Works Fantastic – Choosing A Career Book Review
If someone really wants to work from home and escape the eight to five life, entrepreneurship is really the only solution. To Ferriss’ credit, he does spend a good deal of time talking about how to start and run your own company but I feel he should have gone directly to this and bypassed the idea of keeping your current job and working out of the home.
The guiding principle of T4HWW is to do what it takes to make as much money as possible with as little effort as possible. I’ll let you decide how much value you think his business is adding. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to someone achieving the enviable lifestyle Tim Ferriss leads is the one to which he devotes the least amount of time explaining: coming up with the product that will generate the income that allows you to “live anywhere and join the new rich.” Indeed, this seems to be the initial hurdle that would prevent most of us from ever making the fundamental switch to a four-hour workweek. And yet I found this book absolutely INFURIATING. If you are a corporate drone in a totally meaningless and worthless job, and you are free of the burden of any morals and ethics, this book is for you! By only advertising in select places, you control the price forever, as he says. Bear in mind – you’re doing all this because your company is willing to turn a deaf ear to your lack of results.
After that the book turns into a “lifestyle-for-dummies” book on setting up a shell company to sell someone else’s products. This works well unless his book becomes a best seller and many people decide they want to do the same thing (can you say, We Buy Ugly Houses”). He’s hood-winked us all and is laughing all the way to the bank. I agree completely with a previous reviewer who nailed it nicely: a get-rich-quick scheme for the shallow. Finally, I know there is a lot of criticism about his ideas on outsourcing tasks, but we live in an outsourced world. The shirt you’re wearing was made in Indonesia, your fruits and vegetables were picked by migrant workers from Mexico, and your computer that you’re reading this from right now was manufactured in China.
He goes through the steps but I don’t think it’s that simple. Also keep in mind that the practices he’s encouraging (and using) are basically parasitic to the rest of society.
Much of what I got out of the book was a reminder to myself about how important it is to spend time wisely. The 80/20 rule is gone over.
So Ferriss is cynical, but does his approach work” I would guess that, for most people, the answer is no.
It’s easier said than done. Written in a fun, engaging style, I would file this under financial porn. He also claims to have become wealthy by starting and running his own company that marketed a health drink that purports to improve brain function. Of course there is no scientific research to back up the claim, no FDA approval, nor any evidence that the product is anything but one of thousands of such “promise everything, do nothing” snake-oils that have made many unethical marketers wealthy over the centuries.
I admire success but not bragging. This is a bragging book.
What are their prices” warmoth guitars.
