Tim Ferriss is not everyone’s cup of tea. I always felt there was some unrealistic expectation setting and marketing snake oil implicit in the title and premise of “The Four Hour Work Week.” Not to mention the 4 hour body–what if you need 5 hours?? The queen of all Tim Ferriss haters has to be Penelope Trunk whose blog headline skills – and sarcastic wit – are evident in her widely read post’s title: 5 Time management tricks I learned from years of hating Tim Ferriss. We featured Tim’s talk from the EG conference on FORA.tv back in 2008. I was in the control room as we pulled the video feed for the sessions.
Certain things you cannot dispute. Tim Ferriss is a fantastic public presenter. His books have sold a lot of copies. He has transformed many lives for the better. And he has been in the vanguard of the idea of liberating yourself from old models of work life design.
A new kudo, then, for Tim. He has created a book club and has an absolutely wonderful first choice. Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding is more than a worthwhile travel book. It is a contemporary treatise on becoming a world citizen for real, and hitting the road to do it. Tim is doing more than the usual, here’s the book of the month choice. He is helping Rolf to monetize, to promote, to harvest social media, to extend his community. More on that from Tim on his blog here. And for the Soundcloud audio session, enjoy below.
One more thing about that EG session. EG was the second conference series created by the fabulous Richard Saul Wurman, years after he created TED. I videotaped Michael Cronan interviewing Ricky at the conference and will find and post that video. I wrote a tribute to Michael on the ShowGo.tv blog when he passed away the first of this year if you are not familiar with him. Michael branded TiVo, Kindle, ShowGo.tv among many others, and created the visual identity for FORA.tv. TED had been posting sessions of EG months after each conference, and I thought, well, why wait, and with the support of EG honcho Michael Hawley, pulled video directly as it was being recorded, and posted those shows on FORA right after the event. Michael, who was paid top shelf fees by the leading venture capitalists and tech companies of the day, agreed to go down early and act as unpaid production assistant to get the initial sessions until I could get there. We shared a room and had a ball. What a gentleman. At one point, we passed by a small bag and a tiny but ferociously loud dog barked at us. A barking bag. For brief comic relief, and for those who will always remember Michael’s angelic but mischievous demeanor, I give you this short video which I call,” Is that a ferret in your bag or are you just happy to see me?”
And the video from Tim’s EG presentation on how to swim from FORA.tv.
Feel Like the Incredible Hulk with Tim Ferriss from EG on FORA.tv