Ferriss original book took the idea of leverage from The Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) to extremes. The original notion is that 20% of one’s efforts (e.g. customers) lead to 80% of one’s results (e.g. revenue). Ferriss’ version was that you should be utterly ruthless and hyper-competitive in order to create your own small business that gives you the free time to brag about how much free time you have while endlessly promoting yourself. This book launched the entire “lifestyle design” cottage blog industry (Ferriss himself coined the phrase). But in the NEW! and IMPROVED! The 4-Hour Body, Mr. Ferriss claims that one can do oh so much more with oh so much less (and leaving 2.5% mysteriously unaccounted for to boot).

This is a long post. Here’s the tl;dr version: Tim Ferriss is a fraud*. But you already knew that, didn’t you. *sigh* Such is the foolishness of critiquing such figures.

So what exactly can one do to hack one’s body into superhero levels of fitness in an instant with Ferriss’ magic bullet secret information never before released to the drooling, gullible public? Here is a summary taken directly from the Amazon product page (with my snarky comments in red):

Thinner, bigger, faster, stronger… which 150 pages will you read? None, thank you. And don’t thinner and bigger cancel each other out?

Is it possible to:
Reach your genetic potential in 6 months? Uh, no. But appealing to laziness sells scammy books, doesn’t it.
Sleep 2 hours per day and perform better than on 8 hours? Sounds really dangerous. But snort a little Adderall and you’ll have no problem finishing that paper.
Lose more fat than a marathoner by bingeing? Ah, better living through gluttony. Also, long slow distance running is probably the worst exercise method to lose fat.

Indeed, and much more. This is not just another diet and fitness book. This is not another totally transparent con. Tim Ferriss is not a fraud. Do not pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.

The 4-Hour Body is the result of an obsessive quest, spanning more than a decade, to hack the human body. It contains the collective wisdom of hundreds of elite athletes, dozens of MDs, and thousands of hours of jaw-dropping personal experimentation. Can any of this be independently verified? From Olympic training centers to black-market laboratories, from Silicon Valley to South Africa, Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, fixated on one life-changing question:

For all things physical, what are the tiniest changes that produce the biggest results? Atomic energy, probably. You’re not gonna go “quantum” on me, are you?

Thousands of tests later, this book contains the answers for both men and women.

From the gym to the bedroom, it’s all here, and it all works.


YOU WILL LEARN (in less than 30 minutes each):
How to lose those last 5-10 pounds (or 100+ pounds) with odd combinations of food and safe chemical cocktails. *NOTE: Results not typical. These claims have not been tested by the FDA and are not intended to cure or prevent any disease. These methods are also probably stupid and dangerous.

* How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends) What ever happened to moderation?
* How to increase fat-loss 300% with a few bags of ice Magic fat-melting ice!
* How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time You mean steroids?
* How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested First off—why? Second—lack of sleep can cause brain damage and memory loss while simultaneously making you more likely to cause a deadly traffic accident.
* How to produce 15-minute female orgasms Here is some evidence from brain research suggesting bigger and more frequent orgasms lead to dopamine crashes for up to several weeks not to mention increased likelihood of infidelity.
* How to triple testosterone and double sperm count That’s easy: watch Conan the Barbarian over and over.
* How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks That’s just asking for a permanent injury.
* How to reverse “permanent” injuries You’ll need that tip after multiplying your running volume by 10x in 12 weeks and…
* How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months Good luck with those totally destroyed joints.
* How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit Is that from the hernia because of too heavy weight lifting? And what exactly are you proposing here—insurance fraud?

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  There are more than 50 topics covered, all with real-world experiments, many including more than 200 test subjects.

You don’t need better genetics or more discipline. You need immediate results that compel you to continue. Ah, I’m glad I don’t need virtue to achieve my narcissistic desires, just magic bullet shortcuts. I just knew TV was right and mom was wrong!

That’s exactly what The 4-Hour Body delivers.

About the Author

TIMOTHY FERRISS, nominated as one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People of 2007,” is author of the #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, which has been published in 35 languages.

Wired magazine has called Tim “The Superman of Silicon Valley” for his manipulation of the human body. He is a tango world record holder, former national kickboxing champion (Sanshou), guest lecturer at Princeton University, and faculty member at Singularity University, based at NASA Ames Research Center. I’ve got some things to say about these “qualifications” below….

When not acting as a human guinea pig, Tim enjoys speaking to organizations ranging from Nike to the Harvard School of Public Health.

If it Looks Too Good to Be True…

I’m sorry to be a sourpus and all, but some things aren’t possible, and other things really aren’t advisable. Many amazing things are indeed possible for human beings to learn and develop, but almost all of them require enormously focused efforts over long periods of time, cultivating such boring old virtues like patience and persistence (but who wants THAT stuff?).

Speaking of stuff, once upon a time, Tim Ferriss promoted a product advertised on television infomercials called “Super Blue Stuff”:

In 2002, 6 years before this testimonial was uploaded to YouTube, the FTC fined Blue Stuff, Inc. for $3m for false advertising in making claims to cure chronic pain on its infomercials. From an ABC investigation of Super Blue Stuff:

DOCTOR DANIEL FURST, UCLA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: If it had any real data behind it, we would have heard about, and we certainly have not.

