesses (usually also physically fit) who credited their journey and even foundation of their business to this book. Maybe anecdotal or perhaps they took away something others fail to spot in it?
- jonny_eh 5y agoI'd buy your book.
- bennysomething 5y agoMost self help books just make me anxious that I'm not doing something. I've become sick of the genre. There are a few that are worth while though. (Four hour week is shit though, I gave up reading it it)
- rajacombinator 5y agoThe writing is actually pretty bad too but it’s a great title.
- klodolph 5y ago> His modus operandi is to take few clever counter-intutive bits and expand into 100s of pages of book. A lot of books that I routinely recommend are like this. Other popular books are like this. Books on communication, persuasion, sales, negotiation etc. come to mind. The Black Swan is like this. The Innovator’s Dilemma is like this. Non-violent Communication couldn’t fill more than one slide in a slide deck if you distilled it down… it’s basically a notecard’s worth of information stretched across a book with repetition, discussion, and examples. The non-fiction books which aren’t like this are things like history books (it can be deeply unsatisfying that there is no unifying narrative for a particular topic in history), textbooks, and guides.
- colechristensen 5y agoThere is plenty of nonfiction out there which isn't mostly unnecessary padding. However, you don't find it very often on bestseller lists.
- polskibus 5y agoWhat would you recommend reading?
- Pepe1vo 5y agoDepends what you're looking for, but I found most of Michael Lewis' books to be quite information dense and highly entertaining. The Big Short in particular takes goes very deep down the rabbit hole of finance.
- xorfish 5y agoBehave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst I guess it can be summarized by "Human behavior is influenced by various factors." But the breath of these factors and their interaction makes for an interesting read. Robert Sapolsky is an excellent educator.
- soedirgo 5y ago
- Stratoscope 5y agoWhen I was a kid more than a half-century ago, I always used to see magazine ads for get-rich-quick books. I picked one that sounded promising, saved up a few dollars, and stuffed the cash in an envelope with the order form. I only remember one concrete piece of advice from the book. In those days, the shipping and handling fee was where your profit was, but if a customer forgot to add it, send them the book anyway. You're not losing any money, so it's free advertising. It did make me realize what I really needed to do. Unfortunately, I only got as far as the title, but I was proud of this title: How to Get Rich Quick by Selling Get Rich Quick Books
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y agoI think you could sell that as a book full of white pages. The lesson would be that the title drives the sales.
- soedirgo 5y agoYou jest, but... https://www.rangevoting.org/FeynTexts.html https://www.rangevoting.org/FeynTexts.html TL;DR: read the end of the first paragraph.
- bodge5000 5y agoA few years ago I was genuinely going to do that, other than the first page which would just say something like "Write this book" in massive letters I decided not to, mostly because of how blantantly wasteful it is (I guess blank pages which no information is less wasteful than filled pages with useless information, at least your not wasting ink, but its more blatant)
- jtsiskin 5y agoThat reminds me of this meme: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/380/563/4f4.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/380/563/4f4...
- 5y ago
- going_to_800 5y agoMate, that's how most best-seller non-fictional books work
- quickthrower2 5y agoThe tldr of his book: 1. Build a highly profitable and cashflow rich business (no tips on how to do that) 2. Instead of doing all the work yourself, hire people. He realised that most of readers probably have a job so he chucked in something for the wagies: Find someone in Philippines to do your job and pocket the difference! Ha ha! Guess he has never had a job? They mostly pay you to communicate not work! Also IP issues!
- kashyapc 5y agoI hope more people will see what you're saying. Newport (the "author" of the above fluff piece) himself is no slouch either. He implements the same Ferris modus operandi you describe. As I noted it more than two years ago here[1][2], he has been on a multi-book contract on the same theme with minor tweaks. So Newport will drum up attention about them in all subtle ways possible. Same story with the intolerable Ryan Holiday -- he repackages the Greek/Roman originals into breathless "books". The alternative to the empty books by the above people is to read the original classics, and the actual scholars who did the work (Csikszentmihalyi, Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Timothy Wilson and many others). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20082125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20082125 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19047303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19047303
- Veen 5y agoExcept, of course, that Kahneman-style behavioral economics is only slightly more likely to be true than The Secret. Hardly any of it replicates.
- miniscapes 5y agoDo you have any source on this? Im interested in reading about reproducibility of pshychological experiments.
