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Tim Ferriss
Born	(1977-07-20) July 20, 1977 (age 47) East Hampton, NY
Occupation	Writer, entrepreneur
Alma mater	Princeton University
Genre	Self-help, Personal Development, Self-experimentation
Notable works	The 4-Hour Workweek The 4-Hour Body The 4-Hour Chef

Timothy Ferriss (born July 20, 1977) is an American author, entrepreneur, angel investor, and public speaker. In 2007, he published The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, which was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, a No. 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, and a USA Today bestseller. The 4-Hour Workweek has made the Best Seller List for 7 consecutive years from 2007 to 2013. In 2010, he followed up with The 4-Hour Body, which was another No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Ferriss's third book, The 4-Hour Chef, was released in November 2012 and was a No. 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Ferriss is also an angel investor or an advisor to Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Evernote, and Uber, among other companies.

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 (after switching from Neuroscience in an effort to "avoid putting printer jacks on cat heads"). After graduation, Ferriss worked in sales at a data storage company. Ferriss was frustrated by inefficiencies at the company and his salary, and began building his own Internet business while still employed at the company.

Career

BrainQUICKEN

In 2001, Ferriss founded BrainQUICKEN, an online nutritional supplements company. It made a product that was marketed as both BodyQuick and Brain Quicken, and whose ingredients included: "Cobalamin, Niacinamide, Folic Acid, 2-dimethylaminoethanol, Pyridoxine HCL, Pantothenic Acid (Calcium Pantothenate), Proprietary Cognamine™ Complex (including components of: Phosphatidylserine, Choline Bitartrate, Vinpocetine, Salix Alba, Thioctic Acid, L-Tyrosine, Ciwujia)." It was claimed that this product would dramatically increase short term memory and reaction speed, taking effect within 60 minutes. It was also claimed that the product was used by 17 world champions, yet no evidence to support either assertion is available. In 2010, he sold the company to a London-based private equity firm.

Angel investing and television

Ferriss is an angel investor and advisor to startups. He has invested or advised in start ups such as StumbleUpon, Lyft, Posterous, Evernote, DailyBurn, Shopify, Reputation Defender, Trippy, Foodzie, Badongo, TaskRabbit, RescueTime, and SimpleGeo in addition to small equity stakes in Facebook and Twitter.

In December 2008, Ferriss had a pilot on the History Channel, where he had one week to attempt to learn a skill normally learned over the course of many years. In the pilot episode he practiced yabusame, the Japanese art of horse archery.

Author

Ferriss is the author of three books, The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef; the first two were No. 1 New York Times bestsellers and the third was a No. 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller.

The 4-Hour Workweek

Ferriss developed the ideas present in The 4-Hour Workweek while working 14-hour days at BrainQUICKEN. Ferriss's frustration and then personal escape from a workaholic lifestyle was the genesis of the book.

The 4-Hour Workweek was rejected by 25 publishers. In 2007, Random House, the 26th publisher, released the book through its Crown imprint. Before release, Ferriss was an unknown. He marketed the book heavily through bloggers with whom he created personal relationships. He has since been praised for this technique. The 4-Hour Workweek would reach No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, No. 1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and No. 1 on the BusinessWeek bestseller list. It has currently sold over 1,350,000 copies and has spent nearly 4 years on the New York Times bestseller list.

The book received both positive and negative reviews. Leslie Garner of The Telegraph noted that, "With a punchy writing style and a higher literacy level than most flash-in-the-pan gurus, Ferriss has struck a chord with his critique of workers's slavish devotion to corporations... Ferriss's book skillfully compartmentalises, then pathologises, workers's unhealthy relationships with office life." Dylan Tweney of Wired wrote, "Nearly every idea taken to extreme. No sense of work being anything more than a paycheck."

In 2009, The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated was released by Random House and included multiple case studies authored by people who have utilized Ferriss's methods.

Blog

Two months before the release The 4-Hour Workweek Ferriss launched a blog for the book, which he updates to this day. His blog has since become a 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, Paulo Coelho, Reid Hoffman (chairman of LinkedIn), Peter Diamandis, Daymond John (founder of FUBU), and others. The resulting influence from such posts on book sales and other metrics has been dubbed the "Tim Ferriss effect."

The 4-Hour Body

In December 2010, Ferriss's second book, The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman, was published by Crown. The book covers more than 50 topics, including rapid fat loss, increasing strength, boosting endurance, and polyphasic sleep. Ferriss also introduces his version of the Slow-Carb Diet, which involves the elimination of starches and anything sweet (including fruit and all artificial sweeteners) and a strong preference for lean protein, legumes, and vegetables.