HUNTER: (Voice Over Tape) Dr. Furst says, if some consumers are getting some relief, that may be because Blue Stuff contains ingredients like menthol, which are known to be effective for minor aches and pains and which are commonly available in many over the counter remedies. But those looking for a miracle cure for severe pain may well be in for a cruel surprise.

…

FURST: Testimonials carry a lot of weight to the person, but they have absolutely no scientific validity in and of themselves. Everybody may feel better for one reason or another, but it may have nothing to do with the substance that they’re talking about.

How to Kick Ass By Picking On Guys Half Your Size

In his first book, Tim Ferriss, “Kick Boxing Champion,” openly brags about how he won his kickboxing match through what basically amounts to cheating while barely remaining within the rules. Most fighters cut some weight in order to not have to fight against opponents much larger than themselves if they are straddling two weight classes. But Ferriss, using a radical dehydration technique, cut so much weight for the weigh-in and then re-hydrated again that he was much bigger and heavier than his opponents. He then won on a technicality by pushing his much smaller opponents out of the ring. He never technically did any kickboxing at all, more like shoving.

Many people associate the martial arts with cultivating virtues like discipline, mental focus, with diligent practice. Picking on guys half your size makes you a bully, not a champ. Ferriss is no champion of kickboxing—he is a champion of cutting corners, of grandiosity, and of deception.

Ferriss elsewhere gives his strategy for becoming a “guest lecturer” at an Ivy League college: rent out a room and hold a talk on campus. You’ve technically lectured on the campus grounds now. No, you weren’t actually invited by the University nor endorsed in any way whatsoever, but technically you’re being honest, right? By the way, did you know I’m the world’s best personal development blogger? I just held a select international competition and declared myself winner, so technically it’s true. No, you don’t get to vote—sorry, those are the rules!

My Virtual Assistants Absolutely LOVE My Book!

Some people suspect or imply that Ferriss may have hired his army of third-world virtual assistants to post 5-star reviews of The 4-Hour Workweek which suspiciously has 1000′s of reviews, most short and 5 stars. A 1-star review on Amazon also suspects foul play:

Are the reviews being gamed …?, April 2, 2010

By R

This review is from: The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content. (Hardcover)

Too many of the five star reviews are by people who have only written one review ever … which happens to be for this book. I would guess 50% of the 5 star are that way. Seems strange. I have no evidence obviously – this is simply an observation.

In fact I am sympathetic to the material … not 5 star quality … but saying something important by saying that you must know who you are, what you want and learn to focus – and do it with some ease, poise and grace. Doing so will help you be the best you can be. No problems there.

Popular blogger Penelope Trunk was receiving enthusiastic comment spam promoting Ferriss’ first book when she confronted him about it. He denied any involvement, but upon further insistence from Trunk later replied that he’d “make sure there were no more comments like that” on her blog. Ms. Trunk also reports that Ferriss pulled a bait-and-switch tactic when he first met her at SXSW in order to promote his book, and implies that in her opinion, he is “full of shit” and self-centered. Was Ferriss paying his VA’s to comment on Trunk’s and possibly other peoples’ blogs? It may not be illegal to do so, but it sure isn’t above the board either.

For his most recent book promotion, Ferriss held a contest to artificially inflate sales of his book in order to jump to #1 on Amazon and get on the NY Times Bestseller list and thus be famous for being famous, a tactic also used by the Kardashian sisters.

One of Ferriss’ claims that supports his new book is that he supposedly gained 34 lbs in 28 days. Some experienced bodybuilders on the Bodybuilding.com forums find this claim to be extremely unlikely if not outright fraud. Other experienced bodybuilders were equally skeptical. On his original BodyBuilding.com article, Ferriss claims:

Before and after measurements, including underwater hydrostatic weighings, were taken by Dr. Peggy Plato at the Human Performance Laboratory at the San Jose State University. Though this ridiculous experiment might seem unhealthy, I also managed other health goals without the use of statins (see the pre-bed supplementation). No joke.

Here are a few comparative shots. Oh, and I forgot to mention, all of this was done with two 30-minute workouts per week, for a total of 8 HOURS of gym time.

Later on his blog, he revised his claim to only 4 hours of gym time, hence the “4-hour body.” Was his math just wrong the first time (2 workouts x :30 x 4 weeks = 4 hours not 8 hours), or is he having trouble keeping his story straight?

Meanwhile, Dr. Peggy Plato says he used her name without permission and she cannot verify his results.

This is the response that I have sent to people who have seen Tim Ferris’ website or blog and have contacted me:

I don’t know anything about Tim Ferris’s exercise regime. He came through our Sport and Fitness Evaluation Program for some testing a number of years ago. He did not provide any information about his purpose. In fact, I only found out that he put my name on his website after receiving an inquiry from someone who had seen the website and asked if I could confirm his results. I cannot — he signed a consent form that states that individual results will not be disclosed. Although he contacted me about being retested, I am not willing to do that because he is apparently using my name and San Jose State University for his commercial purposes, without asking for permission or notifying me of this.

Peggy Plato

Note also that one of the supplements Ferriss used in his alleged transformation was Ferriss’ own BrainQuicken BodyQUICK, which is advertised at the bottom of the article.

