What it is: The 4 Hour Workweek is a book about designing your lifestyle to inform your job as opposed to your job informing your lifestyle. It outlines strategies for delegating, streamling and outsourcing tasks (yes to India or China) to free up time and stress so that you can do the things you really want to do. Central to the premise of this book is that free time to do what you want (be it to start a nonprofit, or learn to dance the Tango) should be the goal, not accumulation of material wealth.

Growth Potential: Ferriss brings a great mix of his own ideology with specific, usable tips and resources. He makes a convincing argument for why you shouldn’t give the best years of your life working for someone else, on the arbitrary 40-60 hr/week schedule. He then delves into dozens of specific ‘how-to’s from pre-testing products and outsourcing their production, to managing interrupting people who want to ‘chat’ at work. My favorite exercise was called ‘dreamlining’ where you put your dreams into realizable financial goals.

Pop Potential: I think Tim has a better chance of hitting the pop mainstream than his book, although he did achieve bestseller status. He’s a charismatic & good lookin’ fella, and you can see from his blog that he spends a fair amount of his time being active and having fun. The YouTube videos on his site are certainly intriguing enough that one could see a 4hourworkweek TV show in the not-too-distant future. That is if it didn’t require putting more than 2 hours a week into it (he’s got other businesses to run after all).

“Get Real” Potential: Central to the book’s premise is that working in an office, on a 9-5 work schedule and having bosses and stuff is bad. Running around skydiving and traveling while your own business is on autopilot is good. I’d argue that that’s a little extreme as each has its merit. Also, I can’t help but get the feeling that a life with free time during the weekdays, and bopping from country-to-country lends itself to a degree of loneliness. If you don’t talk to your employees, customers and have virtual assistants emailing thank you notes to your friends and loved-ones…um, who are you interacting with?

What I Got out of it: Personal development books often get me real psyched up at first, and then I kind of forget about all that stuff I was going to do to transform my life a few days later. This is the first book that I can really say is a new bible. So much of what the author shared resonated with thoughts I’d had for years but felt ashamed to think. He not only helped me make sense of my intuition, he told me how to make it work. This book served as a catalyst for me to streamline and optimize my life and projects so that I can spend more time doing the things I’m really passionate about.

Learn more about The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss