I'm on vacation this week so this will be a brief entry to share a few thoughts about a book I picked up to read on hols.
It is called "The 4 hour work week" by Tim Ferriss and is on the NY Times #1 non fiction best seller's list. I have to say I am a bit conflicted about the book but I read it from cover to cover and went to his blog several times so he's clearly doing something right. The conflict is that I find this book at once fascinating and a bit unsettling. Ferriss will clearly do well in life as he's a very high energy rule breaker who loves to debunk the way things work and explore how far you can push yourself (physically, intellectually and societally, how to push the limits of all sorts of rules) but I am not sure his ideas will work for everyone. This book is really destined for those of you who have an entrepreneurial spirit and want to strike it on your own or those of you who want to explore ways of working part time.
What I particularly enjoyed were his observations of the current entrepreneurial "rat race." Ferriss' take home message is the following: in the search for MORE (more money to buy more stuff, the corporate rat race, working 70 hours a week, being trapped in the cycle of work/overtime/more work/collapse for the weekend/start again), many of us have forgotten how to live simply and focus our energy on our health and quality of our life experiences.
See his blog entry of September 4th 2007:
New Research and a Dirty Truth: Read This Before Chasing the Dollar by Tim Ferriss
"74.64% of Americans would rather get Fridays off vs. a 20% raise”
He writes: “Basically, even permanent increases in income have little effect on perceived happiness, as we compare ourselves to those above us, no matter how much progress we make. Material goods give us a short-lived happiness sugar high, and we seem committed to making ourselves miserable. [...]
“Just remember: it is entirely possible — in fact, common — to be a success in business and a failure in life”
End quote (view the article in its entirety at www.fourhourworkweek.com)
I loved that last sentence. Do you know someone who is a success in business and a failure in life?
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