YouTube-famous bodybuilder “Scooby” debunks such claims of rapid muscle gain and says most post-pubescent individuals can expect to gain 5-10 lbs of muscle per year at best, unless they have superior genetics (in which case slightly more) or are using steroids. Scooby does not sell any products and all his videos are free (he has only 3 or 4 affiliate links that I can find on his site and discloses that they are affiliate links). Personally I’m more inclined to believe the soft-spoken Scooby on this one. Others claim that one can gain more muscle than that, but only if you had it in the past due to a phenomenon bodybuilders call “muscle memory.” Here’s how one person responded to Ferriss’ claims:

I’m surprised no one caught this yet.

Can you gain 34lbs of muscle in 4 weeks? No!

Can you regain 34lbs of muscle in 4 weeks? Yes!

This dude used to have that muscle, lost it and gained it back.

Casey Viator did something similar when he worked with Arthur Jones. He went through a period of time “detraining” prior to his stint with Jones and Nautilus.

Then just like magic he gained several pounds of muscle quickly. When in reality all he did was regain the muscle. And as everyone knows regaining is pretty easy, especially if it’s done immediately after losing it.

In other words, Ferriss might have technically gained 34lbs in 28 days but nobody can confirm this, and he may have been regaining lost muscle not gaining new muscle. As we’ve seen already, the “shoving people much smaller than him” champion doesn’t seem to above such borderline fraudlent tactics.

“Lifestyle Design” and The 4-Hour Con

One of the premises of the 4-Hour Workweek is Ferriss’ claim to have gone from $40k per year to $40k per month with his BrainQuicken LLC supplement company. According to Stephen Barrett, an industry watchdog, dietary supplements are a largely unregulated industry and have been a consistent source of consumer fraud that the FDA can do little if anything about. Reviews of BrainQuicken (also branded as BodyQuick) are not particularly favorable either (emphasis mine):

BrainQuicken is a health supplement manufactured by the company of the same name. The same product is also sold under the brand name BodyQuick. BrainQuicken was founded by productivity guru Tim Ferriss, but he has since sold the company. BrainQuicken (aka BodyQuick) claims to improve study skills, memory, athletic performance and as a safe stimulant. The claims made by the manufacturer are not supported with any scientific data however. The official website frequently mentions a 60-day, 110% money-back guarantee, yet when this option is investigated the website says this offer is “on hold”, and the product is only available from online retailers. Thus, there seems to be no real money-back guarantee or free trials of this product available.

The official website of BrainQuicken reads like a television informercial, with dozens of testimonials from people from all professions. In addition to improving cognitive function, BrainQuicken also claims to aid in strength training, improving reaction speed and circulation, and in hang-over prevention.

But Wait, There’s More!

Some suspect that Ferriss may have made fraudulent or misleading claims about his income from BrainQUICKEN that he stated in The 4-Hour Workweek. Once again, the math doesn’t add up. A devotee of Ferriss’ methods attempted to copy Ferriss’ supplement business for his lifestyle design project and found that his market research showed the numbers Ferriss claimed didn’t match up with the business and market realities:

Do the math yourself, and anyone can quickly see that BrainQUICKEN does not generate anywhere near that income.

…

As it is written it is straightforward, but it does lead people to believe that Tim made 40k in income every month from BQ. Even a cursory view of easily verifiable numbers shows that this can’t have come from BQ (not to mention zero spending on google ads).

…

I also researched the heck out of the business model in developing GameBRAIN. That is when the cracks in Tim’s muse story came from. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but after imitating BQ to a certain extent, it was like an onion. Lots of good layers to dig through, only to find a few rotten ones.

This wouldn’t be the first time a get-rich-quick guru made a false income claim in order to sell a get-rich-quick product based around his fake success. The Salty Droid caught get-rich-quick internet marketer Irwin “Frank” Kern admitting on video to that very thing. Kern says in this video that he didn’t make a dime before his first venture made money (which was later determined an illegal pyramid scheme by the FTC and Kern was sued for every last penny of his profits), yet his first venture claimed he had made $115,467.21 the year prior. From one of the slides on the video:

Was Ferriss’ first “muse” business—a business that pays you enough to live off in just 4 or less hours a week—actually his book deal, the book that supposedly contained the secrets to his already achieved success?

Maybe he really did gain 34 lbs in 28 days through some miracle supplementation and working smarter, not harder. Or maybe…just maybe…he fudged a bit. Maybe he doctored the photos up a bit, or used a radical dehydration technique to lose a lot of weight and then quickly put it back on, or otherwise cut corners in order to make it appear as if he had done something more amazing than he actually did. After all, we’re talking about Mr. Ruthless, Mr. Win by Technicality, a man willing to take advantage by any means possible—even if it bends the rules, or the truth—as long as it gets the results he’s looking for in the end. I have no doubt that Tim Ferriss has lifted weights and tried supplements, but this information does raise serious doubts that he has achieved the things he claims to have achieved—the very things that form the basis for his books and his fame.

What Color is Your Lifehacking Hat?

Tim Ferriss is certainly a lifehacker, in the sense of a kid who always plays video games with cheat codes, content to win without putting in the real effort of skill acquisition, lacking patience and persistence and an ability to play fair with others. This is “black hat” or at the very least gray hat lifehacking: self-absorbed, anti-social, and ruthless.

