In reality, I think we average Americans do have “other people” doing most of the work for us! Just not in the way we think. Many of us do make work in exchange for money, while others grow and process our food, for example. The work I was doing for a large company that shall remain nameless: reformatting documents for hundreds of dollars a day.

Also, I have a completely different take on Tim Ferris. He is an entertainer, a P.T. Barnum. What he does, flakey or not IS work. Writing, book touring, networking for that next photo op, the testing he describes doing to arrive at the exact title for his book/brand. It all sounds very glamourous, which is part of why his ideas sell.

I had one experience of touring as a musician and one experience of (very minor!) modeling. I choke every time I hear someone describe these jobs as “just standing around and making lots of money.” Are they better than shoveling coal for $50 per day? Certainly?

Something I find really interesting in the American psyche: everyone seems to think that they work harder than everyone else. Wealthy, successful people ignore the fact that poor people working 3 jobs are also hard workers. People with unglamorous jobs let the glamour of things like “rock star” blind them to the grueling work it can be. Managers think their subordinates are goofing off; staff ask, “What the hell does management do?”

This is precisely why a book like Tim’s sells in the first place – it is a fiction that fits exactly to a fantasy we already have – and live.

The point is that outsourcing your have-to-do work can free you up to do the want-to-do work. If you already like what you’re doing, then keep doing it!

I’ve been working on my own for the last 4 years, and there are several things that Mr. Ferriss writes that echo my own experience.

Mahesh

You’re right on target about the unsustainability thing, and I think it’s also about the freak-out factor. When someone (like Milana Leshinsky) says “do what I do and you’ll be able to work twenty hours a week”, it’s exciting because you can FEEL how restorative and healthy that would be. Plus it sounds like it might actually possible.

A human-scaled workweek! Something that would let you do the thing you were born to do, and still have time for your own life, your own self-work process. Ahhh, I want!

Four hours presses a lot of panic buttons. And when you’re in panic mode you just can’t be creative.

Also, about the flake thing: my yoga mentor once spent a year only stretching — no strength exercises. He’d been an olympic swimmer and figured he could skip it for a while. After several months he noticed that he’d started flaking on appointments. So: balance between flexibility and strength in your work or your work-out, pretty much the only smart way to go.

I must give him his due, as you do, that getting help and support, and thinking more clearly through work patterns is incredibly important.

And yet I had a similar heart reaction to his book that I did to The Secret- there is something not entirely -true- at the core of it all, even if there are beneficial elements involved. Thanks for articulating it.