For the book, Ferriss interviewed more than 200 experts over a three-year period. The experts ranged from doctors to athletes to black-market drug salesmen. He said that he had recorded every workout he had done since the age of 18, and from 2004 (three years before his first book was published) he had tracked a variety of blood chemistry measurements, including insulin levels, hemoglobin A1c, and free testosterone.

The 4-Hour Body was an immediate bestseller and debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list. It peaked at No. 4 on both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today's lists, and was one of Amazon.com's top 5 bestselling books for December 2010 and January 2011. As part of the press for the book, Ferriss appeared as a guest on The Dr. Oz Show and ABC's The View.

The 4-Hour Chef

Ferriss's third book, The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life was released by Amazon Publishing in November 2012.The 4-Hour Chef contains practical cooking and recipe tips and uses the skill of cooking to explain methods for accelerated learning. Ferriss calls this capacity for mastering new skills in the minimum amount of time possible "meta-learning."

The book would go on to debut at No. 1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Prior to the release of The 4-Hour Chef, the book was boycotted by a selection of brick and mortar bookstores, most notably Barnes & Noble, due to the book's publisher, Amazon Publishing. This boycott led to Ferriss striking a handful of partnerships with non-conventional partners, including BitTorrent, Panera Bread, and TaskRabbit. In particular, Ferriss teamed up with BitTorrent to distribute an exclusive bundle of 4-Hour Chef content including excerpts from the book, photos, interviews and unpublished content. The bundle was downloaded over 300,000 times the first week after release. During the first week, the book received coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, CBS, Wired Magazine, Outside Magazine, Dr. Oz, and many other outlets.

Lifestyle design

Ferriss is known for his application of both the Pareto principle and Parkinson's Law to business and personal life. He has also taken the position that technology such as email, instant messaging and internet-enabled PDAs complicate life rather than simplify it. 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. This involves breaking what he calls "outdated assumptions" and finding ways to be more effective so that work takes up less time.

On his blog and later in his subsequent books, Ferriss applied this approach to areas other than business. His book on fitness, for example, claims to provide the exercise and diet advice that produces the greatest results with the least amount of effort or time. Ferriss uses the analogy of the "minimum effective dose" to describe this technique."

Philanthropy

Ferriss is a charity advocate and a member of the National Advisory Council of the public school nonprofit DonorsChoose. His projects and donations have raised more than $250,000 for underfunded public school teachers and classroom projects, and his campaigns, such as dedicating his birthday to raising funds and heading LitLiberation to increase literacy worldwide, have impacted more than 60,000 students.

Primarily through his blog, Ferriss and his readers have built schools in Vietnam and are active in constructing schools in Nepal, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka.

Personal life

Ferriss lives in San Francisco, California. He claims to speak five languages on his blog. Ferriss holds the Guinness Book of World Records' record for the most consecutive tango-spins in one minute. Ferriss and his dance partner Alicia Monti set the record on the show Live with Regis and Kelly.

Ferriss has acknowledged using steroids, specifically "a number of low-dose therapies, including testosterone cypionate," under medical supervision following shoulder surgery, as well as using "stacks" consisting of testosterone enanthate, Sustanon 250, HGH, Deca-Durabolin, Cytomel, and other unnamed ingredients while training.

Reception

The New York Times said Ferriss was "somewhere between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk." Newsweek declared Ferriss "The World's Best Guinea Pig" In 2008, he was named Wired's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time." He was named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Business People of 2007." In 2012, he was listed in Newsweek's Digital Power Index 100 as the 7th most powerful online personality. Ferriss was named a 2009 Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute.

Both The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek are in the "10 Most Highlighted Books of All Time" on Amazon Kindle. His blog is listed as one of Inc.'s "19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now."

Controversy

Ferriss has stated that, prior to his writing career, he won in the 165 lb. weight class at the 1999 USAWKF national Sanshou (Chinese kickboxing) championship through a process of shoving opponents out of the ring and by dramatically dehydrating himself before weigh in, and then rehydrating before the fight in order to compete several classes below his actual weight.

He has also faced repeated allegations of manipulating the Amazon review system, via soliciting or paying for reviews, a practice known as "log rolling." In a New York Times titled "On Amazon, Cooking Up Friendly Reviews," by David Streitfeld concerning Amazon's broken review system, it was noted that many of the four and five star ratings that Mr Ferriss' books achieved were given on the first day by reviewers who had no other record of Amazon reviews, and who also admitted to not having read the book they reviewed.