There are also white hat lifehackers. Like the kids who took apart their parent’s 486 PCs just to see how they worked, white hat lifehackers are curious, inventive, follow their interests wherever they go, and are often willing to lend a hand just because they want to share their knowledge with others. White hat lifehackers are curious about what they can do with their lives just to see what’s possible and how things work, not necessarily to achieve anything or to win at some game of money or fame. They push the buttons of their minds just to see what they do, filled with a childlike wonder and curiosity. Inquiry and invention—for its own sake—is more important than “success.”

We are all a mix of both good and bad motivations, but what we choose to cultivate makes a big difference in the long run.

No doubt Ferriss will ignore this blog post, as he has already been criticized many times by others and has posted his policy on dealing with “haters” on his blog (note the attempt at garnering search engine traffic for the “tim ferriss scam” keyword phrase in his blog post title). Unlike Bill “Push-Button Zen” Harris, Ferriss is much more PR savvy and understands that fighting legit criticism is bad for business, so he simply ignores it.

By the way, one of Ferriss’ friends is a guy named Tucker Max. Max is famous for being a psychopathic drug-using womanizer and telling the internet about his sexual conquests in detail, then being sued by one of the women he manipulated and wrote about (he had posted her real name in his online stories). Max used this lawsuit as a way to get more publicity, which got his book onto the NY Times Bestseller list. Ferriss cites Max as a marketing genius for his kissing (or rather manipulating) and telling.

Tim Ferriss isn’t the only one with a principle. I’ve got a principle too—it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. And it explains a lot:

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” ~Bertrand Russell

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” ~W.B. Yeats

*Note to Ferriss and his lawyers: I can neither confirm nor deny any of the specific factual claims made by or against Timothy Ferriss by others that I have quoted or linked to in this article. I am presenting this information merely for educational and entertainment purposes. However, it is my opinion that Timothy Ferriss is a fraud and his books are a scam and it is well within my legal rights to express this publicly on my blog as these are not factually verifiable claims and therefore constitute protected free speech. My intent is not to harm but solely to provide consumer protection from frauds in the personal development industry so that we can advance our field, as well as provide entertainment to my blog readership.

UPDATE 1/14/2011: Haters, please read the addendum before commenting.

Nowhere is this herd mentality as apparent as in the Lifestyle Design community. After reading The Four Hour Workweek, the kids must have figured that apparently the way to show your individuality was to move to some piss poor, tropical country and make a living selling e-books about moving to some piss poor tropical country to sell e-books. Soon enough, hundreds of kids in their early twenties gather like lemmings to live on the beach in some piss poor tropical country, trying to sell e-books about writing e-books about selling e-books about living in a tropical country selling e-books. Nice work if you can pull it off, though I suspect there’s a limited market for selling e-books filled with truisms, old platitudes and other profound wisdoms amassed over a long life of.. eh.. 23 years?

There is nothing inherently wrong with being part of a herd, if you made an informed decision based on what you wanted, that’s great. But it gets a bit ridiculous when people criticize the “status-quo” while espousing the virtues of their own supposedly unique life choices when they proudly share a label describing their lifestyle with an industry and thousands of others doing exactly the same thing.

Rebelling Against That Other Herd

If you followed in the steps of others to rebel against the status-quo and assert your individuality in exactly the same way as hundreds, possibly thousands of others, are you really doing something very unique? This is where I think a lot of Lifestyle Designers, as well as their critics go horribly wrong. I just don’t get the obsession people have with other peoples life choices. To me, the obsession with others is the worst kind of herd behavior there is. At what point do you even need to compare yourself to others to feel good about yourself? If that is what you need, then I’m pretty sure you either took a wrong turn somewhere or simply suffer from low self esteem.

When you start criticizing other peoples life choices because they are different to yours, you are criticizing someone for the simple reason that they are not part of your herd. If you want to live on a beach and sell e-books, then good luck to you, but choosing to live in the community where you grew up, in the house of your late grandparents, having 2.5 kids and driving a Volvo to the office is a perfectly valid life choice as well. In fact, I hear having a settled home- and family life isn’t all bad for your health either.

The same goes the other way around too: If you want 2.5 kids, white picket fence and a Volvo, that’s all good and well, but if someone else wants to have a look around the world instead of doing what you have done, that too is a perfectly valid choice. Do whatever makes you happy, if someone else chooses another path, why should it be any of your concern?

Lifestyle Design: It’s Just The 80/20 Rule Repackaged, Dummy!

You have to give it to Tim Ferriss, he is a marketing genius: he basically took the hundred year old Pareto Principle, repackaged it with some examples of practical applications for your personal- and business life and made a fortune out of it. But in repackaging it he created an unfortunate unintended consequence: a lot of people missed out entirely on the scientific and philosophical implications and insights of realizing that a minority of causes create a majority of outcomes.

Instead many young men and women (well, mostly young men) interpreted Ferriss’ illustrative anecdotes literally as a checklist or quick-fix formula on what to do and how to live. In doing so, they missed out on the whole point. The pursuit of non-conformity has simply turned into conformity with a different herd, and we’re right back to the Goth kids in your old High School.

Being Part of the Herd Is Fine (You Can’t Avoid It)

Being part of a herd is okay. As humans, we are social animals, we need interaction, we need a herd. It is inevitable that we will identify with- and be part of many herds throughout our lifetimes, we will change herds as we move through different phases of our lives, we might even be part of multiple herds at once (I’ve heard of soccer-mom bikers).

