4-Hour Work Week



$19.95
Customize It


Hardcover
308 pages
ISBN 9780307353139 Published April 2007
Crown Business
See all formats


4-Hour Work Week
Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
By Timothy Ferriss 

Related Blog Posts
Must Reads from Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose
Posted Oct. 16, 2009 4:11 a.m. by todd-sattersten
In General Business - 800 CEO Read Blog

Just ran across this video of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, and Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, talking about their must read books. Each choose five books (Tim actually chose seven).

Random w/ Tim and Kevin - Ep3 from Glenn McElhose on Vimeo.

There are also 274 comments on the post with plenty of additional suggestions.



Reviewing Reviews: Part II
Posted Sept. 26, 2008 11:45 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog

I have a few more links for you all before I leave for the weekend. There are only two actual reviews among them, but it's the end of the day on a Friday afternoon, and I had to name this post something.

First up, BusinessWeek's Jessica Scanlon penned an interesting profile of the incomparable Seth Godin--maketing guru, friend of the company, and the man who just today taught me the difference between Stephen R. Covey and Stephen M.R. Covey. I still can't believe I didn't figure that one out on my own.

In case you missed it earlier this week, Daniel Akst wrote this glowing review of Billion Dollar Lessons in The Wall Street Journal. Ankst writes:

Billion-Dollar Lessons is an insightful and crisply written book, one that offers wisely chosen and well- narrated case studies but also good advice, such as urging companies to appoint an in-house "devil's advocate" to challenge the unhealthy unanimity that accompanies many major decisions.

Guy Kawasaki (Art of the Start) has also interviewed one of the book's coauthors, Chunka Mui, over at the American Express Open Forum blog. Two brilliant human beings in conversation... how could that not be worth your time?

Chris Erikson of The New York Post recently sat down with the author of The 4-Hour Work Week, Timothy Ferris, and got this job description from him:

I view my job these days as a sort of professional experimentalist. I experiment with things I think are interesting, including investing, and then report my findings, generally through the blog.

Sounds like a sweet gig. You can read the entire interview here.

For the second time today, I came across a reference to "Big Brother" in a review. This time, it was in the Economist's review of Planet Google, and the language is remarkably similar to Roger Lowenstein's review of The Numerati I linked to earlier today:

From books to health records and videos, from your friendships to your click patterns and physical location, Google wants to know. To some people this sounds uplifting, with promises of free access to knowledge and help in managing our daily lives. To others, it smacks of another Big Brother, no less frightening than its totalitarian ancestors for being in the private sector.

Finally, we have an opinion piece on the magic trick that is the American Dollar by James Grant. He is author of Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond, being published by Axios Press in November. His is one of many books due out this Fall on the financial crisis and its causes. Next week, we'll take a closer look at some books that are already out on the topic and turn our eyes to some of the upcoming titles.

Have a great weekend everyone!



PW 2007 Bestsellers
Posted April 22, 2008 4:43 a.m. by dylan
In Uncategorized - 800 CEO Read Blog

Publishers Weekly released its bestseller list late last month. A Thousand Splendid Suns topped the fiction category, while The Secret took the top nonfiction spot. But, those books get enough love, so we thought we would list the business titles that show up on the list (they list all books that sold over 100,000 copies in calender year 2007). I will briefly note, however, that The Secret sold more than twice as many copies as A Thousand Splendid Suns.

The first business book on the list, The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, shows up at number 35. Listed below are all the business titles sold more than 100,000 copies in 2007.

I'd like to mention one other book from the list for all you fiction lovers out there as well. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao comes highly recommended from Mr. Jason Kennedy, the book-buyer at our sister company, and a man who knows his fiction. It's good to see a book by a debut novelist make the list, which it barely did at 101,164 copies sold.



Defending the business book genre.
Posted March 19, 2008 4:18 a.m. by kate
In General Business - 800 CEO Read Blog

It seems just a bit ironic that the last page in April's Fast Company is a grueling review and warning of the business section of your local bookstore. Especially considering more than a handful of business book authors--including the Heath brothers, Dan Roam, Amy Sutherland*, Tim Ferriss, Robert Scoble, Fred Krupp--contributed to or were mentioned in the issue.

The last page is Elizabeth Spiers' (founding editor of Gawker and Dealbreaker) article "Library of the Living Dead." She starts out by contradicting all that our parents and teachers have taught us for years:

...reading does not necessarily make you smarter. Sometimes it doesn't even require you to think. I would send you a copy of Nicole Richie's novel, The Truth About Diamonds, as demonstrable proof, but there's a clause in my contract prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. Instead I'll point you to the modern era's second-worst literary promulgator of intelligence reduction: your local bookstore's business section.

