Timothy Ferriss

SOURCE: Flickr.

[edit] Early life

Ferriss grew up in East Hampton, NY and graduated from St. Paul's School. He received a degree in East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 2000.^[5]

[edit] Career

In 2001, at the age of 23, Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, a San Jose-based online company that sold profitable unregulated sports nutrition supplements without any clinical studies (such as a double-blind study) to confirm their efficacy.^[6]^[7]^[8] He sold the company in January 2009 to a London-based private equity firm.^[9] He also claims to be a full-time angel investor that has invested in Twitter, Posterous, DailyBurn (formerly Gyminee), Reputation Defender, Foodzie, Badongo, RescueTime, and SimpleGeo.^[10]^[11]

He also acts as an advisor to StumbleUpon and Shopify^[10] in exchange for equity, according to his interviews with Kevin Rose.^{[citation needed]}

He holds the Guinness Book of World Records' record for the most consecutive tango-spins in one minute.^[12] Ferriss and his dance partner Alicia Monti set the record live on the show Live with Regis and Kelly.^[13] Prior to his writing career, Ferriss claimed that he became the national champion in the 1999 USAWKF Sanshou (Chinese kickboxing) championship through a process of shoving opponents out of the ring and by starving himself before weign in to compete several classes below his actual weight, although this has never been verified and no public record of this event exists.^[14]In fact, the news and results section of the 1999 USAWKK webpage reveals no mention at all of Tim Ferriss competing in any of their tournaments.^[15] Likewise, an extensive archive of results in a variety of Chinese kickboxing disciplines, dating from 1999 to present, reveals no mention of Tim Ferriss.^[16] In 2008, he won Wired Magazine's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" prize^[17] and was named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Business People of 2007".^[18] Ferriss has also spoken at the EG Conference.^[19]

His show Trial By Fire aired on the History Channel in December 2008. In the show, Ferriss had one week to attempt to learn a skill normally learned over the course of many years, and in the pilot episode he practiced yabusame, the Japanese art of horseback archery.^[20] The show was canceled due to low ratings.

The Aspen Institute named Ferriss a 2009 Henry Crown Fellow in March 2009.^[21]

[edit] Productivity and teachings

Ferriss is known for his application of both the Pareto principle and Parkinson's Law to business and personal life.^[22] He has also taken the position that technology such as email, instant messaging and internet-enabled PDAs complicate life rather than simplify it.^[23]^[24] His teachings fit under the umbrella of what he calls "lifestyle design", in which he promotes "mini-retirements" as an alternative to the "deferred-life" career path where one would work a 9 to 5 job until retirement in one's 60s.^[25]^[26] This involves breaking what he calls "outdated assumptions" and finding ways to be more effective so that work takes up less of people's time.^[25]

[edit] The 4-Hour Workweek

Main article: The 4-Hour Workweek

In April 2007, Random House released his book The 4-Hour Workweek through its Crown imprint. The book warns against information overload, recommends what Ferriss calls "selective ignorance" and coins the phrase "lifestyle design".^[26] He also advocated hiring virtual assistants from developing countries such as India.^[26]

Before the release of the 4HWW, Ferriss was an unknown.^[27] He marketed the book heavily through bloggers with whom he created personal relationships.^[27]^[28] He has since been praised for this technique.^[27]^[29] The book eventually hit number 1 on both the New York Times bestseller list and the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. On December 15, 2009, The Four-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated was released by Random House with several more case studies of people who have utilized Ferriss' methods.

The book also spawned a blog run by Ferriss, which shares the same name but covers many topics. It remains in the Top 1000 on Technorati.^[30] Ferriss stated, in a Fast Company interview, that 4HWW is read by many of the "top tech CEOs in the world".^[31] His blog has since become publishing clearing house for many notable entrepreneurs, bestselling authors and thinkers including Chip Conley, Neil Strauss, Tucker Max, Ramit Sethi, Ryan Holiday, Noah Kagan of AppSumo, Chase Jarvis and others.^[32] The resulting influence from such posts on book sales and other metrics has been dubbed the "Tim Ferriss effect."^[33]

[edit] The 4-Hour Body

On December 14, 2010, Ferriss' second book, The 4-Hour Body, was published by Crown Archetype. The book reached the #1 position in the New York Times Hardcover Advice & Misc. list that week.^[34] It also appeared on the Dr. Oz TV show.^[35]

The book, while commercially successful due to Ferriss' innovative marketing and his enlistment of his blog readers in a successful effort to manipulate the book's rating on Amazon, was not as well received by some critics.^{[citation needed]} In a rare New York Times review of a self-help book, Dwight Garner wrote, "'The 4-Hour Body' reads as if The New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog."^[36]

Ferriss has acknowledged using steroids—including testosterone cypionate, testosterone enanthate, Sustanon 250, and human growth hormone (HGH)—under medical supervision during his recovery from shoulder surgery.^[37]

[edit] The 4-Hour Chef

Ferriss' third book, The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life, is set for publication by Amazon in 2012.^[38] Ferriss intends the book to be as much about "the skill of learning skills" as cooking food.^[39]