References

1. Grant, Elaine Appelton (March 25, 2008). "4 Questions for Productivity Guru Tim Ferriss". US News and World Report. Retrieved April 4, 2008.
2. Hartley, Matt (April 26, 2011). "Ottawa's Shopify launches $500,000 Build-A-Business promotion". National Post.
3. ^ Chalupa, Andrea; Maney, Kevin (October 11, 2007). "Tim Ferriss Wants You to Get a Life". ABC News.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
4. ^ "Hardcover Business Best Sellers". The New York Times. August 5, 2007.
5. ^ "Best Selling Books". Wall Street Journal. August 10, 2007.
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7. "# 5: 4 Hour Work Week". USA Today. March 30, 2008.
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10. ^ Taylor, Ihsan (January 2, 2011). "Best Sellers Hardcover Advice & Misc". The New York Times.
11. Streitfeld, David (August 16, 2011). "Amazon Set to Publish Tim Ferriss". The New York Times.
12. ^ "Best-Selling Books, Week Ended Nov. 25". Wall Street Journal. November 30, 2012.
13. Wauters, Robin (April 29, 2010). "Tim "The 4-Hour Workweek" Ferriss on Angel Investing (Video)". TechCrunch.
14. Bertoni, Steven (April 14, 2011). "Tim Ferriss on Facebook, Twitter And Building A Huge Web Brand". Forbes.
15. Timothy Ferriss ’00. Princeton Alumni Weekly.
16. Hall, Cornelia (May 9, 2007). "Ferriss '00 takes the day off". The Daily Princetonian.
17. Ferriss, Timothy (2007). The 4-Hour workweek. Random House. p. 13. ISBN 9780307353139. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
18. ^ Rosenbloom, Stephanie (March 25, 2011). "The World According to Tim Ferriss". The New York Times.
19. http://brainresearchsupplements.com/brainquicken-by-body-quick-llc/
20. http://s3.amazonaws.com/quarkbase_test.com/brainquicken.com-snapshot.jpg
21. • Bowers, Brent (June 13, 2007). "In the Hunt; The Hectic Chronicles". New York Times.
    • Ferriss, Tim (September 5, 2007). "How I Work". CNN Money. Retrieved April 5, 2008.
    • Tim Ferriss Wants You to Get a Life ABC News. October 11, 2007.
22. Warrillow, John (October 6, 2010). "Why Tim Ferriss Sold His Muse". The Globe and Mail. Toronto.
23. Warrillow, John (November 11, 2010). "Why Tim Ferriss Sold His Muse". Inc. Magazine.
24. Hartley, Matt. Ottawa’s Shopify launches $500,000 Build-A-Business promotion. National Post. April 26, 2011. "This year, participants will receive advice on building their fledgling businesses from some of the most well-regarded names from the startup and technology worlds – including prominent angel investor Tim Ferriss."
25. Hill, Kashmir. Taking My Measure. Forbes. April 6, 2011.
26. Tim "The 4-Hour Workweek" Ferriss On Angel Investing (Video). TechCrunch. "Some of the companies he's invested in and/or acts as an advisor for are Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Posterous, SimpleGeo and DailyBurn."
27. Bertoni, Steven. Tim Ferriss On Facebook, Twitter And Building A Huge Web Brand. Forbes. April 14, 2011. "Q: You were an early investor in Twitter, what did you see in the company? A: I'm involved with the Tech scene and companies ranging from Facebook, Stumbleupon and Twitter. I knew a number of the guys and a number of the investors. I decided to invest when I saw Twitter..."
28. Wauters, Robin. Tim Ferriss Joins Startup Evernote As Strategic Advisor. TechCrunch. May 18, 2010.
29. Bertoni, Steven. Tim Ferriss On Facebook, Twitter And Building A Huge Web Brand. Forbes. April 14, 2011.
30. Moran, Gwen. Big Investors Are Helping Trippy Go the Distance MSNBC. June 9, 2012. "First, he approached Tim Ferriss, author of the bestselling book The 4-Hour Workweek, to be an advisor. Ferriss wanted in—and also wanted to be part of the seed investing team..."
31. Busque, Leah. The Best $750 I Ever Spent Bootstrapping My Startup: One Plane Ticket West. The Huffington Post. January 18, 2012.