- kashyapc 5y agoSee this recent article that was discussed here: https://replicationindex.com/category/kahneman/ https://replicationindex.com/category/kahneman/
- kashyapc 5y agoI forgot to add the caveat -- I don't mean to say just gobble up whatever the said researchers wrote. Read them with a healthy dose of skepticism. Especially all the psychology and "behavioural economics" books. Yes, some of Kahneman's work doesn't replicate, as he himself admitted. But he's not a "hack". An incredibly hard worker, and an equally fallible human like the rest of us.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fxtentacle 5y agoHe has a super positive vibe about fixing things that irritate you. You said it yourself: "You pay the price to be inspired" For me, that was the whole point of reading the book. I enjoyed how it affected my mood. It's the same reason why I spend so much time with the Discworld books. In a similar vain, that's why I avoid depressing "everyone will die" horror movies. $10 for the ebook is a great price for 4 hours of feeling good.
- nxpnsv 5y agoReading because it makes you feel good - a truly underrated idea in productivity land.
- heavenlyblue 5y agoCocaine and/or heroin would make anyone feel good too. Yet somehow we accept that too much of that is a bit of a waste of time.
- nxpnsv 5y agoMaybe books aren’t for you?
- postsantum 5y agoI prefer calling it a daydreaming facilitation tool
- jseban 5y agoFor sure, but it's better to be open about the fact that it is just for inspiration and entertainment, it can never be a good thing to spread ideas and visions as made up stories about how it actually works.
- basisword 5y ago“The author didn’t actually work for four hours” is the most tired argument and seems to come up repeatedly. The point of the book is getting you back as much time from work as possible so you can then focus it on things you enjoy - which could be leisure or some other type of work. The point is efficiency. It also has nothing to do with getting rich. Sure Ferriss got rich from the book but he was running a successful business before hand. The book is quite clear that “getting rich”’should never be a goal you should look at the things you want (inc. material things) and figure out how much money you need to achieve those (usually it’s less that you think - e.g. you don’t need $250k to buy a Ferrari when you can lease one monthly).
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago> Sure Ferriss got rich from the book but he was running a successful business before hand He was nowhere near rich before the 4-hour workweek success.
- LittlePeter 5y agoThen maybe it should have been named "How to work more efficiently" instead of click-baity "The 4-Hour Workweek"?
- foogazi 5y agoThis reminded me of how the early novels had incredibly long titles that correctly summarized the plot For example Robinson Crusoe’s title was: “ The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates ”
- basisword 5y agoWhat a boring world we'd live in if media products weren't allowed to use catchy titles.
- 5y ago
- jameshush 5y agoSounds a bit... harsh? When I read the 4HWW (probably close to 10 years ago now... time flies) what I got from it was a story of someone who went from his business owning his time to him owning his business. I agree there's nothing particularly "complicated" in the book but all in all it left my life in a net positive. E.g. the first time I even considered hiring a virtual assistant was from reading the book. I was a lot younger than I was now when I read it, but since then I regularly listen to Ferris's podcast and generally enjoy the content he produces.
- boyband6666 5y agoI'm with you here. Did I change my approach totally? No. But it did force me to be more explicit about the time/money tradeoff, and accept that I might at times be better spending on things that would make me more productive, or take away pain points. Likewise his podcast is generally excellent. I now have to be more judicious in which guests I listen to, but he has amazing people, and really does get in to detail, not just glib highlights.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoInterestingly I found Tim Ferris' podcast put me off of him and any other products he might produce. It seemed every other episode was about microdosing with LSD or taking some kind of mushroom. Just things I've no inclination to get involved in.
- mam4 5y agoYou are super harsh and low key condescending to the people who like the book. There are a lot of good things in the book. One food example is when he tells you to write done what would be your ideal life and how much it would cost to get there and what step you could take. Its a really good exercise that helps you project yourself and write down / organise random thoughts you've had along the years. It helped me so much have a macro vision of what i want in my life The has the value you make of it. If you feel its not good for you then too bad but its not the case for everyone.
- demauroy 5y agoI have also heard several people knowing Tim Ferris mentioning he does not work at all 4 hours a week.
- suketk 5y agoThat's the problem with self-help today - inspiration/consumption is overrepresented and action is underrepresented. The problem stems from misaligned incentives - creators make money through engagement, regardless of actual change created. I created a platform [0] to solve this problem - for creators to develop programs (example [1]) that are aligned with their audience's best interests. [0] https://themoai.org https://themoai.org [1] https://themoai.org/intentional-technology https://themoai.org/intentional-technology