However, choosing a herd should be a conscious choice based on what you want to do with your life at that point in your life, not a choice based on some quick-fix formula or trying to rebel or wanting to hang with the cool kids. And for God’s sakes, stop being so obsessed with the herds other people choose, as long as it’s not something like NAMBLA, I’m pretty sure their lifestyle is just as valid as yours, even if it is a bit different.

Wille is a wannabe-entrepreneur with multiple failures under his belt, over the years he has forged a close friendship Jack Daniel’s and been known to resort to various acts of immaturity in a desperate bid to hang on to what little youth he has left in him. You can read his blog musings here or follow him on twitter here.

Image Credit.

Friend of the blog, Eric Schiller over at Beyond Growth recently posted about 17 Steps to Instant Success as a Lifestyle Designer.  It made me laugh.  It made me cry.  But in the end, I was just pissed.  I mean, what the hell does Schiller know about lifestyle design? Maybe I took it too personally since Eric probably didn’t know that I am a failed lifestyle designer.

You see, I read a couple of lifestyle design books and I thought, “hey, I can design my life like an Abercrombie commercial!”

So, I sold my stuff, went out and bought some cool Abercrombie fashion. Then, I made plans to travel to the beach. I wanted to go to the French Riviera but I am a member the “new rich” whereas the Riviera is for the ”rich rich”. So, instead I moved to some poor-ass country (where they didn’t even speak English!) and went to the beach.

Emphasis mine. Read the rest here: Lifestyle Design Sucks at Don’t Step in the Poop.

1. Get a poofy haircut that only a rockstar could pull off.

Use this to hide your vanity.

2. Get rid of every thing you own, and make up for it by purchasing as much boutique yuppy clothing, shoes, and apparel that you can fit in a large backpack.

(Note Colin’s poofy hair.)

3. Use the backpack full of clothes and move to a foreign country with great beaches where you can feel wealthy by being around desperately poor people.

4. Talk about how many desperately poor people are around and how you wish you could help them.

5. Take advantage of desperately poor people by leveraging your powerful American money against the pitiful local currency.

6. Talk about changing the world for the better, while at the same time flying to every country in the world for the novelty of writing about it, releasing countless tons of C02 in the the environment as a result.

The Spread of Chris Guillebeau’s C02.

7. Take friendly photos with the natives so you can demonstrate how cultured and well adapted you are.

8. Call yourself a “consultant,” even if you’ve never had a client if your life.

9. Buy the laptop of gods (Apple Macbook Pro) and be seen “working” [browsing twitter] on it in trendy coffee shops.

You can have 15 inches for only $1799.

10. Name drop all the famous bloggers who have replied to you on twitter while you were working in coffee shops.

As lifestyle designers age, they begin to look like bald chipmunks.

11. Read the Communist Manifesto or Atlas Shrugged. Write your own manifesto. Quote the Communist Manifesto or Atlas shrugged when talking about what moved you to write your own powerful manifesto.

She sure was a sexy capitalist.

12. Use the words revolution, awesome, freedom, and nonconformity in any sentence it you can fit them in.

And buy a T-shirt with Che on it.  Because it’s awesome.  Because it’s revolutionary. Oh I give up.

13. Constantly refer to your “projects” even if they don’t exist. If your projects don’t exist, make some up, and find some lifestyle designer friends to “work” on them with you.

A lifestyle design project.

14.Write an about page detailing every single interest you have, ever had, and ever will have. Write a second about page just in case you missed any gaps in your ego, err resume.

15. Make lots and lots of videos.  Talking about inane things is okay as long as your hair is sexy and/or poofy or you are at the beach.

I picked this video because of the awesome first image, and the fact that Ferriss just bullshits his way through anything and everything.

16. Be as cool as humanly possible. Take lots of sexy abercrombiesque photos of yourself near the beach or somewhere that could pass as a beach in pictures.

Edit 5/11/11:  Cody “How To Be Joyful And Accept Life As It Is” McKibben has decided to pull a very thrilling heroic by requesting that I remove his photo from my post *seven* months after I offered to take it down. Prior to that he said that it was fine and carry on.  I guess Mckibben lost his balls and just couldn’t accept life as it is.  Anyhow, you can still view the photo (and thousands of other vain photos of Cody) here on his flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/codymckibb/5033919160/in/photostream

Carlos and Colin remain cool.

17. Rip off wealthy white Americans by promising that they too can live on the beach with desperately poor people.

Well, that certainly puts some things into perspective, doesn’t it?

Fabian Kruse responded to our ongoing discussion about lifestyle design on his blog the Friendly Anarchist:

Should lifestyle designers be better people? When reading the recent discussion on the topic over at Beyond Growth, one could reach the conclusion that this indeed should be the case. And, honestly, why not? Why limit our niche to the creation of muse businesses, travels, and vain endeavors?

On the other hand, when looking for a better approach to lifestyle design, one should also have in mind that pretty much everything one could wish for in the niche does already exist in another one. Searching for a well-elaborated critique of consumerism? Call Adbusters. Looking for people engaged in fixing our financial system? Ask Attac. Miss an environmental stance? Join Greenpeace or Earth First. Now, you might ask, what do these institutions and the individuals behind them have to do with lifestyle design?

