Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2015; the closing remark about 50 Cent reflects that moment, shortly after he filed for bankruptcy in July 2015.
To avoid any misunderstanding, let me make it clear from the start that I wholeheartedly recommend the book The 4-Hour Workweek to any entrepreneur, company and employee, for the excellent ideas we can take from it to be more productive, the very shrewd tips we can apply, and even some business ideas we can draw from it if we read it with an open mind.
That said, I advise you to buy his book, but I do not advise you to buy into his philosophy of life, work and business.
Ferriss sends out a dangerous message: if you are not travelling the world and sitting around scratching yourself with both hands ten months a year, you have no life and you don’t know what happiness is.
Being allergic to work is as bad as being a workaholic, and that seems to be the “Ferriss philosophy”, whose happiness lies in dancing tango in Argentina, practising martial arts in Japan, riding a motorbike around Europe, and so on…
He also gives us some financial advice that is completely inconsistent, such as the fact that Ferriss pays a 1,000-dollar monthly mortgage on a home he does not use, and says that instead of renting it out it is better to find a new source of income to cover that mortgage, when the financial philosophy is that “money not spent is money earned”.
Tim Ferriss says he does not want to be a businessman and does not want to run a company; he only wants to receive that company’s income while he is scuba diving off some exotic beach.
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In fact, he advises you not to read books, except entertaining novels (and his own book, of course). And the message that travelling the world all year round is cheaper than having a permanent home is not so much dangerous as simply false, unless you go backpacking, or unless instead of travelling for two weeks you move your residence to wherever you want to travel (which is basically what he ends up advising), or you spend all day watching for cheap flights, making a thorough study of the cheapest places, calling around to hunt for bargains… which is already a full-time job.
The problem is that with this kind of philosophy you would logically expect a person to have crashed and burned in life, but Ferriss has clearly been very successful, first with his company selling products online and then with his book.
Of course, setting up a company that is generating 80,000 euros a month for you in less than six months is not exactly normal either.
The fat lawyer in the red BMW
In his book, Ferriss explains how people like him would not want to end up like the typical lawyer who drives a red BMW and is stuck in a “crappy” life.
That example even rubbed me the wrong way. And no, I am not a lawyer, I am not fat and I do not own a red BMW.
But Ferriss seems to forget that the lawyer in the red BMW may have dreamed of being a lawyer since he was young, and his passion may be winning cases; perhaps when that lawyer walks into a courtroom he feels more adrenaline than someone jumping out of a plane. Perhaps that lawyer is fulfilling his dream and does not need to tour Europe to feel his life is full.
Perhaps there are people who value stability rather than constant movement. A doctor studied medicine to save lives, a surgeon did so to save people in an operating theatre, and just because they cannot do their work from the Virgin Islands does not mean they have to be bitter about their lives. “Ferriss, don’t forget about passion.”
What Ferriss calls fun would personally stress me out
Sitting at a negotiating table and crushing my opponents, watching mediocre salespeople become excellent professionals and raise their company’s sales considerably, moving the pieces when drawing up business strategies so that my side wins the game… for me, that is adventure. In fact, I do not stake my happiness on travelling the world: I am happy 7 kilometres from home.
Sometimes, when I have had to give a talk at the other end of Spain, I have stayed on in that place and taken the next day off to rest. And to me that already feels like a luxury I appreciate.
And in reality I could train sales reps over Skype, negotiate the terms of deals by email, advise companies by phone and write articles from China or Berlin while scuba diving in a jacuzzi, but personally I enjoy dealing with people, and I am happy with what I do.
Today I can say that I make a living from my passions. Well, I also like sex, but I don’t think monetising that passion is well regarded 🙂
Getting drunk in Japan and getting completely stoned on marijuana in Amsterdam is not my idea of fun; for me it falls under punishment.
And I am sure that the life Ferriss leads will make many people truly envious, but make no mistake: Ferriss’s passion is travelling and doing all kinds of crazy things in every country in the world, and he has wisely found a way to make it happen while earning a constant and large income.
So take the ideas he puts forward in his book, but don’t let yourself be too infected by this kind of philosophy, which does more harm than good. Believe me: “as a rule, if you are not happy in Madrid, you will very probably be bitter in Berlin”. In the same way, I think Ferriss is the exception that proves the rule “There is no reward without effort”.
Only a few years ago, 50 Cent was held up as an example of a philosophy of life. Today he is held up as an example of mismanagement in every sense after filing for bankruptcy.
Featured image: Photo by Wojciech Kowalski., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
