Why The Four Hour Work Week Is Unrealistic

Much has been made of Tim Ferriss’s bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek (check out the accompanying blog, it’s quite good).  It’s been met by plenty of praise and lambasted by a few detractors, but practically nobody who’s read it has been indifferent.  Let me start off by stating I love the book.  It’s inspiring and I can vouch for a lot of what Tim says regarding online business, although I learned those lessons the hard way, well before I had ever heard of the book.

Why The Four Hour Work Week Is A Pipe Dream For Most

It sounds great, doesn’t it?  Earning vast sums of money, traveling the world, and living life to its fullest, all working a modest 4 hours per week remotely.  Indeed, that would be a sweet life.  And it’s entirely possible, for some.  But I think most people would find such a life both a.) impossible to achieve and b.) undesirable in any event.

Remember back in high school when your guidance counselor asked what you wanted to be when you grew up?  The exercise, a la Office Space, was to imagine what it was you would do with your life if money was no issue.  Your answer was supposedly what you were supposed to do for a living.  For some people, it’s “help sick animals.”  Ferriss’ methodology won’t help you with that, since being  a veterinarian requires you to work long hours.  There’s simply no way around it.  Sure, you could donate money to PETA, but would that really fulfill your dream?  Probably not.  But as Tim would say, that’s your choice.

What if your goal is to become a powerful businessman?  You can certainly do very well for yourself using Tim’s methods online (I can personally vouch for that), but you’ll never become anything approaching a powerful businessman working 4 hours per week.  Nor will you ever be president, a respected senator, or even mayor of a small rural town.

What about family?  Tim would argue you can take your kids with you around the world, and he’s right.  There are people who do just that, quite successfully.  Good for them.  There are others, however, who would argue a child needs stable surroundings.  Who’s right?  I have absolutely no idea.  I suspect there is no right answer.  But one could certainly be forgiven for believing a stable suburban upbringing with the accompanying stable 9-5 job is an ideal environment for a job.  Who am I to tell them their life could be better?  Perhaps a quiet suburban life is exactly what their hearts desire.

That’s not to say the 9-5′ers don’t occasionally dream of what it would be like to live a vagabond’s life.  Everybody does, it’s just that, all else being equal, they prefer the life they have.  Maybe it’s just that the conventional life is comfortable, but so what?  Comfort is a great thing.  For some, it’s worth giving up on other dreams for.  For people like Tim (and me), on the other hand, it’s not.  I yearn to see the world (even more than I already have) and fill my day-to-day life with the kinds of dramatically different experiences that just wouldn’t be possible living conventionally.  Thus, I’m actively planning to semi-retire as young as possible (possibly as young as 30).  To that end, I am aggressively working to build defensible streams of passive online income in the hopes of supporting myself for months at a time while on the road.  To don’t expect to become or even want to be a full-time traveler, but I would like the freedom to do so if I so desire.

People like Tim and I are rare.  Not everybody wants what I want, and still fewer people are willing to sacrifice what’s required to obtain it.  The semi-retired life isn’t for everyone.

Buy The 4-Hour Workweek from Amazon.com and see what all the fuss is about.