Regrets, I’ve had a few (but not too few to mention)

The ‘Regrets of the Typical American’ have been analysed in a new study that not only looks at what US citizens regret most, but provides some clues for those wanting to know whether it is better to regret something you haven’t done, or regret something you have.

The research has just been published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science and was carried out by psychologists Mike Morrison and Neal Roese who used random dialling to call people and survey them about a troubling regret.

As blues singers have suggested for years, love tops the list (click for larger version):

Previous studies on regret have talked to college students who are probably not ideal for this sort of research as they tend to be quite young and, quite frankly, really haven’t fucked up enough to give a good idea of what the average person laments about their life.

This was the first study to survey a representative sample of all ages, incomes and education levels and although love topped the list, there were some interesting differences in the details.

Women, who tend to value social relationships more than men, have more regrets of love (romance, family) compared to men. Conversely, men were more likely to have work-related (career, education) regrets. Those who lack either higher education or a romantic relationship hold the most regrets in precisely these areas.

Americans with high levels of education had the most career-related regrets. Apparently, the more education obtained, the more acute may be the sensitivity to aspiration and fulfillment. Moreover, the youngest and least-educated people in our sample, who most likely possess the greatest capability of fixing their regrets, were indeed the most likely to provide fixable regrets.

The study also found that regrets about things you haven’t done were equally as common as regrets about things you have, no matter how old the person.

The difference between the two is often a psychological one, because we can frame the same regret either way – as regret about an action: ‘If only I had not dropped out of school’; or as a regret about an inaction: ‘If only I had stayed in school’.

Despite the fact that they are practically equivalent, regrets framed as laments about actions were more common and more intense than regrets about inactions, although inaction regrets tended to be longer lasting.

So the question of whether it is better to regret something you haven’t done than regret something you have, might actually be answerable for some people, but we still don’t know how much choice we have over adopting the different views of regrets or whether this is largely determined by the situation.

Link to summary of study ‘Regrets of the Typical American’.
Link to write-up on PhysOrg.

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Moving forward: TEDxTokyo shares their story

Via the TEDx Blog:

Patrick Newell, organizer of TEDxTokyo, has been collecting and sharing news from TEDx communities affected by the recent tragic events in Japan. He sends this report:

The effects of the earthquake that struck the Tohoko region of Japan on Friday, March 11, has had an impact all around the world.

Here in Tokyo, thousands were stranded as transport systems came to a sudden halt. A shortage of water, food, fuel and electricity continue to cause anxiety, while uncertainty over the situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant has led to health concerns for millions across the east of the country. In the hardest hit areas, over 20,000 people are dead or missing, and hundreds of thousands are now living in shelters.

Whilst many upcoming events in the region have subsequently been cancelled, the TEDxTokyo community feels more determined than ever to hold our big annual event as originally planned on May 21. In times of crisis, there is no understating the importance of sharing ideas, solutions and stories of human resilience and unity. TEDxTokyo will enable this to take place against the background of the huge upheaval we are now seeing.

Beyond our event itself, the TEDxTokyo community are working reactively and proactively to help those in the Tohoku region, through the establishment of a reconstruction planning team, partnership to provide immediate support for existing orphanages, children who have lost their parents, a disaster relief supply center at a local international school, and through personal donations of money, goods and time to local relief organizations.

To find out more about these efforts please read this post on the TEDxTokyo blog.

Please join us and share your stories of ways in which the situation in Japan has influenced your local communities. Post stories on our Facebook page or email stories@tedxtokyo.com.

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How to Prove that You Are Worthy of a Raise

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Watch the archive of TEDxChange @ TEDxDelhi

This past Tuesday at 3pm Indian Standard Time, an inspiring group of thinkers gathered in New Delhi to talk about new ideas in world health and development coming out of India, during TEDxChange @ TEDxDelhi. Recognizing that 3pm IST is the middle of the night for many people who’d like to watch, the Gates Foundation is hosting an archive of the 90-minute event here. Want to know more before you tune in? Read the TEDx Blog’s coverage of TEDxChange @ TEDxDelhi, assembled using Storify. Tweets, photos, statuses and other updates tell the story of an energizing day of ideas.

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How to Magically Transform Your Irritations into Personal Development Teachers

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Don’t insist on English! Patricia Ryan on TED.com

At TEDxDubai, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question: Is the world’s focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? (For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?) It’s a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas. (Recorded at TEDxDubai, December 2010, in Dubai, UAE. Duration: 10:35)

Watch Patricia Ryan’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 900+ TEDTalks.

