He claims to have set the record for most tango turns performed in a minute. This is true. The problem is…there is no competition for the most tango turns completed within a minute. Tango is a sensual dance. Doing the most tango turns is meaningless to Tango.

Think of it like this; In baseball a Pitcher sets a world record for the most baseballs thrown in a minute from the pitching mound to the short stop. Sure, the guy sets a record, but it’s totally meaningless to his skills as a baseball player or the game of baseball. There is no competition to see who can throw the most baseballs and no pro pitcher would waste his time even trying.

This is the case with Ferriss’s tango record. Totally meaningless… and he didn’t even perform it well at all.

My friend read the book (I outsourced it to him, LOL) and from the stuff he quoted from the book, I won’t waste my time reading it.

I am starting a new semi-regular feature here called Behind the Meme. You’ve heard of the VH1 show Behind the Music. This is similar. Each post will take a look at a meme (e.g. an idea that spread through conversations)

The 4-hour workweekEscape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new richby Tim FerrissISBN-10: 0307353133 ISBN-13: 978-0307353139 Published by Crown/Random House (April 24, 2007) Tim Ferriss sure knows how to launch a book. I was amazed by the speed with which

thanks for the post

NTS

By following simple advice heard from Dr. Phil show, you can find inner peace. Dr. Phil says: “The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started and have never finished.”

So I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn’t finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of merlot, a bottle of white zinfandel, a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a bottle of Kahlua, a package of Oreos, the remainder of my old Prozac prescription, the rest of the cheesecake, some Doritos and a box of chocolates.

Naturally I am working a 4-hour work week. And you have no idea how freaking good I feel! ;-)

Thanks for the reply and clearing things up.
I see a few things different now. I’ll be a LOT slower next time with my comments.

Let’s hope we all find a good way to improve on our work / life balance.
Have to go now. Installing Auto-Reply haha ;)

1. I know it seems unbelievable, but nothing in my bio is made up. To address the question about the tango world record, I set it on Live with Regis and Kelly for Guinness, and the video is on my site. For cage fighting, I used to train and compete with Shooto fighters in Tokyo (including Kiguchi Dojo and those from the original Japan Vale Tudo), and I was a police officer in the Chinese series “Human Cargo” — we shot US-based scenes in Oakland — which was broadcast in the mainland and HK around 4-6 years ago.

2. The outsourcing is definitely a multi-faceted socio-economical and political topic. I recently spoke at the Ignite keynote for Web 2.0 last week (www.web2expo.com) and was approached by a Swiss gentleman who works at UBS, the investment bank, in Zurich. While we were talking, another person walked up and asked if I felt bad about taking jobs from Americans to give to Indians, and the Swiss gentleman answered it for me. He said, “Tim, you’re actually in social development. In Switzerland, a recent study showed that for every white-collar job that was outsourced to India we were bringing 25 people above the poverty line.” He explained that five people could be paid the same wages as one Swiss, and five people depend on each of those five. The Swiss would be provided for by social services in Switzerland until he or she got another job, where the Indians did not have that provision.

Please note that the wages paid to these overseas workers are often the highest-paying jobs available in their countries. $5/hour doesn’t should like much here, but in India — even in a place like Argentina, where I used to live — it can go quite far. There are plenty of Americans overseas who work for $5/hour, and I’ve used them as well. It’s not underpayment; it’s just payment in another economic structure. I don’t in any way recommend exploitation in the book — I recommend being someone who “moves resources from low-yield areas to high-yield areas,” which is precisely how J.D. Say originally defined and coined the word “entrepreneur.”

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I don’t blame people for being skeptical, as I’m a skeptic myself. The whole premise seems impossible, but as Billy and the dozen or so case studies in the book will attest, it isn’t. It’s just uncommon. To respond to Oliver’s last two sentences, the book is all about finding your own path, not about being Tim Ferriss. Most people have no interest in tango or cage fighting, and I push the principles to extremes, but people can use time however they please once they create it. I just want to give them options.

Hope that helps!

Tim Ferriss
P.S. I actually dig the Chuck Norris comparison ;)