The Best Ever – Career Coach Book Review
It became very clear that some people really truly believe that working few hours on work you hate to free up time for more productive and meaningful life activities is somehow “immoral.” I guess the Puritanical mentality this country started out with (earliest settlers here) has seeped deeper into our overall culture than we once imagined. I wouldn’t be surprised if his next book is about how to write a “work lifestyle philosophy” book and make a ton of money on it. There are some interesting ideas in this book – about outsourcing to a “virtual assistant” and living life for now rather than retirement.
The only real meat in the book is building your automated side biz. This is just building your website, testing it, and outsourcing all tasks. This is more a guide to working less once successful than what it claims to be (finding successful while working less). I was skeptical about this book right from the start when he talked about how he won the kickboxing championship by using deceptive tactics of weighing in at a lesser weight using dehydration methods and then pushing his opponent off of the platform. Really, a lot of what he drives home is even a wakeup call for me personally.
There are already a lot of businesses this can be done with. The other idea is not to wait to live your life or take vacations and do what you want. It has also become significantly more complicated so take the time to understand it well before you begin. Develop a product or idea that you understand and enjoy. I had a bad feeling during the first part of this book – its blatant marketing to the reader (think infomercial) and it had me rolling my eyes. I stuck with it and then he got on to what seemed like more practical information (80/20 rule, keep your focus on the important things, selective ignorance/information overload, etc).
Do what you love and make the choices yours. Many things he suggests doing just contributes to the amount of crap we see every day on the internet and in infomercials, and probably isn’t a very rewarding way for an entrepreneur to live their life or make their money. It’s the equivalent of a how-to-become a 21st century snake oil salesman. He also tells people who have jobs to outsource their work to India or somewhere which while makes sense financially – the company hired people to do their work otherwise they would have outsourced it in the beginning. Most of his ideas follow suit but he does have a few good points. To be blunt, that’s the best part of the book. You shouldn’t be wired 24/7 checking your inbox.
I am a naturally skeptical person and I am often highly critical of books that lead readers to believe they can become rich very quickly and with little effort. But something about this book caught my attention. Many of Ferriss’s business ideas exploit easily-duplicable arbitrage opportunities. In chapter 9, Ferriss describes his friend Doug, who resells sound effects libraries on the internet. The real world just doesn’t offer that type of flexibility unless you dump your spouse, your children, and your pets. The book is worth getting but don’t consider it to be a miracle cure for what’s wrong with your present situation.
The remainder of the chapter continues to provide basic time management tools presented, or rather spun, to sound like a revolutionary approach. WHITE OTTOMAN.