The answer: It depends on your definition of the word. It’s a triteness, but following the broadest and simplest definition, lifestyle design is about nothing more or less than designing your lifestyle. Or, as JD Bentley put it a few months ago in a similar discussion: “Judging by the requirements of the term itself without any concepts applied by the zealots who promote it, everyone who has ever lived is a lifestyle designer.”

You can read the rest of the post here.

I was asked by Eric Schiller to write a response to his recent post calling for a more socially responsible Lifestyle Design. Klint Finley also responded, defined many useful terms, and made some suggestions for how Lifestyle Design could be put to socially conscientious use. I am going to start on a different tack–a personal one–and try to explore what I feel is missing from Lifestyle Design and how it could change.

I have always been looking for a way out of the rat race. My whole life. So when The Four Hour Workweek was launched, I gave it a shot. It promised a lot but was somehow different from most self-development and business books. I have been asking myself two related questions. What drew me to Lifestyle Design in the first place? And what is it that I want from an online business movement?I had not asked myself the second question until Eric started this discussion. The answer turned out to be a little weird. I wanted a rational and practical leftist radical agenda. By that I mean, roughly, people using the Internet and other technologies to build and support development efforts and a new economy.

Imagine one talented Internet marketer supporting a small community of ten living in West Africa who buy a community house. Cost of living is much cheaper, so it is entirely possible. Once the house is paid for, the community has a near-free place to live. They then work with local cooperatives to begin to export handmade goods to the US, taking a small cut. A new business, which supports eleven Americans and many West Africans, has been bootstrapped. Or what about a group of ten lifestyle designers pooling their money to buy themselves houses one at a time?

What I wanted from Lifestyle Design has never been to make an easy living and goof off all day. My idea has been to solve my problems of survival financially, so I can help others do the same. Maybe that is too much to ask of others. Are people that generous? Am I that generous, for that matter? I do not know. It was only a dream I had, not a reality.

I have always seen the idea of passive income as a means of reducing the risk of other, more socially valuable yet less profitable ventures. Why take out a loan when you can sell an ebook? A small group pooling their efforts could solve the housing problem for the members very quickly.And removing a house from the cycle of debt is a good thing. I am going to go out on a limb here with a little theory and appeal to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It is cliché, I know. But I have a point. The simplified version of the Hierarchy of Needs is that once you solve the basic survival needs, you get bored and you start thinking about other things like helping others and being a better person. We have not solved the basic survival needs for most Americans.In a sense, we have solved them because we do not starve or go without shelter if we can get a job. But in another sense, we have not solved them because we cannot move on.

Our psychologies tell us to move up the hierarchy and start working on social issues. But we cannot. We are stuck in our job almost half of our waking lives. And our jobs are not helping us self-actualize. An ennui develops. It is this ennui that Lifestyle Design promises to eliminate by reducing working hours to a minimum. It is an appealing alternative to the corporate job.

Imagine a team of seven crack Internet marketers building seed funding for a microfinance organization in Ecador. What about a group of Lifestyle Designers who fund their own yoga/community center. They can worry about making it self-sustaining after they have gotten established because of their passive income. The point is that there are a lot of great things that can be done once you do not have to worry about survival. And if you have a little more cash, you can start riskier ventures. And not just financial ventures. Imagine 1023 lifetyle designers (1 mentors/funds 2 who mentor/fund two each who mentor/fund two each . . .) who pool their resources and fund lobbyists to pass laws to reform corn subsidies. The possibilities are endless. I would propose two drastic changes to the movement.

1. Lifestyle Design is no longer about the rockstar lifestyle. It is about being a development rockstar. Saving babies, building capacity, disaster relief, etc.
2. Lifestyle Designers stop selling programs about how to sell ebooks and just mentor a few people at a time until they are on their own feet.

These are drastic changes because they totally change the business model of successful LD bloggers. Instead of selling the dream, you give it as a gift with the hope that the receiver will pass it on, too. Of course, there is a limit to how many people can live off of information products. But the idea is not that everyone does it. The idea is that enough people do it to develop something that can get more people out of the mire that our current economic system offers. What that something is anybody’s guess. This something is what I mean by “new economy”.

If people are freed from concern about their survival and have money to spare, what kind of economy would develop? A gift-based economy? An economy of patronage? I certainly cannot say. But I think it would be better than what we have. With basic necessities solved, where does the mind turn to?

The current, most visible model of Lifestyle Design is to sell access to Lifestyle Design itself. I suggest that we turn that around. In theory, Lifestyle Design frees the Designer from day-to-day concern about his own survival. With that new freedom and a little generosity, the Designer could turn to other people’s issues of survival and apply themselves to solve it. Is this too radical to expect? Maybe. But would somebody do it? And could it work?

Eric Normand can be found dreaming up schemes to get himself out of corporate wage-slavery. He currently blogs at Renegade Yogi about self-transformation and his upcoming travels. He might be visiting your neck of the woods soon. Drop him a line or follow him on Twitter here. He would be honored and delighted to meet you in person.

In his “The Lifestyle Design (un)Manifesto” Eric calls for the transformation of lifestyle design “into a collective of people who can influence the greater culture for a sustainable future.” Can lifestyle design be reformed into something more socially valuable? Put to work on the right problems, perhaps it can. But there are a few questions that we have to ask first.

