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A review of "The 4-Hour Workweek" Date published: 9/21/2007
BY BILL FREEHLING A common American work-life model goes something like this: Spend 40 prime years working 50 hours a week at a job you don't love. Cram all your adventures into two or three weeks of vacation per year. Scrimp together enough savings to live the good life at retirement. Timothy Ferriss disagrees with that deferred-life plan. He's laid out an alternative path for happiness in his best-selling book, "The 4-Hour Workweek." Ferriss advises people to break free of the societal expectations that govern our work lives. Why spend thousands of dollars on fancy hotels and restaurants during a one-week vacation when you can pay the same amount for months of cheap and fulfilling excursions overseas? Why waste hours on repetitive, mindless and time-consuming tasks when you can cheaply outsource the work to personal assistants? Why drag yourself into work every day to a job you hate when you can figure out a product to sell and become an entrepreneur? Why spend 10 hours at the office on time-killers such as commuting, meetings, e-mail and voice-mail when you can accomplish the same results from home in a fraction of the time? Those are all questions Ferriss uses to challenge the reader in his popular book. He says life It's doubtful that many people--facing mortgages, children, pets and other obligations--are going to follow Ferriss' lead completely. That involves vagabonding across the world mastering tango and kickboxing while running a business on auto-pilot. But even if you don't plan to emulate all aspects of the 29-year-old's life, there's no doubt that Ferriss has a number of useful tips. Here are among them: E-mail is a time-killer that can consume hours of the workday. Ferriss suggests you check it twice a day at most. He recommends noon and 4 p.m. If necessary, send out an auto-response telling people when you'll be checking e-mail. Ditto with the phone. Screen your calls, and force people to get right to the point. Respond to some messages by e-mail, which forces the caller to be concise with his or her questions. Avoid meetings like the plague. Find ways to opt out of them if at all possible.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
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