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The Most Important Things

Cleaning up emotional pollution. by Steven Stosny The Most Important Things Think values, not goals. Published on March 22, 2011

What is the most important thing about you? What is the most important thing about your life, your relationships, and the next thing you do?

If you can answer these questions with conviction, purpose, and passion, and if your behavior is consistent with your answers, then your life, no doubt, feels completely genuine. You are one of the fortunate few who continually grow, learn, produce, create, and care. You never question your own value or anyone else's. You routinely regulate negative emotions by investing interest and creating value in the world around you.

Those less fortunate have to think long and hard to answer the most crucial questions of their lives and often become appalled at how little their behavior reflects what they deeply believe to be important. The negative emotions that we blame on stress, bad days, excess weight, society, coworkers, neighbors, and family come largely from ignoring or violating what is most important to us.

For instance, when the most important thing about driving is to get to a destination as quickly as possible, people tend to drive aggressively. They devalue their own emotional well being, not to mention their safety and that of every person - every child - in every car they pass. They ignore both the general warning of their emotional discomfort - to value more - and the specific message - develop solutions to any problems that being late might cause. If they blame their discomfort on other drivers, the design of the highway, the boss, getting up late, or their "own stupidity," their discomfort gets worse. Their emotions can no longer guide their behavior to conform to what is most important to them. Instead, they seem to be vehicles of punishment, unfairly controlled by situations or other people. The result is a sense of powerlessness that impairs thinking, performance, interest, and concentration. They will work less efficiently, become exhausted more easily, and be less than sweet to their kids when they get home.

Related Links Adolescence and emotion.The nature of emotionsLike it Or Not, Emotions Will Drive the Decisions You Make TodayMisery Loves CompanyUnhappiness Find a Therapist

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Small and Important
When it comes to staying true to the most important things to and about you, it's the small emotions that matter. Subtle, moment-by-moment emotional experience motivates the vast majority of our behavior. The great passions of life, which seem to have the most significance, never spring from flat emotional landscapes. They rise and fall like waves on a continuous stream of small, unconscious emotions.

The primary function of the stream of emotions is the same in humans as in all mammals, to motivate and energize behavior on the most fundamental level of "approach, avoid, attack." By habit and default, this unconscious stream of small, everyday emotions greatly influences what you will see, think, feel, and do next. If it flows from what is most important to and about you, your life will get better. If not, it will get worse.

The unconscious motivation of behavior is usually different from goals and intentions. For instance, Rick came to my office about a "communication problem" with his teenage daughter. He described a terrible altercation that began with his "harsh but right" reproach: "This is the third time I've asked you to clean your room!" His goal in this interaction, of course, was to get her to clean her room. His intention was to let her know that he was upset because she hadn't. But the motivation that energized his behavior was attack, i.e., make her feel bad for not cleaning her room. Her emotional response, of course, was defensive. After some mutual name-calling (hers under her breath), she cleaned her room, in submission and humiliation, which she numbed with resentment. In fact, this is why she "forgot" to clean it in the first place.

Rick had begun to misinterpret the normal distractedness of a young teenager as a personal affront to him. Feeling disrespected, he attacked. After only a couple repetitions of this dance, his daughter associated cleaning her room with submission and humiliation. It turns out that the human brain will do almost anything to avoid thinking about submissive and humiliating behavior. Rick's daughter naturally sought more interesting things to occupy her mind, which made her more likely to "forget" to clean her room. The more often she forgot, the more he attacked, and the more he fooled himself with the "rightness" of his goals and intentions.

Motivations are basic, simple, and straightforward. Goals and intentions are always complicated and often self-deceptive. In any given interaction, people respond emotionally to basic approach, avoid, attack motivations, not to goals and intentions.

Rick's problem with his daughter, by the way, was about importance, not "communication." The most important thing, he later decided, was to teach her cooperation and respect. Attack motivations can evoke submission and fear, along with the resentment that goes with them, but never cooperation and respect.

Rick left my office rejoicing in his "single-session cure." He thought that his new "insight" of what was most important would change everything between him and his daughter. As it turned out, he did behave differently toward her, when he was conscious enough to remember his "insight," usually after an episode of frustrated attacks. I tried to warn him that conscious insight rarely influences, much less changes, the unconscious stream of small, everyday emotions. Whatever change you make is likely to last only as long as your attention lasts. Once routine sets in, the flow of the stream of returns to automatic pilot.

