4 Hour Workweek Author Defines “Work”

The New York Times has posted a profile of Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Workweek, that explores some of the extreme information-reducing methods we’ve covered before and balances some of the hype. While Ferriss is described as not exactly having a four-hour week himself, he counters with his own assessment of his method’s success:

“If your definition of work is something primarily financially driven that you would like to do less of, like with my company, I spend far less than four hours a week on it,” he said.

All that other stuff—lecturing at the corporate campuses of Google and PayPal, blogging incessantly on his www.fourhourworkweek.com—that’s, well, “evangelizing,” he said.

I don’t necessarily follow Ferriss’ logic on, for example, outsourcing email to free up time, but he raises a good point about the divide between financially driven “work” and business-related “pursuits.”