32. Rao, Leena. Kevin Rose Invests In Facebook On SecondMarket. TechCrunch. January 29, 2011.
33. Kingcaid, Jason Feel the DailyBurn TechCrunch. May 26, 2009.
34. Marketing Ideas #17 Tim Ferriss Trial by Fire on the History Channel Unconventional Marketing. December 3, 2008.
35. How Does a Bestseller Happen? A Case Study in Hitting #1 on the New York Times. FourHourWorkWeek.
36. Ohannessian, Kevin (January 20, 2011). "Leadership Hall of Fame: Tim Ferriss, Author of "The 4-Hour Workweek"". Fast Company.
37. Pfeffer, Jeffrey (March 19, 2011). "What You Can Learn from Tim Ferriss about Power". Harvard Business Review.
38. "The 4-Hour Workweek Random House page". Random House. April 24, 2007.
39. ^ Scoble, Robert (March 2008). "Meet the Press". Fast Company.
40. Williams, Alex (November 11, 2007). "Meet the Press". The New York Times.
41. Rubel, Steve. "The 4-Hour Workweek – Behind the Meme". MicroPersuasion.com. Retrieved April 5, 2008.
42. "Online Extra: The BusinessWeek Best-Seller List". September 9, 2007.
43. Schuessler, Jennifer (January 23, 2011). "Hardcover Advice & Misc". The New York Times.
44. "Best-Known Projects publisher=Publishers Marketplace". {{cite web}}: Missing pipe in: |title= (help)
45. Garner, Leslie (May 7, 2008). "Tim Ferriss: the clock watcher". The Telegraph. London.
46. Tweney, Dylan (June 15, 2007). "Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek? You Should Be So Lucky". Wired.
47. "The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated Random House page". Random House.
48. Ferriss, Tim. "4-Hour Workweek Blog". FourHourWorkWeek.com.
49. Fourhourworkweek.com/Guest Posts
50. Ellsberg, Michael (January 11, 2012). "The Tim Ferriss Effect: Lessons From My Successful Book Launch". Forbes.
51. ^ Ferriss, Tim (December 14, 2010). "The 4-Hour Body: How Do You Follow Up A #1 Bestseller Without Repeating Yourself?". The Huffington Post.
52. Garner, Dwight (January 6, 2011). "New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!". The New York Times.
53. "4-Hour Body – The Slow-Carb Diet". Gizmodo. December 14, 2010.
54. Cahalan, Susannah (December 10, 2010). "The 4-Hour Body: Advice from the guy who knows everything". New York Post.
55. "Best-Selling Books Week Ended Jan. 9". The Wall Street Journal..
56. "Best-Selling Books Database: The 4-Hour Body". USA Today.
57. "Bestsellers in Books for the Week of December 27, 2010". Amazon.com.
58. "Four Hours to Your Perfect Body, Pt. 1". Dr. Oz.
59. "Tim Ferriss and The 4-Hour Body on "The View"". February 15, 2011.
60. Streitfeld, David (August 16, 2011). "Amazon Set to Publish Tim Ferriss". The New York Times.
61. ^ The 4-Hour Chef
62. "Amazon Publishing Acquires No. 1 and Four Years Running New York Times Best-Selling 4-Hour Guru Timothy Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Chef," to Launch New York Imprint". Reuters.com. August 16, 2011.
63. Timothy Ferriss's 'The 4-Hour Chef' stirs up trouble. USA Today. November 19, 2012.
64. Ungerleider, Neal (November 16, 2012). "Tim Ferriss Teams Up With BitTorrent". FastCompany.
65. ^ Streitfeld, David (November 20, 2012). "Tim Ferriss and Amazon Try to Reinvent Publishing". New York Times.
66. "Tim Ferriss Presents: The 4-Hour Chef". TaskRabbit.
67. Lunden, Ingrid (November 16, 2012). "With Amazon Publishing Stonewalled By Retailers, Tim Ferriss Taps BitTorrent To Market His New Book". TechCrunch.
68. Protalinski, Emil (November 30, 2012). "Thanks to BitTorrent, The 4-Hour Chef goes from being boycotted by Barnes and Noble to a bestseller". The Next Web.
69. "The 4-Hour Bestseller (Thank You)". BitTorrent. November 30, 2012.
70. Trachtenberg, Jeffery A. Amazon Publishing Signs Up Timothy Ferriss's Next Book. Wall Street Journal. August 16, 2011.
71. Deutsch, Lindsay (November 29, 2012). "Book Buzz: Give the gift of books this holiday season". USA Today.
