alt Hacker NewsIf you’re not familiar with Tim Ferriss, you should know that there is always more to the story than the narrative he shares. He’s one of the most charismatic and charming writers and podcasters out there and has a strong ability to build trust through his writing. However, he also has a long history of stretching the truth and spinning history in his favor, often by omitting important facts.
One example: His 4 Hour Work Week book really was on the New York Times Best Seller list for a long time like he brags about in this post, but he has also bragged in other contexts about all of the manipulation and engineering (including mass purchasing books to artificially inflate sales numbers) that goes into gaming the New York Times Best Seller List.
On the topic of being famous, he’s not typically famous like a celebrity. He built his career around being a self-help guru who will bring you the secrets to success in business, life, relationships, and even cooking. He’s talked about how he selects his writing topics based on how to present solutions for people’s inner desires, like financial freedom or impressing people for dating success. He puts himself at the center of these writings, presenting himself as the conduit for these revelations. He was even early in social media and blogging and experimented with social media engagements and paid events where you get to come hang out with Tim Ferriss and learn his secrets, encouraging his fans to idolize him and his wisdom dispensing abilities.
So his relationship with his fans isn’t typical fame in the style of a celebrity or actor. He’s more of an early self-help guru who embraced social media and blogging early on. His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame.
EDIT to add why I know this: Tim Ferriss literally wrote the book on how to abuse remote work. His Four Hour Work Week book encourages readers to talk their boss into working remote then to outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants so they have more time to travel the world. It encourages things like setting up an e-mail auto responder and only responding to your coworkers once a week whine you’re “working remote” and setting up your own side job while traveling the world. If you’ve ever had a remote work job get ruined by people abusing it, chances are good that those people had read a Tim Ferriss book somewhere along the way.
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I personally have a hard time taking anyone seriously who claim things like "4 hour work week". It is a mockery of every real successful person who has worked extremely hard especially early on and it sets a dangerous expectations/entitlement among young people. Unless you are a trust fund baby, you are not going to live a good life by working 4 hour work weeks especially in your younger years. You just won't.
The fact is that if you want to live a good life, you have to grind it out in your early years. Not saying everyone has to grind the startup culture or 80 hour week but thinking that you can swing a 4 hour workweek at 25 is just idiotic and not realistic.
Is that right? I had no idea this was the core thesis of that guy’s book! I just assumed it was an “automate the boring stuff, get organized and delegate” kind of platitudes. If he’s part of the movement that has people ripping off employers and their co-workers like that then, frankly, screw him.
> So his relationship with his fans isn’t typical fame in the style of a celebrity or actor. He’s more of an early self-help guru who embraced social media and blogging early on. His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame.
I think your framing is outdated. It sounds more like his relationship with his fans anticipated how “fame” is typically thought of today. Remix this entire comment with Mr. Beast as the subject and see if that helps my point.
Edit:
He even says himself:
> [...] I’m not really famous. Beyoncé and Brad Pitt are truly famous. They cannot walk around in public anywhere in the world. I am a micro public figure with a monthly audience in the millions or tens of millions. There are legions of people on Instagram alone with audiences of this size. New platforms offer new speed. Some previous unknowns on TikTok, for example, have attracted millions of followers in a matter of weeks.
So maybe not quite Mr. Beast level even...but certainly in that vein albeit a few degrees below.
Oh. That kind of "famous".
> outsource their work to low paid overseas assistants
Literally every business is based on the idea of tacking on a margin onto someone else's work and profiting from it. Markets are based on imperfect information distribution at the end of the day.
It's likely the very company he'd be doing that too is already doing the exact same thing with their customer support (or "success" as they call it now), and their subcontractors themselves outsource various jobs. But I guess we've been conditioned to accept that as good because the boss is pocketing the difference, vs the lowly employee.
> only responding to your coworkers once a week
I struggle to think there is a company in the world where this kind of behavior would fly, but if there is then they must be satisfied with the work (or lack thereof I guess) and so in that case is it any worse than just slacking off at work and browsing HN for that matter?
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Now should you do this? No, but not because you should feel bad for anyone. You should not do it because it's really hard to find someone good enough (and cheap enough) to deliver the same kind of quality you do and worthy of trusting them with your reputation. But if you know a magical place where to find such unicorns, go right ahead!
Wow, I feel uneasy about your comment and then the host of comments piling on that are basically "Yeah, Tim Ferris is actually a shitty guy!!"
Mainly, I can accept literally everything you say is true (and to be clear I don't know, but they all seem quite to be reasonable assertions), but more importantly, I think they're pretty irrelevant to the point of this blog post. Yes, Tim Ferris craved fame (he literally says that in his post), and I'm sure he tried to "hack" his way get it, but I still think his experiences and lessons about the pitfalls of fame are informative and interesting. I also don't agree with your statement "His experience with uncomfortable fan obsessions is therefore probably on the next level, but not exactly typical fame." His post goes in detail about a number of colleagues, especially women, who were stalked, one of whom had her house broken into by an intruder who tried to murder her husband before he was killed in a shootout with police. So yeah, I think his warnings about fame can apply to a broad swath of people who aren't self-help gurus.
If your comment was in response to a "4-hour work week"-y type post, and you just wanted to point out it was BS by highlighting specific problems with its advice, I'd agree. In response to this post, though, it just feels unnecessarily and deliberately schadenfreude-y.
Wasn't he also encouraging people to do medical tests on themselves and take acid to work / regular life for a while?
I wish I was brave enough to try to get away with soemthing like that though.
This is spot on. I was an impressionable young male that loved that book and took to heart the ideas. Looking back it’s a mixed bag - the ideas teach you about delegation and thinking like an owner, but the bigger message that work sucks and you should figure out how to avoid it kinda hurts people who would be more ambitious.
An OG “digital nomad blogger bro” that took it all the way to the top!
At the end of the day his voice is a refreshing twist and a net positive but with a ton of caveats.
I remember reading his books and thinking "This guy seems really insecure". The quote he opens the article does not surprise me at all - his books come across as if he really wants fame and is speaking to an audience who similarly needs to be smarter, more clever, richer, more loved.
However, I don't think this is unique to Tim Ferriss. I think this is the dynamic behind fame itself. People who are really secure in their worth don't spend their time looking for casual external validation from strangers, and they also don't spend their emotional energy idolizing strangers and distant figures. They spend it on their family and close friends, and seek it in return from those same people.
It's been interesting watching myself drop out of the popular discourse as I got more secure in myself and more inclined to spend time, money, and energy close to home. Pop culture isn't made for us, because who got time for that shit? Crass consumerism isn't made for us, because we don't spend money on things we don't need in an effort to feel better about ourselves. Most of the transactions that make modern America go don't make us go, because, well, if you're happy with yourself then why do you need them?
But I'm glad I realized that before getting famous. Because there was a time, in my teens and twenties, when I wanted nothing more than to be adored by the masses. And like Tim Ferriss says, there isn't always a reset button where you can suddenly become un-famous if it becomes too much of a drag.