Are the people behind the “lifestyle design movement” – that is to say, the people who are actually profiting from it – serious about solving real-world social, environmental, and economic problems? If all they’re interested in is cash and kicks, then there’s probably no point to this discussion. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, because I think there are at least a few among them who are earnest.

Next, what is “lifestyle design,” and can “lifestyle designers” actually solve social problems?

I’ll submit a tentative definition: lifestyle design is the creation of “lifestyle businesses,” specifically ones that are location-independent, depend only knowledge and skills proprietor already has or can learn very quickly, are “scalable,” cost little to start, have low overhead, and (usually) are sole-proprietorships.

Wikipedia defines lifestyle businesses as “businesses that are set up and run by their founders primarily with the aim of sustaining a particular level of income and no more; or to provide a foundation from which to enjoy a particular lifestyle.”

I’m also going to propose a slightly modified version Nassim Taleb’s definition of “scalable” from The Black Swan. Nassim wrote that a scalable profession is “one in which you are not paid by the hour and thus subject to the limitations of the amount of your labor.” If you write a book or make a DVD, you’re not paid for the time it took you to make it, you’re paid according to how many you sell. I would submit that a profession that is paid hourly, but has no market cap as to how much they can charge per hour (ex, various types of “coaching”), is also “scalable.” (Taleb points out that “scalable” professions are actually a bad bet, because so few people are actually successful.)

By Wikipedia’s definition, being a self-employed residential plumber might count as a lifestyle business (Matthew B. Crawford would seem to be the perfect guru for anyone wanting to go this direction). But lifestyle designers have no interest in this business – it’s location based, it’s paid by the hour subject to market constraints (no matter how good a plumber you are, there’s only so much over the market rate you can charge), it requires years of training, and to strike out on your own you need to invest in your own tools and equipment. The ultimate lifestyle design business is selling “info products” – usually e-books so the proprietor needn’t trouble themselves with inventory.

So to reword an earlier question: can these sorts of minimalist businesses actually address serious world problems? I’m not sure. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, but I’m sure someone out there can give us a few examples. The lifestyle design gurus themselves would say that they’re helping people live their dreams, have more free time to spend with their families, etc. and that those are worthy goals in and of themselves. There may be some truth in that – if the dreams sold by lifestyle design gurus is actually attainable. More on that later.

I’ll mention here that I certainly don’t blame anyone who’s managed to start any sort of a lifestyle business that basically just makes them a living but isn’t particularly “world changing.” If you can make a living teaching yoga, making craft beer, giving guided tours, or whatever – that’s great. In this economy, just getting by is hard enough. If you can get by doing something you love that doesn’t hurt anyone else, that’s fantastic. That said, I think that if more people were focusing on solving important problems, rather than just getting by, maybe just getting by wouldn’t be so hard. On the other hand, you know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions… But we can talk about picking the right way to solve the right problems some other time.

Lifestyle designers push the sole-proprietorship thing pretty hard. Partners, co-workers, and employees are seen as unnecessary distractions from leading an optimal lifestyle. According to the gurus, any work that can’t be done by oneself should be outsourced to someone who needs little management. It’s hyperindividualistic. I understand the appeal – being free of meetings, bosses, subordinates, etc. and being free to just do what I do best would be great. But tackling big problems can take cooperation at a large scale. I’m not sure sole-proprietorships are going to be up for the task of, say, cleaning up oil spills.

I question the ability of “social innovation” and “green tech” companies to really address these sorts of issues, but they do bring more resources (talent, money, organization) to the table than a typical lifestyle designer is going to be able to. However, for all the hyperindividualism of the lifestyle design movement, it’s really quite a community/network. Few of the really successful people in lifestyle design (the gurus, basically) are really working on their own. They’re constantly collaborating, cross-promoting, etc.

There’s probably good work that competent programmers, engineers, and designers can do working alone or in loose remote networks (check out open_sailing). But can they attach a business model to these projects? Maybe some individual lifestyle designer could invent something like the LifeStraw, but could they build a successful lifestyle business around it? I don’t know. But maybe set loose on small, discrete problems the lifestyle design community could have a large collective impact. One idea that intrigues me is the idea of “low hanging fruit“: problems are relatively small compared to big systemic issues but, are much easier to solve and therefore have more of an immediate impact. The idea was originally articulated in relation to the developing world, but the global North has our share of issues and this line of thinking could be applied here as well. If lifestyle designers were put to work trying to build lifestyle businesses around solving small problems, maybe we’d have something there. Maybe unleashing a network of creative slackers on these issues could lead to some mini-breakthroughs.

I’m guessing a lot of people from the lifestyle design community will argue that the best thing lifestyle design could do is untether passionate people from their bland corporate 9-5 jobs and free them up to spend their time on real world changing stuff. That seems to be at least part of the promise of the lifestyle gurus. The problem is, I’m not sure that dream is attainable for many people.

The idea of a “four hour work week” is attractive – but part of my critique of lifestyle design is that they’re selling empty promises. It’s hard to start a successful business. And getting it to the point where it can be automated and/or outsourced while still generating a decent profit for the owner (all ethical issues aside) is even more difficult. It’s not impossible – Ferris did it with BrainQuicken. The guy who runs Plenty of Fish claims to only work a few hours a week. Guillebeau claims to have supported himself and his wife for four years while volunteering full-time in Sierra Leone by selling info products online part-time. So I suppose someone with the right inclination could start some sort of lifestyle business that enables them to work part time and spend their spare time volunteering or working on world changing problems. It’s possible, but it takes a lot of work, creativity, and luck (not necessarily in that order). The truth is, most people, no matter how pure their positive thoughts, will never actually succeed in this. I don’t want to discourage people from starting businesses, or even from trying to build scalable elements into their businesses (I know I am), but I think people need to be prepared for more.

