Techies Find “4-Hour” Man Strangely Compelling

Tim Ferriss and his bestselling The 4-Hour Workweek landed on the front page of the NYT style section yesterday, as Alex Williams investigates how Ferriss’s ultra-extreme productivity techniques have made him “a pet guru of Silicon Valley,” even though his methods revolve in large part around cutting the Internet out of your life as much as possible. And even though nobody really seems to think the four-hour thing is actually possible. (That said, he’s very engaging on the basic principles of defining the life you want, eliminating what doesn’t support that life, automating the processes you don’t need to do yourself, and liberating yourself from drudgery; the book’s vision is very seductive.)

It’s the second Times foray into Ferriss territory; back in June, Brent Bowers used Ferriss’s backstory to discuss burnout. As Williams notes, though, Ferriss still seems to be spending a lot more than four hours a week working. But the author says otherwise: “If your definition of work is something primarily financially driven that you would like to do less of, like with my company,” he tells Williams, I spend far less than four hours a week on it.”

photo: Jodi Hilton/NYT

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