Most of what we do bypasses conscious thought and feelings. Only waves of larger emotions, like fear, anger, joy, or sadness bulge into awareness. Otherwise, the stream of unconscious small emotions makes a powerful force of habit that easily overrides the best of goals and intentions.

Lasting change usually requires emotional reconditioning, i.e., changing habits. For most of us, that is the only way to ensure that our streams of unconscious, everyday emotions flow from the most important things to and about us.

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5 Reasons to label your digital photos on your phone: Labelbox

Back when cameras were not digital, labeling photos was a process of writing on the back of the printout. If you owned a Polaroid camera, scribbling on the bottom on the photo was another way to describe what was happening in the photo. However, this is no longer the case. Digital cameras and mobile phones have become the main tools in photography. Looking at photos is now usually online. Labeling photos usually involve writing in the ‘comments’ or description of online sites. If you’re looking at photos from your computer, there isn’t even any comments or descriptions for you to understand or remember what was going on.

With apps, it’s possible to label photos on your phone, so when you print them out, or share them online, it’s already labelled with artistic flair and with great style. If you’re using your computer, the label is there inside your photo. That’s why we wanted to create a solution and now released a free iPhone app called Labelbox.

If you are not convinced, here are 5 reasons you should consider labeling inside the photos.

Using a pen means you have to print out the photo first, everyone has to decipher your handwriting, and sometimes it can make the photo harder to see because of the indentations created from the pen. If you make a mistake, it’s not easy to erase. Using labelbox means you can easily place where the text goes and delete it if it looks wrong, no indentation marks either.

With a pen, style is mostly all about your handwriting. If your on the move when your taking those photos, you don’t have access to your computer or laptop to make those extravagant edits to label. An iPhone app like Labelbox has 8 different tapes and labels providing multiple styles to label your photos and share them wherever you are. It takes 3 actions, Select, Swipe and Type, and the photo is labelled in a stylish, well presented manner.

It’s not always about labelling, sometimes you just want to share something but keep a face private, yet you want to keep the original for yourself. Easy! Select a black strip, cover the eyes and it’s ready. The original can still be kept intact.

Everyone is on the go, capturing the moment is the in-thing, but when you’re capturing lots of moments, it’s easy to forget what each moment was. Quick easy tagging using labelbox means you can label quickly before you forget, so when you look at the photo later, you already have a cue. Even better if you’re trying to share instantly, labelling it means your friends quickly understand what it is your photograph is saying. When you look at the photo in years to come, the label is a nice reminder of what you was taking.

Tapes and labelling is only one use… You can get artistic, creating frames, layering labels, and use it as a pet art project. It makes it more fun to try to think out of the box with creative ways to enhance your photos.

If you have an iPhone, download Labelbox for free from the app store. Hope you like it!

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10 Ways Improve Your Memory & Boost Brainpower

Have you ever noticed that some people are able to effortlessly remember even the most mundane details, and quickly comprehend new things, and wished that you too could be like that?  Well, you can.  To unlock the full potential of your brain, you need to keep it active and acute.  Wasting away on your couch watching mindless television shows is not going to help.  Besides getting out flashcards, what can you do to help remember things better and learn new things more quickly?  Check out these tips:

