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Rethinking the Office – Dutch Design (Plus: Pics of My Home Office)

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Topics: CategoriesInterviews, Remote Offices

Interpolis – unconventional but damn effective. (photo: jsigharas)

Through simple redesign of workspaces, Interpolis of Holland increased productivity 20%, and sick leave has dropped from 9% to 2.5%. Last but not least, their new design also brings in 90,000 visitors a year.

How was it done?

How do you create a Results-Only-Work-Environment (ROWE) for yourself or a company — and increase profits — by tweaking your surroundings? Continue reading “Rethinking the Office – Dutch Design (Plus: Pics of My Home Office)”

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Why Language Classes Don't Work: How to Cut Classes and Double Your Learning Rate (Plus: Madrid Update)

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Topics: CategoriesLanguage, Travel

Coffee shops vs. classrooms – who wins? (Photo: eye2eye)

This is one of several articles planned as supplements to the original “How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour.” This piece focuses on acquisition of new material; for reactivating “forgotten” languages and vocab, I recommend also reading “How to Resurrect Your High School Spanish… or Any Language.”

Let us begin…

From the academic environments of Princeton University (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian) and the Middlebury Language Schools (Japanese), to the disappointing results observed as a curriculum designer at Berlitz International (Japanese, English), I have sought for more than 10 years to answer a simple question: why do most language classes simply not work?

After testing the waters with more than 20 languages and achieving conversational and written fluency in 6, I have identified several cardinal sins that, when fixed, can easily cut the time to fluency by 50-80%… Continue reading “Why Language Classes Don't Work: How to Cut Classes and Double Your Learning Rate (Plus: Madrid Update)”

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How to Never Forget Anything Again

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Topics: CategoriesMental Performance

Systems allow stress-free productivity without wasting mental RAM. (Photo: Fotopakismo)

The human brain is a wonderful thing, but it’s a bit faulty as a tool for remembering things. Luckily for us (and for our frazzled brains), technology has stepped in to help out.

With the proper habits and the right tools, you and your brain won’t have to remember a thing again.

There are a host of tech tools that can help with taking notes, managing projects and to-dos, and manage your email and calendar needs just fine. Though I’ll include the best choices below, these tools are just one piece of the puzzle. There are more elegant methods (ever scheduled something in Google Calendar via voicemail?)… Continue reading “How to Never Forget Anything Again”

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Rolf Potts Q&A: The Art of Long-term World Travel… and Travel Writing

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Topics: CategoriesInterviews, Mini-retirements, Remote Offices, Travel, Writing and Blogging

rolf potts

Rolf Potts is one of my favorite writers, and his book — Vagabonding — was one of only four books I recommended as “fundamental” in The 4-Hour Workweek. It was also one of two books, the other being Walden; Or, Life in the Woods, that I took with me during my 15+-month mini-retirement that began in 2004.

He interviewed me for Yahoo! Travel almost a year and a half ago, and I’m thrilled to have the chance to interview him about his long-awaited new book and the art of travel writing.

Have you ever wondered what it really takes to pull the trigger and embark on long-term world travel?

Have you ever fantasized about getting paid to do it?

Let Rolf give us a look at both… Continue reading “Rolf Potts Q&A: The Art of Long-term World Travel… and Travel Writing”

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Random and Fun Announcements: Keynote with Mike Shinoda, Inc. 500, Madrid Party, More…

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Topics: CategoriesThe Book - 4HWW, Uncategorized

Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park: more than 50 million albums and counting. (Photo: norrelb)

Rather than sprinkle these announcements around, I figured I’d just load up one post. Hope to bump into some of you at one of these!

Keynote with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park in Las Vegas

I’ll be doing an opening keynote with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park fame at BlogWorldExpo in Las Vegas, Sept. 21st at 9am. Hosted with Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Worldwide, it’s going to be a blast. Here’s what we’ll be covering… Continue reading “Random and Fun Announcements: Keynote with Mike Shinoda, Inc. 500, Madrid Party, More…”

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Stop Rationalizing and Make Hard Decisions: Learning from Dr. King

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Topics: CategoriesUncategorized

Greetings from London.

I thought I’d share the below quote, which was sent to me (Thanks, Thao!) when I was considering whether or not to put up the controversial FISA post. I knew beforehand that it would lose me some readers.