Next comes the critique of the business genre's cliches, "12-step-ification," and seemingly empty promises (four-hour workweeks, loads of money and personal growth); all of which, Elizabeth would say, don't amount to much or anything at all really. Rather "they [business books] create the illusion of progress simply by adding another layer of busyness." Ouch.

Really, a comparison of Nicole Richie's writings to that of business authors? Okay, I'll be the first to admit that many books lack in substance and rightly deserve such criticism. The first set of titles used to back up this point are Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life and Donald Trump's Think Big and Kick Ass both of which, she points out, have different formulas for success and both of which are currently on the best seller list.

To Elizabeth's point, the best seller list is certainly not where I'd start in my search of a business book. (And my apologies here to Surowiecki because I do partially adhere to the Wisdom of Crowds philosophy, just not in best sellers.) In business books, like in music, the top titles not always the best of the best, rather they're what the masses are buying. Take music. Though I haven't done any strict calculations or research, I'd imagine that only a small portion of the music covered by Rolling Stone appears on top 10 lists. Nonetheless, ask nearly anyone who follows music closely and they probably subscribe to Rolling Stone. I doubt the same crowd would consider Leona Lewis (currently toping iTunes best seller list as of 4pm CST yesterday) to be one of the greatest.

Good or bad, best seller lists operate in a catch-22 manner or more simply, inertia. Once a book is on the best seller lists (through a number of clever PR pitches, handing books out to each member of a packed audience, and special Amazon giveaways), people start talking about the book. That leads to more people buying the book, which leads to bookstore restocking. Which leads to more people buying the book and better placement on the best seller lists, ultimately starting the process all over again.

That's not to say every best seller fits in this category. There are a number of best selling business books worth reading, many of which have been featured in Fast Company and whose authors have regular bylines there. Case in point: The Wal-Mart Effect and Made to Stick. Yet, if a best seller list is your only reading guide, you'll miss a number of really great titles. Books that are provocative and will compel you to think or act differently.

Which brings me to another of Elizabeth's points:

Business books let us amble zombielike through our careers freeing us from responsibility for the quality of our own decision making. Better to delegate that responsibility to other people--Jack Welch, perhaps. It's a fresh spin on the old saw that no one ever got fired for buying IBM: No one ever will get canned for leaning on something with a Ken Blanchard blurb on the front cover.

Yes, we should stand on our own feet and rely on our own critical analysis. It'd be foolhardy for me to take Jack Welch's lessons and replicate them exactly here at 8cr. Not every lesson, as Elizabeth explains, works for every situation. I imagine it's for that very reason that 11,000 business books are published every year. There are at least 11,000 different ways to present a problem and solution; certainly not every one merits our time in reading nor application.

But we learn through exposure to and experience with both the good and bad, the smart and the not-so-smart. And certainly, being exposed to Welch's ideas makes me a better prepared, better informed business woman. Experience via a $24.95 hardcover is not a bad way to arrive at new ideas and solutions.

Elizabeth's last point is that if we cannot become more skeptical of and less dependent on business books, we should simply move business best sellers to the self-help section. I would argue that at least half of business titles are self-help (the other part being books on new ideas or trends, a la The Long Tail); and I mean this in the best of lights. Self-help has long been stereotyped as the answer for the spineless or those who need a more regular pat on the back.

Yet, many business books are meant to help us help ourselves--help us manage better, help us start up a company, help us communicate better, etc. That is the very definition of self-help. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Self-help doesn't have to be preachy (yes, you will find these preachy, self-help books on the best seller lists). If I'm a horrible manager, I'm going to pick up Growing Great Employees to learn how to improve my skills. If I'm not sure where to start when evaluating customer satisfaction, I might start with The Ultimate Question.

If the question is whether every best seller is worth reading, I'd respond without a doubt, no. If that were true, we (as a company) would not exist in the blogosphere. If the question is whether business books are worth reading, they are. Not every single one of them is worth reading. And finding the right one is not always easy. To stand on my pulpit here, that's what we endeavor to help with--finding the right business book for you. Please, don't be afraid of the business book aisle, many a title is worth a gander.

[Stepping off the pulpit.]

- - - - - - - -

* Amy's an animal trainer -- a whale trainer, in fact. The Heath brothers apply her lessons to the training of bosses. Hence, for the purposes of this post, she's listed as a business book author.



Authors visiting Google
Posted May 8, 2007 3:55 a.m. by kate
In Training and Development - 800 CEO Read Blog

Google has been bringing authors in to speak for quite some time now. They recently shared the videos of the authors' visits from John McCain to Valentino Achack Deng. In the business arena, you'll find these folks and more:

  1. James Scurlock, Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders

  2. Chris Anderson, The Long Tail
  3. Max Barry, Company
  4. Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

So far there are 68 posted.




More on this book