Gosh, even the title has one drooling with anticipation. “The 4-Hour Work
Week,” it shouts. “Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich.” Who
could resist such a blandishment? At heart we are all Fausts, aren't we?
We're all seeking the magic formula that will make us richer than Bill
Gates, happier than a monkey in a banana plantation, and idler than a cat
napping in the sun.
And Timothy Ferriss plays the role of the tempting Devil with insouciant
charm. “Has being ‘realistic' or ‘responsible' kept you from the life you
want?” he asks, enticingly. No wonder that his book was a New York Times
bestseller for 17 weeks. Today it is published in Britain. So will it
revolutionise the lives of oppressed workers on this side of the pond?
“Read it, digest it and live the life!” my editor commanded. “See if it's
possible to go from ‘$40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per
month and four hours per week', as the author claims to have done.”
Well, of course it's impossible. Logically impossible, I mean. Had I followed
Ferriss's advice, I wouldn't even have been in the office to receive my
instructions. No, I would have negotiated a “remote working agreement”
allowing me to toil (or pretend to toil) from whichever exotic location I
fancied this week. “Being bound to one place,” Ferriss tells us, “is the new
defining feature of being middle class.” His heroes, the “New Rich”, are
defined by “a more elusive power than simple cash - unrestricted mobility”.
Nor would I have been available via e-mail or phone, because my colleagues
would know by now that I look at my e-mails only once a week, and check
voicemail even less. Nor would I have known about Ferriss's book from media
coverage, since I would have followed his advice to “cultivate selective
ignorance” and “develop and maintain a low-information diet”: reading no
newspapers, only the odd trade magazine article that might increase my
profits.
And even if my editor's message had somehow slipped through, I wouldn't have
bothered to read the book myself. I would have done what Ferriss recommends:
“outsourced” all the dreariest parts of my job to a researcher or personal
assistant in Calcutta or Delhi, who would complete the tasks overnight and
e-mail me a snappy summary - all for a pittance. “Build a system to replace
yourself,” Ferriss instructs. In other words, reduce your work to the
“minimum effective load” necessary for your boss not to notice.
Actually, I wouldn't even be working for The Times any more. I would have set
up some mysterious but amazingly profitable internet-based company that
specialises in buying niche products from manufacturers, repackaging them,
shamelessly adding a huge mark-up, and flogging them to retailers at such a
profit that one is free to spend all one's life travelling first-class from
one exotic beach to another. “An automated vehicle for generating cash
without consuming time” is how Ferriss describes this entrepreneurial marvel.
And the beauty of his book is that it seems so easy to achieve! His own
brainwave was a “dietary supplement company” that outsourced everything
“from manufacture to ad design”. A friend has set up a “surf adventure
company” for jaded yuppies. Another has launched a “start-up poised to
reinvent peer-to-peer technology”. If I had the faintest idea what that
means, I'd do the same. Apparently it makes millions.
All this may suggest to you that Ferriss's book is the biggest load of new
cobblers since ... well, since the last self-help, get-rich-quick tome to
top the New York Times bestseller list. But the strange truth is that, as I
ploughed through his 300-odd pages of “lifestyle design” tips, I warmed to
him. Consciously, he says a lot of astute things about office drudgery
generally and corporate America specifically. Unconsciously, he says even
more.
Let's start with the conscious things. Ferriss puts his finger on so much that
is inane, timewasting and life-sapping about the 9-5 treadmill. The fetish
with meetings that go on and on and settle very little. The requirement to
push even the smallest decisions upwards for approval, creating
organisational inertia and personal frustration. The culture of e-mail
chit-chat that now consumes millions of man-hours each working day. The
requirement to sit at your desk for eight hours, even if you can accomplish
all designated tasks in two. The reluctance to be flexible about either the
hours or the location of office work.
And, most of all, a typical career structure that holds out the promise that
(as Robert Frost drily observed) “by working faithfully eight hours a day,
you may eventually get to be a boss and work 12 hours a day”. And which, to
pile injury on insult, delays the ultimate reward - the time and money to do
exactly what you want - until a few waning years between retirement and
death.
Sweep it all away! That's Ferriss's mantra. Why defer to an unknowable
tomorrow what you could enjoy today? Rather than scrimping and saving for a
retirement that you may not be healthy enough to enjoy, plan a series of
“mini-retirements” throughout your life: a minimum of one month's fun for
every two months of work.
None of this wild “thinking outside the box” is new, of course. From Charles
Dickens to Ricky Gervais, the world has never been short of wags pointing
out the surreal insanities of the office worker's daily grind. What's
different about Ferriss, and typical of his brash, techno-savvy generation
(he has just turned 30), is that he thinks it is within the power of you, me
and every other wage-slave to liberate and empower ourselves.
