Just Finished Reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

The past few weeks I've been exploring podcasts and videos...Timothy Ferriss has a podcast, as well as a best-selling book titled The 4-Hour Workweek.  In it he makes the claim...backed up by his own recounted experiences...that people don't need to limit their lives to the ordinary, humdrum routines of nine-to-five jobs or careers that spill over into their private lives with homework, emails and the like.  No, it's possible to fashion their own lifestyles, and to his credit, Ferris doesn't just leave it there with a lot of vague, positive exhortation: he gets down to the nitty-gritty of the self-liberation process, spelling it all out step-by-step.  The dude is obviously super-intelligent...I've heard his podcast as well, and sometimes I felt while reading this book that his message was for someone with mental faculties far beyond my own.  Part of the book's premise is to convince the boss that working remotely (for me at least) is more productive than working on-site, allowing for my freedom of movement and even extended travel abroad.  Another part is how to delegate my remaining work to others while I soak up the sun in some exotic dream place or climb mountains or whatever suits my fancy.  While I applaud Ferris' attention to detail in explaining how this can be accomplished, I do have a problem with his sales pitch for this book.  Back in the 1990s I experienced a similar argument from an Amway meeting I was invited to attend.  The idea then was that all you need to do is get enough hard-working folks "under" you and then you'll be freed to go ice-fishing in Canada or do whatever you want.  I even heard a coworker tout the company as an alternative to the "dead-end" job we were working.  I think there is a personality type out there, a restless soul who is prone to travel addiction and sees hopping on planes to this place or that as an absolute necessity when they want to appraise the quality of their own lives.  The notion of tending to a steady job, being good at it, and more or less staying in one locale while occasionally traveling to fun spots is, to them, a kind of surrender...I, on the other hand, don't feel the need to follow suit.  The 4-Hour Workweek encourages deception on the job in that the employee has to convince their boss that their performance in person is markedly worse than when they are away from the office...that, to me is unethical.  There's also another problem: like in the classic Broadway show and movie titled You Can't Take It with You, everybody in the featured Vanderhof family lives in their roomy house doing whatever they want...but they still depend on the paid, structured labor of others, including their own housekeepers.  When Mr. Ferriss is visiting all his exotic places, I'm sure that he is constantly around others engaged in their employment which support his adopted lifestyle...does he think they're all losers in dead-end jobs?  I tend to see all this in a more universalist light, believing that while it's good to improve your living conditions...including allowing for more travel and fun...life in all its different levels of perception, struggle, and relationships is much more complex and interesting than the way this book's author presents it, even if he is one bigshot smartass son-of-a-gun...