D Rusak
Jedi Council Member
A colleague recently recommended a book to me called "The Four Hour Workweek" by a gentleman called Tim Ferriss. Since it was available for download loan through my library's website (pretty cool, eh?) I decided to check it out. I've been reading a lot of books about getting work recently since I have been looking for a job without success. The book turned out to be quite fascinating really even if I don't agree with all of the ideas brought up in the book. Most of the book is centered around the idea that 20% of your time leads to 80% of productivity, and the other 80% of your time only accounts for 20% of productivity. If one can free up the 80% of your time that does not lead to optimal productivity, one can spend that time enriching oneself and living one's life NOW, rather than for the deferred reward of retirement, etc. Sort of reminded me of the struggle the movie Holiday (Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn)- a fun movie if you've not seen it. The methods he suggests range to severely cutting back on time spent emailing, ridding oneself of things like text messaging, twitter, etc almost or to total completion, stopping multitasking and focusing on one item at a time to improve efficiency, to outsourcing "busy work" to companies in places India who are more efficient and cost less per hour than it would to hire someone to do the work for you here in the US (note- this being one of the things I am not so cool with, obviously). It then provides a guide to setting up an automated form of business (most of these are web-based companies selling a product or service produced elsewhere) so that one can operate one's business remotely, and get about living one's dreams. The ideas really are not completely far-fetched, to be honest, and while it's hard for me to jive with much of this, being in service-based industries most of my life (performing and teaching) it definitely is spurring some creativity. The author admits that the book should be taken piecemeal and that not every piece of advice will work for everyone- take what works and throw the rest out.
I happened to see his new book (apparently it's only been out a few days) and was able to read through it at a local bookstore while on breaks from my holiday performing gig. It is called "The Four Hour Body". I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see that much of what he writes is consistent with results found here and on sites like mercola.com- having a lot of protein, decent amount of fat, and veggies, with no grains (things like amaranth, quinoa, etc okay on occasion), limited fruits (preferably those without a lot of sugar when one does have them), supplementation, interval type or short, specific workouts for maximum efficiency, supplementation, etc. He again asks the reader to approach things with an experimenter's mind and to record results for oneself- what one reads in studies and from scientists often can be misconstrued or misleading for various reasons. In both books the author writes in a very entertaining style and it's humorous to look at, especially in "The Four Hour Body", where the experiments he puts himself through are pretty wild. I would recommend checking out both of these books if you have some free time.
I happened to see his new book (apparently it's only been out a few days) and was able to read through it at a local bookstore while on breaks from my holiday performing gig. It is called "The Four Hour Body". I was VERY pleasantly surprised to see that much of what he writes is consistent with results found here and on sites like mercola.com- having a lot of protein, decent amount of fat, and veggies, with no grains (things like amaranth, quinoa, etc okay on occasion), limited fruits (preferably those without a lot of sugar when one does have them), supplementation, interval type or short, specific workouts for maximum efficiency, supplementation, etc. He again asks the reader to approach things with an experimenter's mind and to record results for oneself- what one reads in studies and from scientists often can be misconstrued or misleading for various reasons. In both books the author writes in a very entertaining style and it's humorous to look at, especially in "The Four Hour Body", where the experiments he puts himself through are pretty wild. I would recommend checking out both of these books if you have some free time.