Exercise & get your body moving – exercising doesn’t just exercise the body, it also helps to exercise your brain.  Obesity and the myriad of diseases that eventually set in as a result of being overweight can cause serious harm to the brain.  Furthermore, without regular exercise plaque starts to build up in your arteries and your blood vessels begin to lose the ability to effectively pump blood.  Plaque buildup leads to heart attacks, but it also reduces the amount of oxygen and nutrients that your blood carries to your brain.  When the nutrients don’t make it there, the brain’s ability to function is compromised.  To prevent this from happening, make sure you get moving every day, even if its just a brisk walk, it’ll help you maintain and increase your mental accuity. Brisk walking , swimming and dancing are all excellent activities.Eliminate stressors and seek help for depression (if you have it). Anything that causes you major stress, like anger or anxiety, will in time begin to eat away at the parts of your brain that are responsible for memory.  Amongst the most brain-damaging stressors is depression, which is actually often misdiagnosed a a memory problem since one of its primary symptoms is the inability to concentrate.  If you can’t concentrate, then you might feel like you are constantly forgetting things. Depression increases the levels of cortisol in your bloodstream, which elevates the cortisol levels in the brain.  Doctors have found that increased cortisol diminishes certain areas of the brain, especially the hippocampus, which is where short-term memories are stored.  Prolonged depression can thus destroy your brain’s ability to remember anything new.  Seek professional help to combat your depression – your brain will thank you.Get a good night’s sleep and take naps. Getting a consistent 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night will increase your memory. During sleep, the brain firms up memories of recently acquired information and getting enough sleep will help you get through the full spectrum of nocturnal cycles that are essential to optimal brain and body functioning during the waking hours.  Taking a nap throughout the day, especially after learning something new, can also help you to retain those memories as well as recharge your brain and keep it sharper longer.Write it down. If there’s something you want to remember, writing it down can help.  Writing it down creates oxygenated blood flow to areas of your brain that a responsible for your memories and literally exercises those parts of it.  You can start a journal, write yourself e-mails, or even start keeping a blog – all of these activities will help to improve your capacity to remember and memorize information.Listen to music. Research shows that certain types of music are very helpful in recalling memories.  Information that is learned while listening to a particular song or collection can often be recalled by thinking of the song or “playing” it mentally.  Songs and music can serve as cues for pulling up particular memories.Feed your brain. 50 to 60 percent of the brain’s overall weight is pure fat, which is  used to insulate its billions of nerve cells.  The better insulated a cell is, the faster it can send messages and the quicker you will be thinking.  This is precisely why parents are advised to feed their young children whole milk and to restrict dieting – their brains’ need fat to grow and work properly.  Skimping on fats can be devastating even to the adult brain.  Thus, eating foods that contain a healthy mix of fats is vital for long-term memory.  Some excellent food choices include fish (especially anchovies, mackerel and wild salmon) and dark leafy green vegetables.  Deep-fried foods obviously contain fat, but their lack of nutritional value is going to help your brain or your body, so think healthy foods and fats.Visual concepts. In order to remember things, many people need to visualize the information they are studying.  Pay attention to photographers, charts and other graphics that might appear in your textbook, or if you’re not studying a book, try to pull up a mental image of what it is you are trying to remember.  It might also help to draw your own charts or figures, or utilize colors and highlighters to group related ideas in your notes.Teach someone else. Reading material out loud has been shown to significantly improve memory of the material.  Expanding further upon this idea is the fact that psychologists and educators have found that by having students teach new concepts to others, it heps to enhance understanding and recall.  Teach new concepts and information to a friend or study partner, and you’ll find you remember the information a lot better.Do crossword puzzles, read, or play cards. Studies have shown that doing either of these activities on a daily basis not only keep your brain active, but also help to delay memory loss, especially in those who develop dementia.  So pick up the daily newspaper and work on that crossword puzzle, read a book, or enjoy a game of solitaire.Eat breakfast and make sure it includes an egg. Accrording to Larry McCleary, M.D., author of  The Brain Trust Program, an egg is the ideal breakfast.  Eggs contain B vitamins, which help nerve cells to burn glucose, antioxidants that protect neurons against damage, and omega-3 fatty acids that keep nerve cells firing at optimal speed.  Other foods to add to your breakfast include fruits, veggies and lean proteins.  Avoid trans fats and high fructose corn syrup.  Trans fats diminish the brain cells’ ability to communicate with eachother, and HFCS can actually shrink the brain by damaging cells.  Having a healthy breakfast in the morning has been shown to improve performance throughout the day.

What are some tips or tricks you  have food to increase your memory and keep your brain sharp?

pts to others

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Being a Savage

If I were to create a resume/CV for myself, it would start out something like this:

1989 – arrested for misdemeanor petty theft
1990 – arrested for misdemeanor petty theft (2x)
1991 – arrested for felony grand theft
1989-91 – UC Berkeley, expelled
1992-93 – retail sales associate, $6/hour, fired
…

I tried to plug myself into a system designed to mold me into a regular job-wielding citizen. But for some reason that system didn’t work for me. It kept spitting me out with an error message.

If you’re able to conform to such an environment and be happy and fulfilled on that path, that’s wonderful. But if you’re struggling to fit into a system that keeps spitting you back out again, perhaps your path of fulfillment is elsewhere.

Does it make sense to keep embracing a system that doesn’t really want you?

If you can’t hold down a steady job, pay your bills on time, and stay out of trouble, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. Perhaps it simply means that the path you’re trying to follow isn’t a good match for you.

Your path of fulfillment is uniquely your own. You won’t get there by doing what’s expected of you. You can’t play by the rules you’ve been taught to follow. Those rules don’t work for you.

