Couldn't Help Myself

I broke down yesterday and bought 2 books. Office Max had a bin of books for $1 each! How could I pass that up?

You're right, I couldn't.

I got 2 books by Kate Jacobs, author of Friday Night Knitting Club; Knit Two and Comfort Food. I read Friday Night Knitting Club a few years ago. It's one of those books that isn't extremely exciting or thought provoking but reading it was like eating grandma's pie, still warm from the oven or waking up to a rainy day (my favorite).

Pealing off the Bargain Bin price label, I'm dreaming about curling up with these books on my hammock out back in October while leaves fall around me and Halloween is in the air.

Man, what lovely things books are.

Book Review: The 4 Hour Workweek

"Life doesn't have to be so damn hard."

-- Timothy Ferriss, The 4 Hour Workweek

The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss wasn't on my list of Unread Books but I'm so behind on reading for pleasure right now that I thought I would review a book I've already read, already...hmmm

Anyway, I've read a lot of reviews on The 4 Hour Workweek ranging from gushing, foot-kissing fealty to one-liners, sprinkled with 4 Letter Words. Actually most of the reviews fell into these two extremes. Apparently we either love or hate Tim Ferriss.

I think the reason why so many readers can't stand Tim is because he comes off as a pompous prick who's just cheating the system for his own gain. And superficially you might be right. But I think you miss the big-picture point if you take this narrow view of his book and life.

Early in the book Tim tells the story of how he won the gold medal at the Chinese Kickboxing National Championships. He didn't win because he had been training since puberty. He didn't win because he's really big and strong. He actually only had 4 weeks to prepare and if you look at him



you can tell that most men could beat him in a fair fight. Too bad Tim doesn't fight fair.

Tim won the gold because he studied the rules and found loopholes. By dehydrating prior to weigh-in and then hyper-hydrating after weigh-in Tim was able to get into a weight class 3 levels below where he should have been. He also focused on pushing his opponents off the mat three times which resulted in a TKO, technical knock-out.

Tim admits that the judges weren't too pleased with his shenanigans (and I'd imagine the other fighters weren't happy either.) Even I have a hard time condoning his actions. It goes against what we all have been taught about "rules" and "playing the game". If there were no rules we would be living in chaos, right?

The bigger lesson to learn from Tim's gold-winning high jinks is that, in life, we all live by rules and these rules stifle our growth. Whether we realize it or not rules govern every fiber of our existence. Rules come from many sources but most of the rules come from ourselves. We are our own biggest overlords.

Tim took rule breaking to the next level. And most of you probably agree that Tim is a little sleazy. Some of you are probably crying, "Unfair! The rest of us have to follow certain rules. He should too." The point that Tim is trying to make is that you also have the power to break the rules. You just have to get out of your comfort zone.

Tim's Toolbox

Comfort Challenges
Even though The 4 Hour Workweek fall on "just this side" of self help, Tim actually gives practical tools and skill-building exercises you don't find in many self help books. His Comfort Challenges don't just make you feel better about yourself, they are real and tangible tools to help you out of your comfort shell and really start making some changes in your career and life.

Productivity & Breaking the 9 to 5 Rule
The most helpful thing I learned from Tim is to recognize when I'm just filling my work time with unimportant tasks. Most of us have jobs that force us to be at a desk from 9 to 5. And even if you own your own business your customers force you to be by the phone or at the front desk from 9 to 5.

I think most of us would also agree that most of that time is filled with busy work or made-up work. It's a fact that the more time you have to work on something the more tasks you do to fill up that time. The pisser is that many of us aren't rewarded for getting things done faster. We would be fired if we twiddled our thumbs or played Angry Bird during "work time", even if we had an extremely productive 2 hours before that.

To combat this illogical work ethic, Tim suggests giving yourself impossibly short deadlines and only working on 2 "mission critical" tasks per day. Impossibly short deadlines force you to focus on the most important tasks needed to accomplish your assignment. And lets face it, if we are being honest with ourselves we would admit that only 2 important things get done between the hours of 9 to 5 anyway.

