The 4-Hour Workweek

Honestly... this book felt like a bit of a joke to me? Roughly the contents of the book are as follows:
* The first third of the book talks about how you can be a jerk to your colleagues
* Ferriss very enthusiastically recommends everyone to get a virtual assistant (VA) in India who you can pay dirt cheap to do your actual job for you (and also send your spouse gifts if/when they get mad you)
* In the last third of the book, it shifts gears and starts becoming more of a travel book. Ferriss recommends everyone to move to Southeast Asia or Central or South America where the cost of living is much cheaper than in North America or Western Europe. This assumes that everyone can do that easily, but people like me and so many other who have weak passports can't just pick up their bags and move to a different country. I don't think everyone would want to just pack up and move around the world either.

Overall this book feels like it was written from a privileged viewpoint without regard to the fact that the world is so diverse and people come from all sorts of backgrounds. I'm really surprised that this ended up becoming such a big hit and was even on multiple best sellers list. There are actual small bits of useful productivity tips sprinkled throughout the book but overall... not worth the read.

Useful to everyone, with caveats:

I'll start with the bad - The author had a good philosophy marred by a blind indifference to the stakes and consequences the average person considers when deciding whether to 9-5 it. But maybe that's the attitude you need to write this kind of book.

The good: While you're reading it you'll be motivated to think about what you want, why you want it, and to take action to get there, but not necessarily the steps in this book. It's not a how-to for everyone even though the author positions it that way. His approach is: here's how you should live your life, and here's the way I accomplished that. He doesn't really make it clear that there are ways other than his own, which can be discouraging if you can't see yourself taking his approach.

I'm being vague for a reason - if I knew his approach before I started reading I probably would never have picked it up, and would have missed out on a really valuable perspective.

I appreciate the premise: How do you do the least amount of work possible? For any developer that's a goal. That's not the goal because then you can take off though - it's so you can get more done. Most of the projects suggested in the book contribute nothing to society, and are usually self serving.

In a past life I dreamt of doing everything in this book, but that was in the mid-2010s and I just don't find a lot of the information in this relevant/timely now. The high level points still are valid, but the way in which Tim achieved all this doesn't seem possible today.

It is worth the read, but in my view, solely because he shows you there are other ways to approach work.

Timothy Ferriss draws the model of the New Rich. These people understood that the right moment to live your dreams is here and now. You should leave your old job and establish your own business that can support your dream life. Live like a millionaire without actually be one.
His formula, DEAL, is made of four components:
Definition – according to the Pareto Principle, you should recognize 20% of the things you do that bring you to 80% of the desired outcomes. Be effective – not efficient, and focus on the few things that make significant progress;
Elimination – save time by “Data Detox” and removal of distractions;
Automation – create “autopilot” that assist you and manage tasks on behalf of you;
Liberation – learn how to release.

Valuable principles, too much details, some outdated tools, pre Covid working from home/anywhere ideas which are already busted, good quotes, some morally questionable suggestions, a little too much outcome oriented rather than process approach for work.

Audiobook version(even though I prefer not to increase the reading speed for my audiobooks I ended doing so for this book because it made sense).

I appreciate the premise: How do you do the least amount of work possible? For any developer that's a goal. That's not the goal because then you can take off though - it's so you can get more done. Most of the projects suggested in the book contribute nothing to society, and are usually self serving.

An interesting take on using a mix of simplifying life, disconnecting from work in the office and geographic ties and setting up an Internet-based business to take “mini-retirements” during your entire life instead of working and then retiring.

It's an interesting measure of how the world has changed that even the revised 2009 edition seems a bit dated - the concept of telecommuting was still fairly new when the book was originally written - it's been routine for over a decade now.

For those with strong reasons to stay in one place, some of the approaches will work better than others. And while Ferriss advocates for fully following the approach, he acknowledges that it won't fit all readers' situations and recognizes that people will take away pieces from the book as well as jumping in. Regardless, there is lots of specific advice, presented with the expectation that the reader will take the advice as places to start making changes they want to their lives and work.

Die Tipps sind zwar zum Teil interessant, jedoch ließe sich der Inhalt in einem Blogpost wesentlich prägnanter zusammenfassen. Am Ende wirkt es so, als würde der Autor sich selbst in einem besonders guten Licht darstellen wollen und mit einem Titel wie diesen den Verkauf des Buches zu erhöhen.
Er schreibt selbst, man kann leicht ein Experte werden, wenn man mehrere Bestseller nimmt, diese zusammenfasst und daraus sein eigenes Buch macht. Das Ergebnis, so scheint es, ist dieses Buch.