The few words below cut through hours of meaningless deliberation and made the decision simple… Continue reading “Stop Rationalizing and Make Hard Decisions: Learning from Dr. King”

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The Fortune 500 4-Hour Workweek: Multiplying Output in Groups (Plus: Downloadable Checklists)

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Topics: Categories4-Hour Case Studies, Automation, The Book - 4HWW

For English subtitles, choose “Danish” from the “Choose Language…” drop-down.

There is a misconception that lifestyle design is just for entrepreneurs or CEOs.

In reality, the principles — borrowed from economics and behavioral psychology — can be applied within organizations and groups with even more dramatic effects.

Just watch the 25-minute segment above from the Danish equivalent of the BBC (DR1), where lifestyle design is tested by both an employee at insurance giant Codan and by the CEO of a fast-growing microbrewery. For English subtitles, choose “Danish” from the “Choose Language…” drop-down.

Who made more progress? The boss or the person with a boss? The results might surprise you… Continue reading “The Fortune 500 4-Hour Workweek: Multiplying Output in Groups (Plus: Downloadable Checklists)”

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Total Immersion: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too

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Topics: CategoriesPhysical Performance, The 4-Hour Body - 4HB

Is it possible to get good at swimming late in life? Yes. (Photo: Shutterhack)

Swimming has always scared the hell out of me.

Despite national titles in other sports, I’ve always fought to keep afloat. This inability to swim well has always been one of my greatest insecurities and embarrassments.

I’ve tried to learn to swim almost a dozen times, and each time, my heart jumps to 180+ beats-per-minute after one or two pool lengths. It’s indescribably exhausting and unpleasant.

No more.

In the span of less than 10 days, I’ve gone from a 2-length (2 x 20 yards/18.39 meters) maximum to swimming more than 40 lengths per workout in sets of 2 and 4. Here’s how I did it after everything else failed, and how you can do the same… Continue reading “Total Immersion: How I Learned to Swim Effortlessly in 10 Days and You Can Too”

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4HWW Cover Story in Men's Journal (Plus: Be in a Movie)

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Topics: Categories4-Hour Case Studies, Interviews, The Book - 4HWW

“Nothing bothers me more than sloth. The objective is to fix mistakes of ambition and not make mistakes of sloth. I work my ass off.”

-Tim Ferriss, from the new issue of Men’s Journal, Sept. 2008

Since I’m going nuts preparing for Burning Man, this post will be a short one.

The quote above is from the latest issue of Men’s Journal, where the main editorial cover story is a profile of me and the rise of The 4-Hour Workweek. There are also fascinating profiles of John McEnroe (awesome insight into his tennis strategies) and Gavin Newsom, as well as a cool snapshot of Tonny Sorensen, CEO of Von Dutch and former world champion in Tae Kwon Do.

The journalist, Larry Smith, spent almost three full days with me and covers a lot of details that haven’t been covered before, including background and education; core tenets of lifestyle design and common misinterpretations; interviews with family, professors, and friends; experiments involving critics; even how I organize my environment and home… Continue reading “4HWW Cover Story in Men's Journal (Plus: Be in a Movie)”

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The Philosophies of Work: A Conversation with Derek Sivers of CD Baby

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Topics: Categories4-Hour Case Studies, Interviews, Marketing

Derek Sivers is a stud. I thought I’d share the conversation we had at SF MusicTech Summit. Dozens of topics covered include:

– Testing asssumptions vs. cheating

– PR and reaching out to unreachables

– Micro-testing ideas and products: from The 4-Hour Workweek to Trent Reznor

– Personal outsourcing for creatives

– Filling the void and creating meaning outside of the inbox and office

Derek is a programmer who lost his stage fright by doing more than 1,000 gigs as a circus ring leader. He is also the musician who started CD Baby, the world’s largest online music store for independent musicians. Here are some current numbers:

– 242,846 artists sell their music at CD Baby

– 4,574,622 CDs sold online to customers

– $83,590,381 paid directly to the artists

With more than 2 million digitized tracks under management, CD Baby is also the largest provider of independent music for iTunes… and it all started as a hobby.

How does it work now that it’s enormous? From Derek’s blog:

When I was the owner and president of CD Baby, it ran without me, and I hardly spent 4 hours on it in the last 6 months. It’s wonderful.

Here are a few snippets from our conversation… Continue reading “The Philosophies of Work: A Conversation with Derek Sivers of CD Baby”