Everyone knows that building the perfect body takes years of hard work and an iron will. Everyone except Tim Ferriss. The bestselling author just announced that his next book will focus on his study of the human body using the craziest subject he could find: himself. Tim promises to show readers how to increase muscle strength by 30% in three days or less, drop 50-100 pounds of fat, or change lean muscle mass weight by 20 lbs in just 3-4 weeks. In short, Tim Ferriss has found the short cut to getting cut, and he’s about to share it with the world.
The bestselling author's next book will focus on superhuman workout regimens. (Photo from Tim Ferriss' Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/)
I have no idea if Tim Ferriss is the real deal, but he’s certainly made himself into a big deal. His 2007 bestselling book, The 4 Hour Work Week, promised to show you how to exit the rat race, make tons of money, and pursue your life’s goals without working yourself to death. He appeared at MIT, Harvard, Princeton, the CIA, Google, Live with Regis and Kelly…the list really never ends. He’s been on a constant lecture circuit while still achieving some ridiculous titles. He holds a Guinness World Record for Tango spins, he’s a champion kickboxer in China, and even had a TV show: Trial by Fire on Discovery Channel. Check out the promo after the break.
So, with all the accomplishments, the accolades, and the action, I’m still left with some serious doubts about Tim Ferriss. The 4 Hour Work Week was a great motivational tool, giving detailed plans to refocus your life and live your goals rather than live waiting for them. It was carpe diem for the Internet-age. Likewise, I expect Ferriss’ new book to be well conceived, well researched, and enjoyable. I just don’t think such programs really have the ability to work for everyone.
We don’t have time to review The 4 Hour Work Week here, but sufficed to say that the strategies it lays out are not sustainable for society as a whole. It’s much more about working your way into the upper class and pursuing your interests than it is about increasing the productivity of the economy. It doesn’t take a long time to realize that we can’t all be rich. In fact, riches like Ferriss describes require a base of poorer people. He more or less admits that. In the same vein, I doubt that this next book will form a society-wide revolution in health care. It’s much more likely that it will allow a talented (or indomitable) few to achieve amazing results. That’s kind of already the situation, anyway.
What does excite me about the book, and why were including here at Singularity Hub, is that it will be based on years of personal fitness research. According to Tim, he’s been collecting data on his workouts since he was 15 using state of the art equipment and regular blood tests. There are an increasing number of products that will soon come to market that would allow you to do similar testing. Soon, we all could be writing our own books about getting fit. Like Ferriss’ book, these results would probably only be relevant to the author, but who knows, you might turn yourself into a life-guru. In the end, we’re all suckers for short cuts.
Tags: 4 Hour Work Week, bestselling author, body 2.0, personal fitness research, superhuman, Tim Ferriss
Share
Most office workers I know have about a 4 hour work week. Then they get paid for 36 hours of internet socializing.
More seriously, the only help self help books do is to make the self help industry a multi-billion dollar empire. Or, helping themselves to your hard earned money.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/tim_ferriss_smash_fear_learn_anything.html
Just thought I’d share that. I enjoyed it.
You should consider checking your articles for grammar, spelling, etc. mistakes prior to sharing them with the world.
[...] code A Calculus Analogy: Integrals as Multiplication How to Get Hired at Fog Creek, Part 1 Tim Ferriss’ New Book: Become a Superhuman Google’s Chiller-Less Data Center Apollo 11 in Pictures Company fined $300,000 for posting [...]
love this
robot makes music: “Most office workers I know have about a 4 hour work week. Then they get paid for 36 hours of internet socializing.”
” It doesn’t take a long time to realize that we can’t all be rich. In fact, riches like Ferriss describes require a base of poorer people. ”
A guy who writes a technology blog should really know better than this.
Ferriss’ business that he runs and wants everyone to model in his previous book is a nutritional supplement business that does not have any verifiable claims to back up the efficacy of their supplements. He’s trying here to just doing some shameless plugging of his internet business by making more outlandish claims about himself.
That kickboxing championship in China? He cheated to get the title by using extreme dehydration methods to get into the lower weight classes and then re-hydrated and focused all of his effort on pushing his opponents outside the out of bounds line so they would be disqualified and he would win because he didn’t know anything about kickboxing. Meaning he didn’t even fight them. It’s described in his book if you want to look it up which I luckily read at a bookstore instead of buying.
Also, imagine if people such as doctors, lawyers, scientists and other career professionals took his outsourcing career advice? We would all be left untreated when sick, underrepresented, and the economy would crash not to mention the progress like Singularity Hub cares about which takes strenuous effort by many people to achieve.
He’s the read deal alright, a real sociopath, cheater, and con artist that sites like singularity hub shouldn’t be wasting their time with. I’m not insulting the author here because Ferriss is a very slick con man and I can understand how his allure can trick people but I think the author should look closer next time.
“Tim promises to show readers how to increase muscle strength by 30% in three days or less,”
As a gymgoer for many years, I’m very suspicious about this claim. I’ve never before heard or seen anyone do this, and it took myself months to increase my strength that much. And that was during the first year of training, a period when the rate of strength increase as far as I know is at its highest for most people.
I agree with cdot, leave guys like this to late night infomercials please.
Reeks of self promoting bullshit monger.
In his book he suggested doing things like getting speech engagements in important places to facilitate name dropping and the spinning of those experiences to inflate your credentials.
I stopped reading his book right there.
I’d be willing to bet not one of the negative comments above came from a person who actually read the book?
By the way, cdot, cheating actually requires you to BREAK rules, but I’m guessing you didn’t read those either.
[...] Tim Ferriss’ New Book: Become a Superhuman (singularityhub.com) [...]