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Have you read the book or followed it at all? Tim Ferris has made it quite clear that the book isn't about working 4 hours a week. The title was picked solely
by teej 18y ago
Have you read the book or followed it at all? Tim Ferris has made it quite clear that the book isn't about working 4 hours a week. The title was picked solely on the response rate in online tests. It's about decreasing inputs and increasing the quality of output.
- scott_s 18y agoSo it's purposefully deceitful? And no, I haven't read the book. I don't have time to read a book about getting work done. I have too much work to do.
- teej 18y ago"So it's purposefully deceitful?" ... yes? Isn't all marketing a little deceitful? "I don't have time to read a book about getting work done. I have too much work to do." - Are you suggesting I shouldn't read up on programming because I have too much coding to do?
- axod 18y agoIt's a waste of time though. It's like reading a book called "The Blah diet - how you can loose 10 stone in 2 weeks!" Just eat less and excersize.
- scott_s 18y agoI assume a book's title is a representation of its subject and contents. If you violate that assumption, then you've lost my trust and I don't want to read your book. As for time and reading, you certainly should read things you think are valuable. But I doubt the efficacy of methods that sound good, feel good, but have not been tested. What seems to work for me and everyone else I know is working hard. I think I'll stick to that.
- GHFigs 18y agoHow does that work? You're both rejecting a book for having a title which you feel is misleading and for the content which you assume the title would indicate if it were not misleading. That is literally judging a book by it's cover.
- scott_s 18y agoNo, it's judging a book by the analysis many people have given.
- GHFigs 18y agoHow so? It sounds more like confirmation bias. If I told you (in more words than I use here) that your previous description of the book sounded like bullshit on a stick compared to the book I read about implementing data-driven improvements to workflow effectiveness, would my analysis count? Or is the title and cover still too off-putting to consider?
- axod 18y agoIf you told me concrete things that you have done as a direct result of reading the book, that have improved your life, then sure, I'd take notice. FWIW, building a self sustaining income isn't that hard. Buying and selling traffic and making a nice profit in the middle is simple to do, and once set up, it takes nothing to maintain, but it's a bit soul destroying and boring TBH.
- scott_s 18y agoI'd consider it. But the subject of the book isn't interesting to me, so there's a lot to overcome. At this point, I'll probably pick it up in a book store, flip through it, and read a few passages.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoSo it's purposefully deceitful? Yep. It's a farce! Though, like much farce, it does prove a rather important point: Book titles are chosen by publishers to sell books. They're often inaccurate, or cheesy, or stupid, but if they move books they've met their design goal. The difference between this book and all the others is that it gives away that secret in the middle of the book. Think: Penn and Teller's Cruel Business Tricks for Dear Friends.
- scott_s 18y agoSorry, that doesn't apply to the books I've read in the past year: - The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War - Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders - Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda - Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War - On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society - The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - The Yiddish Policeman's Union Each of those titles tells you the contents of the book. The only one that perhaps does not is "The Yiddish Policeman's Union," but it's clearly fiction, and it is in fact about a Jewish policeman. Maybe what you said applies to bad books.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoMaybe what you said applies to bad books. Yes, that's where the phenomenon becomes obvious. I note that none of your titles are business books, for example. ;) [Pertinent side question: How do I know that? I haven't read any of the books. Though I probably should, because your reading list sounds awesome.] Which is not to say that the titles of all those books weren't chosen primarily to enhance sales. It's just that the target customer was a nonfiction reader, a person who is probably more likely to buy a book if it has a descriptive, serious-sounding, nonfiction-type title. Perhaps the median nonfiction reader is much more likely to pick up The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York than Architect: Robert Moses and his Largely Discredited Ideas, or Robert Moses: A Musical Homage to an Architectural Juggernaut. (Though the last one might turn out to be a great farce!) Have you noticed that every nonfiction book has a colon in the title? Even my fake book titles have that stupid colon -- it's like a tic, I can't get rid of it! Why is that, do you think? I think it's because the titles are designed for marketing: The initial title is short, and memorable, and evocative like a tiny little poem, kind of like a good domain name should be. The part after the colon tells you what the book is actually about, because the first title is so busy being pretty that it doesn't have time to tell you anything.