72. Schawbel, Dan (November 20, 2012). "Tim Ferriss: What Cooking Can Teach You About Learning". Forbes.
73. "Timothy Ferriss talks food, life lessons". CBS This Morning. November 23, 2012.
74. Ferriss, Timothy (November 20, 2012). "From Modern to Mallmann". Outside Magazine.
75. "Tim Ferriss's Plan to Master Cooking in 4 Hours, Pt 1". Doctor Oz.
76. R. della Cava, Marco (January 28, 2008). "Services cater to our speeded-up lives". USA Today. Retrieved April 4, 2008.
77. Ferriss, Tim (March 4, 2008). "I receive 500 to 1,000 emails per day". The Economist. Retrieved April 4, 2008.
78. Williams, Alex (November 11, 2007). "Meet the Press". The New York Times. Retrieved April 4, 2008. "Most fundamentally, Mr. Ferriss turned ruthless against e-mail. "
79. ^ Dannen, Chris (September 2007). "Seven Questions with the 4-Hour Workweek Evangelist". Fast Company. Retrieved April 24, 2008.
80. Ferriss, Timothy The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich' Crown (2007)
81. ^ Ferriss, Tim (December 13, 2010). "4-Hour Body – The Principle of the Minimum Effective Dose". Gizmodo.
82. Ferriss, Tim (October 9, 2007). "The Karmic Capitalist: Should I Wait Until I'm Rich to Give Back?". The Huffington Post.
83. "Meet the Team". DonorsChoose.org.
84. "Tim Ferriss's Give-Back Birthday". DonorsChoose.org.
85. "LitLiberation". Donorschoose.org.
86. Ferriss, Tim (May 12, 2009). "Measuring Social Media Campaigns: A Philanthropic Case Study". The Huffington Post.
87. Rebecca Grant (July 27, 2012). "The four-hour impact: Tim Ferriss partners with Vittana to raise $100K by midnight". VentureBeat.
88. Michael Roberts (July 2011). "The Life Hacker". Outside Magazine.
89. Zee (May 15, 2011). "Tim Ferriss: The Eternal Student".
90. http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/about/. Retrieved November 26, 2013. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
91. PAW: Alumni Spotlight. "...Ferris [sic] and Monti executed a jaw-dropping 37 tango spins in a minute. They shattered their own record of 27, set in June 2005 during the tango world championship in Buenos Aires".
92. Tim Ferriss (2006). Tango World Record (http://youtube.com/watch?v=H9pWKB2D23k). Live with Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa. {{cite AV media}}: External link in |medium= (help)
93. http://www.askmen.com/celebs/interview_400/493c_tim-ferriss-interview.html
94. Guo, Jerry (January 4, 2011). "The World's Best Guinea Pig". Newsweek.
95. Tweney, Dylan (March 31, 2008). "Tim Ferriss Takes Wired.com's Self-Promotion Prize". Wired.
96. Hannessian, Kevin (February 15, 2008). "Fast Company's Most Innovative Business People of 2007". Fast Company.
97. "Digital Power Index: Personalities". Newsweek.
98. "Aspen Institute Names 2009 Henry Crown Fellows". The Aspen Institute. March 30, 2009.
99. "Most Highlighted Books of All Time". Amazon.com.
100. Chafkin, Max. "19 Blogs You Should Bookmark Right Now – Tim Ferriss". Inc.
101. ^ "The 7 Commandments of Blogosphere (and Life) Self-Defense", Ferriss's blog, August 2007
102. Tweneymail, Dylan. Tim Ferriss’ Four-Hour Work Week. Wired. March 16, 2007.
103. Brickman, Sophie. Tim Ferriss has strong likes: knives, kettlebells. San Francisco Chronicle. January 15, 2012.
104. Streitfeld, David (December 4, 2012). "On Amazon, Cooking Up Friendly Reviews". The New York Times.

External links

• Tim Ferriss Blog
• Problogger Interview: with Tim Ferriss
• Former desk slave Tim Ferriss on why you only need to work a four-hour week from The Independent
• Tim Ferriss: The Clock Watcher from The Daily Telegraph
• Tim Ferriss: "The 4-hour workweek" on YouTube – Tim Ferriss (TEDtalks): "How to feel like the incredible hulk" on YouTube,
• Better, Faster, Stronger from The New Yorker
• The 4-Hour Body and Slow-Carb Diet Apps for Rapid Fat Loss and Muscle Gain (Android/iPhone)

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