The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (2007) is a self-help book by Timothy Ferriss, an American writer, educational activist, and entrepreneur. The book has spent more than four years on The New York Times Best Seller List, has been translated into 40 languages and has sold more than 2.1 million copies worldwide. It deals with what Ferriss refers to as "lifestyle design" and repudiates the traditional "deferred" life plan in which people work grueling hours and take few vacations for decades and save money in order to relax after retirement.
Background
Ferriss developed the ideas present in The 4-Hour Workweek (4HWW) while working 14-hour days at his sports nutrition supplement company, BrainQUICKEN. Frustrated by the overwork and lack of free time, Ferriss took a 3-week sabbatical to Europe. During that time and continued travels throughout Europe, Asia, and South America, Ferriss developed a streamlined system of checking email once per day and outsourcing small daily tasks to virtual assistants His personal escape from a workaholic lifestyle was the genesis of the book.
The format of The 4-Hour Workweek took shape during a series of lectures Ferriss delivered on high-tech entrepreneurship at Princeton University, his alma mater. The lectures (and book) described Ferriss' own experiences in company automation and lifestyle development.
Reception
The New York Times noted that Ferriss spends far more than 4 hours per week in blogging and self-promotion, which Ferriss describes as "evangelizing." USA Today commented: "If it all sounds too good to be true, maybe it is. Or maybe not. Clearly, selective ignorance, farming out chores and applying the 80/20 principle have paid off for Ferriss." Wired praised the book's ideas for telecommuting and its pre-retirement advice, but faulted it for "formulaic writing" and that "nearly every idea [is] taken to an extreme. No sense of work being anything more than a paycheck". Leslie Garner of The Telegraph noted that the book had a "punchy writing style" and that Ferriss had "struck a chord with his critique of workers' slavish devotion to corporations."
The book received coverage also through Fast Company,[ ABC News, The Today Show, Newsweek, and MSNBC.
Timothy Ferriss is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, and lifestyle guru
Early life
Ferriss grew up in East Hampton, New York. Throughout childhood, Ferriss experienced poor health, sparking an interest in self-improvement. After graduating from St. Paul's School, Ferriss matriculated at Princeton University, earning a B.A. in East Asian studies in 2000.His senior thesis was titled "Acquisition of Japanese Kanji: Conventional Practice and Mnemonic Supplementation", under the supervision of Seiichi Makino.After graduating from Princeton, Ferriss worked in sales at a data storage company.
Career
In 2001, Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, an internet-based nutritional supplements business, while still employed at his prior job.[8] He sold the company, then known as BodyQUICK, to a London-based private equity firm in 2010.He has stated that The 4-Hour Workweek was based on this period Since writing his books, he has reevaluated his ideas about productivity, saying "Not everything that is meaningful can be measured."
Ferriss has been an angel investor and advisor to startups.
He invested or advised in such startups as StumbleUpon, Posterous, Evernote, DailyBurn, Shopify, Reputation.com, Trippy, and TaskRabbit. He is a pre-seed money advisor to Uber, co-founded by Garrett Camp, the founder of StumbleUpon, which Ferriss also advised.
In 2013, Ferriss raised $250,000 to invest in Shyp by forming a syndicate on AngelList. Ferriss ended up raising over $500,000 through his backers, and Shyp raised a total of $2.1 million. In 2018, Shyp shut down[ and laid off all its employees.
In November 2013, Ferriss began an audiobook publishing venture, Tim Ferriss Publishing.The first book published was Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.Other books include Ego is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday, Daily Rituals by Mason Currey, and What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars by Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan.
In 2015, The New York Times listed Ferriss among their "Notable angel Investors" while CNN said he was "one of the planet's leading angel investors in technology."
Also in 2015, Ferriss declared a long vacation from new investing. He cited the stress of the work and a feeling his impact was "minimal in the long run", and said he planned to spend time on his writing and media projects. In 2017 he stated one of the reasons he moved from Silicon Valley was that, "After effectively 'retiring' from angel investing 2 years ago," he had no professional need to be in the Bay Area.
A picture showing cover of one of the most notable works of Ferriss.
Ferriss has written five books, The 4-Hour Workweek (2007, expanded edition 2009), The 4-Hour Body (2010), The 4-Hour Chef (2012), Tools of Titans (2016), and Tribe of Mentors (2017).
In December 2013, The Tim Ferriss Experiment debuted on HLN. The series focused on Ferriss' life hacking and speed learning methods. Although 13 episodes were produced, only a portion were shown on television. Ferriss also hosted the 2017 TV show Fear{Less} with Tim Ferriss, in which he interviews people from different industries about success and innovation.
Ferriss has raised funds for the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and for the Center for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London. Since 2016, Ferriss donated at least $2,000,000 for clinical research into psychedelic drugs.
Since April 22 2014, Ferriss has regularly released The Tim Ferriss Show, an interview-centered podcast, covering a wide range of topics.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ferriss