The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design Blog. Tim is an author of 5 #1 NYT/WSJ bestsellers, investor (FB, Uber, Twitter, 50+ more), and host of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast (400M+ downloads)
I love testing new gadgets and products. It’s an obsession. For The 4-Hour Chef alone, I tested well over $100,000 worth of gear. OCD + Amazon Prime = expensive. Why on earth do I do it? Simple–I love sharing the 5-10 things out of 500-1,000 that really work. Strange fetish, perhaps, but I get off on it. …
(Photo: Alan Clark Design) [Tim’s note: This is a guest post by Ramit Sethi on two of my favorite topics: one-shot-one-kill e-mail, and creating policies so you never repeat things. Also important to note: great VAs will use templates for answering *your* email; my assistant Amy uses more than a dozen specific templates to handle …
Continue reading “How to E-mail Virtual Assistants (or Any Assistants): Proven Templates”
The following post is a guest post by John Hargrave, whom I met in 2007 at SXSW. If you find large-scale pranks (Super Bowl, anyone?), impersonating celebrities, and other clever mischief amusing, he’s the king of the domain. His book Prank the Monkey is a guide to unleashing your inner Loki. Given my interest in …
Continue reading “How to Make Visa Obey Your Every Desire: The Credit Card Concierge Experiment”
The Wilburns have used freelancers in India, Israel, and Britain. (Photo: Dana Smith) Here is the beginning of a worthwhile article in the current issue of Businessweek called “Mom-and-Pop Multinationals” [ed. note: please allow extra load time, as this link now goes to the Internet Archive]. Ever wondered how much personal outsourcing really costs? How to …
Continue reading “Mom-and-Pop Multinationals: How to Go Global”
What happens when a successful US-based computer programmer, who lost his lucrative job to outsourcing, travels to India to try to get it back? Will he discover the secret of India’s success, or that sending jobs overseas is an unstable gamble? The videos below share his incredible experience. It’s a fascinating and humanizing portrait of …
Berkshire Hathaway vs. Nasdaq (orange), 1984-2004 I met David Hassell in Omaha at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, and he asked me an interesting question: Do you think that the value of time can compound like interest? Three glasses of wine into a post-event party with Cirque du Soleil performers, I didn’t have a …
Continue reading “Lifestyle Investing: "Compound Time" Like Compound Interest?”
[IMPORTANT: Please note this was an APRIL FOOL’S DAY joke! Please read the whole post, especially the postscript.] Will the real Slim Shady please stand up? This is Tim Ferriss. The real Tim Ferriss. This is the first time I have written a post on this blog since March 30, 2007, 366 days ago, when …
Continue reading “The Grand Illusion: The Real Tim Ferriss Speaks”
Do you want to get a promotion, make $500,000 per year, appear on Oprah, or have 10x the number of customers? Be careful what you ask for. GetFriday, a personal outsourcing firm in India, was thrust into the limelight when The 4-Hour Workweek hit #1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and their client …
Continue reading “GetFriday and the Cost of Success: Exclusive Letter from the CEO”
So good I had to show it to you again. This past Tuesday, I was part of a segment on the CBS Early Show on personal outsourcing called “Average Joes, Janes Outsourcing Tasks.” Check out the video, one of the best I’ve seen on the topic, here. It includes case studies. Two of my favorite …
Continue reading “The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant?”
First, a few questions from Eastern Europe for you all. Take a minute to seriously consider each: Envision the 5 books that have most impacted your life. How would your life be different if you’d never read them? Where might you be today if you’d never met the most influential teachers in your life, past …
Continue reading “LitLiberation: How to Travel the World–and Get a Personal Assistant–for Free”