20 years after publication, has Tim Ferris’ The 4 Hour Work Week become an overestimate?

Let’s talk about that.

Tim Ferris has always been ahead of the curve. Whether it’s angel investing, podcasting, or predicting the rise of the gig economy.

Tim was a digital nomad in dial up age, and built a billion dollar business working from home. When The 4 Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich, hit the shelves in 2007, most of us had no idea the economy was about to crash.

But this tiny book laid down the blue print for how to live in the next two decades.

Think about this:

People are open to exploring alternatives (and more forgiving of others who do the same), as many of the other options—the once “safe” options—have failed. When everything and everyone is failing, what is the cost of a little experimentation outside of the norm? Most often, nothing.

Reminder: This is pre-2008 crash, pre social media, pre covid.

This book, along with Vagabonding by Rolf Potts and anything by Anthony Bourdain, essentially showed me how life is to be lived.

This version of the new rich life is both sustainable, experiential and eye opening.

This book is a major influence on my own ‘lifestyle design’. The ideas I hatched after first reading it almost two decades ago hatched my do LESS: learn, earn, save and sleep.

🤲🏽 I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.

—WOODROW WILSON

So how do the ideas hold up almost 20 years later?

Let’s start with his idea of the new rich. Tim Ferris made a clear choice to redefine wealth as experiential and lived, not tallied up or counted.

He was influenced by Vagabonding, and influential on his friend Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to be Rich. The bottom line is that life and wealth are not simply money, or investments for later.

Life is lived in the present. Here and now.

Tim Ferris tells us straight up:

It begins with a simple distinction most people miss—one I missed for 25 years. People don’t want to be millionaires—they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

This is exactly how I feel about my own rich life. Friends and family with more assets, and more leverage, ask me all the time.

How can you afford your lifestyle?

How did you retire early from your career?

How do you generate income from home?

How do you make money living on a beach in Asia?

Here’s a dose of reality. Most of them already know the answer.

Everyone understands the basic principles I teach.

But the answer isn’t one they’re ready to hear yet.

They hear me but they are not listening. So they don’t get it.

But why?

The greatest challenge is to be unconventional.

To zag when everyone else zigs takes a mental leap of faith.

The reality I have come to accept is that not everyone is prepared.

But you want to be, and that’s why you’re still listening.

I can teach you, like Ferris, how to experience a rich new life.

But you have to meet me halfway.

Not everyone is ready for a drastic lifestyle and identity overhaul.

You will have to take on risk.

$1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows. The question is then, How can one achieve the millionaire lifestyle of complete freedom without first having $1,000,000?

Tim Ferris’ 3 key lessons distilled into simple goals:

1. You work minimum hours to generate maximum income.
2. You create steady cash flow by becoming an owner.
3. You take mini retirements or adventures regularly.

What hasn’t aged well?

Let’s look at the psychology and neurosis of the book.

Who was the author?

Tim Ferris, a 29 year old Princeton Tiger tech bro selling supplements and living as an expat in Argentina. In his wildest dreams, he may have aimed to be a NY Times bestselling author.

But there is no way Ferris expected the success and fame from this book.

The 4 hour work week went viral.

Tim Ferris followed Seth Godin’s first lesson of marketing. Your work has to be shareable.

But this book wasn’t supposed to be a best seller. And Tim was unprepared for celebrity.

First off, the book has a narrow target audience. Tim Ferris has said that he wrote it for a friend who was stuck in a bad job.

Maybe someone like you?

But it’s a bit tech broey.

There is chest puffing, and angry young man, masculinity dripping all over the page. The voice and tone is masculine and boastful.

But let’s have perspective. This is a naive first book written by a 29 year old that went crazy viral.

The 4 Hour Work Week was the most highlighted book on Amazon for years. It was the most popular advice book for over a decade.

But it has also had some long term negative effects.

For example, every douche bag streamer, gamer and Andrew Tate on the internet is schilling crappy supplements. The worst scam artists all push drop shipping.

But that’s not on Ferris.

Bad intentions can be taken from good lessons.

I know from two decades of teaching and lifelong learning. Education is a 50-50 relationship between student and teacher.

This book struck alchemical gold. It mainlined a time and place.