How? By being brutal with those (including our bosses) who waste our precious
time. Wriggle out of all possible meetings, he says. Delegate as much as
possible. Be shameless about calling in sick if it is strategically helpful
to you. Learn to be difficult. Don't be bullied. For those who “wouldn't
have the nerve”, Ferriss suggests a series of “comfort challenges” to
stiffen the sinew - everything from asking complete strangers for their
phone numbers, to lying down in a public place.
And be equally brutal about rationalising your work. Don't expend energy on
deals that will produce only limited returns. Ferriss is scathing about the
supposed virtues of “managing your time”. That's for wimps and beginners, he
says. What he wants is for you actually to eliminate most of your workload.
Then, after you have perfected the art of doing your work in two hours or less
each day, comes the moment for you to liberate yourself from the shackles of
daily attendance in the office. He outlines a series of conversations in
which you persuade your sceptical boss that, while you are indispensable
anywhere, you are at your most blazingly productive working from home.
Except that you won't be at home. Having mapped out your “dreamline” (the time
and money you will need to pursue your dream of hiking over the Himalayas,
or learning Hungarian, or whatever your improbable fantasy is) you will use
your newly acquired spare hours to establish the business that will generate
the necessary dosh.
You could, for instance, create an “information product” - such as marketing
yourself as a “top expert” in some field or other. But, you protest, you
aren't a top expert in any field. No matter! According to Ferriss, it takes
less than four weeks to acquire enough expertise, professional letters after
your name, and general hogwash to pass yourself off as an expert in an area
such as “relationships” or “work-life balance”.
I can believe that.
Ferriss writes with the amoral fervour of a latter-day Nietzsche, advocating
the triumph of the strong-willed over the weak, the dithering and the
conscientious. He even uses words such as “übermentor” to signify his
reverence for heroes who have succeeded in conning their way to a gloriously
indulgent lifestyle. And his strategies for subterfuge - everything from
pulling the wool over your boss's eyes to setting up an automated reply
service to kid callers that you are a vast corporation rather than a one-man operation
- have been devised with Machiavellian cunning.
But you don't need a mind as sharp as Machiavelli's to spot the big flaw in
his scheme. For him, or you, to live the life of Riley, it is necessary for
a lot of other, dimmer people to toil on in offices - picking up the pieces,
taking care of the nitty-gritty work, sorting out the cock-ups that the
brilliant Ferrisses of the world loftily ignore as they swan around the
globe.
And what would happen if, say, teachers, doctors, nurses, train drivers or
policemen decided to adopt Ferriss's tactics? Or if all those Indian slaves
working for a pittance to do your outsourced tasks suddenly realised that,
if they cut you out, they could be earning your salary from your employer?
Funnily enough, that is where Ferriss's book raises some really interesting
questions - though he doesn't even acknowledge them, let alone answer them.
Isn't his strategy for pursuing a life of hedonistic self-gratification, by
dumping all the hard work on an underclass in the Third World or his own
country, a metaphor for what has happened generally to industry and commerce
in the US and Western Europe? Aren't we now dangerously reliant on gullible
workforces in the Far East doing all our dirtiest or most labour-intensive
tasks for tuppence, while we reap the profits from retailing or marketing?
And isn't it only a matter of time before the New Exploited wise up to the
sly sleights-of-hand of the New Rich?
Ferriss's answer, presumably, would be “yes, so get in quick”. He is a very
snappy writer, and the picture he paints of his own liberated, carefree
lifestyle - “racing motorcycles in Europe, scuba diving off a private island
in Panama, kickboxing in Thailand or dancing a tango in Buenos Aires” - will
be seductive to the twentysomething slackers who will presumably rush to buy
his book. Especially those who are blissfully untroubled by scruples. To
misquote the old Gershwin song, it's nice work if you can shirk it.
My trouble is that I do quite like my job. I think it gives my life some shape
and purpose. But this is a freak concept that Ferriss can't quite get his
head around. In his world, everyone hates to work.
The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, Vermillion, £10.99
The Four-Hour Work Week Top Ten Tips
1 Check e-mails once a day at most, and never first thing
2 Wriggle out of meetings
3 Delegate, or outsource, all labour-intensive tasks
4 Practise being awkward, so you're not troubled with trifles
5 Take outrageous liberties with your working practices without asking
permission. You can always apologise afterwards
6 Apply Pareto's Law: focus on the 20 per cent of work that produces 80
per cent of profits
7 Dump the 80 per cent that produces 20 per cent of profits
8 Cultivate “selective ignorance”. Don't waste time reading what's of
no relevance to you
9 Liberate yourself gradually from the workplace, claiming to work more
efficiently from home
10 Don't defer having fun till you're too old. Take two or three
“mini-retirements” each year