So what reforms of the lifestyle design movement would be necessary to make it into a truly positive social movement? Here are some ideas:

• Lifestyle design leaders could emphasize social problems, especially “low hanging fruit” and encourage would-be lifestyle designers to build their lifestyle businesses around these problems. (The issue I’m wrestling with right now is how to fund “difficult journalism“)
• Leaders can encourage their followers to network to solve problems that can’t be solved by individuals working in isolation, and work together to try to find ways to make their projects financially sustainable.
• Leaders can encourage followers to dedicate time and money to learning new skills like programming, engineering, and applied sciences instead of merely trying to capitalize on their existing skills. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but I see advice like “you can write an info product on something you already know about” far more often than I see “maybe you should learn PHP, or go back to school and get a biology degree.”
• Leaders should acknowledge that the dream life of easy money and ample free time won’t come to most people and that their time would be better spent learning new skills and trying to solve serious problems rather than selling pointless info products.

That last one is probably the hardest because it flies in the face of the cult of positive thinking and undermines their own business models (selling people info products and coaching to become successful as info product sellers and coaches). But the more honest among the gurus could admit that many businesses are going to be time consuming and that non-scalable businesses are usually a safer bet. They can even encourage mixed models – both providing an hourly service and selling products.

Is there room for a legitimately socially conscientiousness lifestyle design movement? Probably. Can it survive without being co-opted by hucksters, or devolving into smug “green consumerism” (there’s a reason “lifestyle activism” has traditionally been used as a slur)? It’s hard for me not to be cynical, but I’d like to see the community give it a shot.

Klint Finley is a “bearded weirdo” who blogs about cutting edge topics on Technoccult.net and about Media on Mediapunk.net. Klint recently interviewed Duff and Eric  in an article titled “Beyond Growth – Technoccult interviews Duff McDuffee and Eric Schiller.”  You can follow him on twitter too.

In many ways personal development and marketing resembles a series of large and interconnected cults, and when one is unplugged from such ideologies it is easy to see how deeply we were buried within an elaborate fantasy.  In the case of lifestyle design, the fantasy of conscious consumption has become embedded in the very fabric of its culture.  It is assumed that if you are participating in lifestyle design that you are also somehow more ‘awake’ and intelligent than ordinary Wal-Mart gobbling consumers.  Life style design itself functions in the greater western culture as a form of elite-consumerism,  by building one’s ideal lifestyle around specific artisan consumables, foreign locations, and ‘freedom’ individuals are taking part in a state of fully realized consumerism.

I am not particularly interested at this time in defining who is and isn’t ‘conscious’, (I’ll leave that to the likes of Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson for now) however, it is very important to realize that the entire notion of lifestyle design is a fantasy itself, derived from the same consumption-based ideology that powers Wal-Marts and sweatshops around the world.  As Slavoj Zizek might suggest, the problem is not that we are participating in a fantasy, but the fact that we do not realize it is one. We truly believe that we understand what is going on, and that our role in the system is ethical and even contributing to the greater good.

This fantasy within the lifestyle design community is problematic because as a movement it could be so much more than an elite ‘more conscious’ form of consumption.  It is pretty obvious to anyone looking that this planet is in terrible trouble, if not from global warming, then from the fact that we are raping this planet’s environment in the name of our own comfort.   By participating in lifestyle design as laid out by Tim Ferris and his ilk, followers believe they are bettering themselves and the world by becoming narcissistic “self-actualized” consumers, traveling around the world like Chris Guillebeau contributing countless tons of c02 into the environment all in the name of “excitement,” “changing things,” and completing pointless personal goals. To the gurus who spread these ideologies, any change is good change, so long as it makes you happy, richer, or both.   We can do better than this. It goes without saying that most of the people who try on the lifestyle design…lifestyle find themselves failing long before they buy their $50,000 dream car, and likely go back to their normal dreams of becoming the next James Arthur Ray (okay, maybe someone who isn’t into baking people.)

In my interactions with bloggers such as Charlie Gilkey, Mark Silver, and Jonathan Mead, I’ve discovered there is great merit in engaging bloggers in conversation.   In that sense, this is not just a critique of lifestyle design, but a call to action.  Lifestyle design community needs a wake up call. Lifestyle design needs to become a true movement; it needs to find a meaningful cause that will actually better the planet and its many citizens.  I contend that lifestyle design needs to become a movement focused on building a society that actually works in a sustainable, ethical way, a society that feeds its poor, and renews its natural resources or it will simply not survive. We need to put our creators, hackers, and designers to work engaging culture outwardly, showing mainstream culture that the future is not as bleak as backwoods commentators on Fox News would have them think.

What we need to do is stop focusing on individual desires, and start converting lifestyle design into a collective of people who can influence the greater culture for a sustainable future.  The truth is that lifestyle designers aren’t any different than anybody else on this planet, and as people with a great deal of influence, we have a responsibility (and I hesitate to say this)  to change the world far beyond our own ends.