Dreamlining
Another tool in Tim's Toolbox that pulls everything together is his Dreamlining Worksheet. Dreamlining sounds uber-self helpy to me but what Tim is really trying to get you to do is take real action toward your goals every day instead of just doing what you always do and hope that something good happens.

What I like most about Dreamlining is that it focuses on real action. You write down 5 things you want to have, to be and to do 6 months from now. (Tim has you turn your Being items into Doing items to stick with the focused action.) This is where so many self help gurus get it wrong. They try to get you to feel differently about yourself or life. Tim tries to help you actually do something about your life. After you have your 15 Dreamlines written down you pick the 4 critical ones and list a step you will take now, a step you will take tomorrow and a step you will take the next day. The goal of Dreamlining is to start working toward your goals today instead of putting them off or creating excuses.

* * *

I've actually read The 4 Hour Workweek 2 and a half times and it took me until the last half time to understand the stripped-down-naked point of the 300 page book. This doesn't make it a bad book though. On the contrary, it makes it a complex (albeit long-winded) instruction manual on how to get the things done that mean the most to you.

The 4 Hour Workweek is basically a blueprint for a more productive life wrapped in Self Help Goop and tied with a Sensational Bow. Which is really sad. I'm sure Tim wouldn't have sold as many books if he wrapped it in anything else but the packaging clouds some pretty awesome insights into the way we work and the things we value. We could all use Tim's philosophy to some degree to help us enjoy our lives more.

I encourage you to read The 4 Hour Workweek if you haven't yet and reread it if it left a slimy coating on your tongue the first time. Ignore the sensational surroundings and think of it instead like a toolbox. Take the tools you need and leave the rest. But use those tools as if your life depended on them which it kind of does.

Envying the Heroes

I'm reading Eldest, the second book in the Eragon trilogy. It's like most other adventure books in the style of Lord of the Rings. A group of mismatched heros from different races team up for a certain middle-earth, magical mission. In Eldest, the mission is to defeat an evil ruler named Galbatorix.

Reading this reminds me of a video I watched yesterday about turning your everyday tasks into games. Most of our time is spent doing boring and seemingly meaningless tasks. Tasks that don't have a clear goal or objective, tasks that don't specify the resources needed in order to complete them and tasks that don't challenge the skills you already posses. Aaron Dignan, the guy in the above video and who has been studying the plague of boredom in our society suggest that we should view employ game mechanics in our lives.

In every game (well, at least the well designed ones) you know what the objective is, you are given obstacles along the way that help you learn new skills needed to continue, you are given instant feedback (if you kill 3 enemies in a row you get extra points and if you fall off a cliff you die) and you know when the game is over because it says "Game Over" or you save the princess and fireworks explode on the screen.

Most of the things we do everyday are not as structured as the games we love to play. And I've just realized that fiction is the same way. While reading about the hero's journey in Eldest I envy him his clear cut life. He knows what he needs to do (kill Galbatorix) he knows how he's going to do it (use magic) he knows where to go for more skills and resources (training with the Elves) and he knows when his goal is accomplished (either Galbatorix is dead or he, Eragon, is dead).

I'm beginning to wonder if we like fantasy because of the magic and action and general super-ness of it all or if we like fantasy and games because that's the only way we get structured experiences. Would you rather work on something in which you don't know what to do next, you can't use your skills and you aren't getting feedback or something where the objective is outlined, the steps are right in front of you and you get immediate feedback along the way?

Yeah, I'd choose the second option too.

For some reason experimentation, playing, problem solving and risk taking are engineered out of us. These qualities are viewed as immature or a waste of time and energy. But these are the qualities that make us fall in love with heros. We put the qualities we most want in ourselves into the characters we create and we envy these qualities in the characters we read about. But what about embracing these qualities in ourselves?