Tim Ferris wrote it on a mini retirement in South America. He was clearly caught off gaurd by his own success, like Mark Manson and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

Tim Ferris became a household name over night. His paperbacks were in every airport checkout on planet earth for a decade plus. This is a book that was, and is, everywhere.

The fame and wealth Ferris won with this hit created his own golden ticket for life.

But its also the golden handcuffs he warned of in this book.

Most people would not have been able to stay innovative. But Ferris went on to found and build one of the most downloaded podcasts in history.

So what’s the Tim Ferris’ secret?

Let’s revisit the tools and tactics from The 4 Hour Work Week that you and I can apply to our lives today. We will rapidly count through his 4 step structure— DEAL: Definition, Elimination, Automation, Liberation.

After defining the new rich, he teaches you and I how to prioritize and rank order to be time efficient. We are told to start by fear setting, a tactic Ferris still discusses on his podcast. This is an imagine your worst case scenario exercise.

What’s your worst fear?

Next up, you and I learn how to rationalize and eliminate your fears. Start a low information diet to cut through the noise and find your signal. Then use Pareto’s 80/20 Law to cut out all the fat in your life and business.

For fun, close your eyes and picture the person who wastes the most amount of time in your life.

What’s the change that needs to happen to eliminate the noise?

Automation has paradoxically aged the worst of the 4 sections.

Why bust out a ten dollar word you ask?

Because Automation is actually the best and most relevant advice today. AI is now the key to having an actual 4 hour work week. Or not working at all in 2024.

But even though Tim Ferris’ tactics are still bang on 20 years later, the tools have drastically improved.

Today internet research, outsourcing to another continent, and SEO advice can all be automated with A.I.

You can run Tim Ferris ideal business for free, or a pittance, on your laptop or phone. Most of Tim’s tech tips are obsolete. But the ideas stay gold.

If you’re still doing the drudge work today, you’re not listening.

You may as well admit you’re too lazy and afraid to change. It hits close to home when Tim Ferris says:

Remember—unless something is well-defined and important, no one should do it.

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.

What skills are you interested in that you—and others in your markets—would pay to learn?

Become an expert in this skill for yourself and then create a product to teach the same.

Advice from The 4 Hour Work Week proves that books are forever. Once you have a hit, you’ve got to play the audience’s favourite for the rest of your days.

Filling the Void, or what to do once you are living the dream?

The last section on Liberation is my personal specialty. This is the ultimate goal of my Do LESS— Learn. Earn. Save. Sleep.

If you’re here now, it’s because you know the end goal is to have your savings working for you while you are sleeping like a baby.

🤲🏽 Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Liberation starts with advice on how to quit. How you prepare for life without a schedule.

Here is my key take away: start now before you quit.

Applying the 80/20 principle, you should be able to setup your own side hustle at your current job, before you leave your salary behind.

Carve out 90 minutes form your work day to start an online business.

What if that’s impossible for you?

Set an alarm. Wake up earlier.

Today, building a thousand dollar a week side hustle, and earning the average American income in your spare time is real.

But, but, but … I can’t.

Now is when the excuses hit like an eighteen wheeler barreling down the highway.

You heard but didn’t listen.

You listened but didn’t understand.

Now go back to the start of the book and actually apply the lessons.

If you haven’t ruthlessly eliminated all your time wasters and distractions…

You can’t be free yet.

If you haven’t defined your new rich life…

You can’t make the dream real yet.

Before I moved to a beach in Asia, I took 8 months to ride the train around China and search for my perfect destination.

I quit my government desk job. I got rid of my house. I was done with being a wage slave.

But I was not one hundred percent sure what my new rich life looked like. I knew I could make enough money with a teaching side hustle. I’d run all the numbers. It made sense to leave North America behind for a tropical climate and an online gig.

But where?

🤲🏽 People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.—JOSEPH CAMPBELL, The Power of Myth

In the end, Ferris suggests a kind of back to basics: smiling friends, home cooked meals, continual learning, and service. Advice like music to my ears.

For you and I, there is no end point, only a continual cycle. To Do LESS: Learn. Earn. Save. Sleep. Every day, every month, and every year.

Life begins again.

When you know you have learned, and earned, and saved, there is nothing left but sleep. And the promise of a new day.

Thanks for reading.

I write copy & content. I teach courses. I show up everyday.

But I do LESS. Learn. Earn. Save. Sleep.