Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

I finally got around to reading the “must” book of the passive income/financial freedom crowd. Overall, I’m a bit disappointed.

First though, there is value to this book. Timothy Ferriss provides some detailed examples of what he did to achieve his four-hour workweek. I’m sure at least some of it will bring about a light bulb moment for you.

Personally, I found his chapter on time management very helpful. I’m looking forward to applying some of those principles.

I was pleased that I figured out much of what he was saying by myself. The ideas of mini-retirements and minimum monthly costs helped me to decide to quit my job. I believed in these concepts before I had ever heard of this book. I think if you are someone who is interested in this book, you probably are also already in the choir.

And now onto the negatives.

It is a product based book. He pretty much comes out and says that you can’t achieve a four-hour workweek running a service company. That’s fine. That may be the truth, but when the key component to running a successful and automatic product-based business is coming up with a brilliant product, that’s not going to be a big help to most people.

Even if you come up with this magic item, the four-hour workweek is not short in coming. He outlines all the things you would have to do with any start-up company, but all that work takes time and energy. You are going to have to work your butt off to get the enterprise off the ground and the system rolling. Mr. Ferriss will tell you to shoot for a timeline of a year.

You had better be really good.

This book is better geared towards a person with an established business that can be modified rather than someone starting from scratch.

As my final point, I do want to say that the title may be a bit misleading for people who want to merely work fewer hours. Timothy Ferris can help you work less and do the same or even more work in that time, but a big part of his pitch has to do with working wherever you want.

In this, I feel that this already short book drifts too much. As I read about how a business owner can work from all kinds of exotic destinations, I was confused. How does this get me fewer hours here?

If you are stuck in a soul-sucking job, get this book and dream. If you are already striking out on your own, this book will have elements that can help you. I just wonder about it’s almost mythical status these days. There’s nothing really revolutionary in there. And it did come out just last year.

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