When you find yourself in a system where happiness and prosperity can’t coexist for you, you’ll sabotage yourself. Either you’ll hold back and do the bare minimum, or you’ll do something that gets you kicked out. So why bother?

Yes, you have needs to satisfy. But it’s a heck of a lot easier to pay your bills when you’re happy and fulfilled. It’s a lot easier to generate abundant income when you feel good — and it’s a lot more intelligent that sacrificing your health due to stress and overwhelm. Making money and being happy are not in conflict, although the system often makes it hard to enjoy both at the same time.

Stop asking “What should I do now?” That question only brings up what others expect of you. The shoulds are nothing but social programming.

Free people don’t have shoulds. They have choices.

Shoulds don’t create happiness and fulfillment, nor do they create prosperity. Shoulds are really good at creating stress though.

Instead ask yourself, “What kind of man/woman do I desire to become?” When you take the time to understand what this person is like, it’s easier to decide what to do. And you’ll be able to see plain as day why you and “the system” don’t get along very well.

If you wish to be a person who’s free, creative, abundant, caring, honorable, and generous, then ask yourself which choices will move you in that direction. Can you see why a part of you would sabotage the cubicle job?

If you desire freedom and flexibility, then avoid situations that trap, confine, or limit you. Choose a path that allows you to keep your options open.

If you want to experience abundance, then don’t choose a path that ensures scarcity or limitation. Choose a path that has a shot of leading to prosperity. Say no to non-prosperous choices like a job with a fixed paycheck.

If you want to express your creativity, then don’t choose a path where someone else tells you what to do and how to do it. Choose a path where creativity is rewarded, not punished.

If you want to be more courageous, then don’t choose a “safe” path. Choose a path that will push you to stretch beyond your comfort zone. If the path won’t build your courage, it’s not your path.

You won’t have clarity about your path until you resolve what kind of person you wish to be.

Now you may look at your path and say, “That is NOT an easy path.”

No, it’s not an easy path at all.

If you want the easy path, follow the system. How has that path been working for you so far?

On one side we have the easy path. On the other side we have the path of happiness, fulfillment, prosperity, and all the other yummy stuff you desire.

If you don’t totally commit yourself to the fulfilling path, you’ll find yourself on the easy path by default. The easy path is automatic. The fulfilling path can only be consciously chosen.

To choose the fulfilling path, you have to be ready to leave behind the comfort of the safety-in-numbers path and embark on a journey that’s uniquely your own. You must be willing to visit places where there are no teachers, no mentors, no bosses, no parents to guide you, knowing that you’re perfectly capable of guiding yourself.

The easy path is someone else’s path. It looks easy because it’s been done before. For the same reasons, it’s also incredibly boring. If you dislike boredom as much as I do, you’ll sabotage yourself each time you try to follow that path. You’ll realize just how pointless it is to spend your precious life doing what’s already been done. Do you really want to live a rerun? Why bother?

As you can see by my resume, it didn’t take me long to realize that my path didn’t look like that of my peers. The benefit of this kind of resume is that I didn’t have the option of pretending that I could still succeed within the system. I had to choose some other path. It hasn’t been easy. It’s been AWESOME!

Of course my resume looks a lot nicer in recent years, but in all honesty I take more pride in how it began. My past screw ups helped me realize that I can’t play by someone else’s rules. I can’t be happy doing what society might expect of me. I have to follow my own path and do what I believe is best. If I try to follow the system, I get really bored and listless, and when I try to compensate for its shortcomings, it spits me out as a criminal, a reject, a defective person.

As it turns out, the system does this to millions of people. So is it really the people who are the problem?

Being a savage isn’t so bad once you get used to it.

If you've found this website helpful, please click the Donate button. I'm grateful for your support.This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2011 at 9:14 am and is filed under Career & Work, Consciousness & Awareness, Purpose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Today: Ask Hans Rosling anything

Today, Monday March 21, from 11:30am-1:30pm Eastern time, the wise and wonderful Professor Hans Rosling will be answering questions in TED Conversations. Ask him about his latest TEDTalk, on the “magic washing machine,” or ask about the latest data tools from Gapminder.org or his recent BBC short film “The Joy of Stats” …

Watch the new TEDTalk “Hans Rosling and the Magic Washing Machine” >>

Browse Hans Rosling’s TEDTalks library — eight talks on data, development, health, hope and sword-swallowing >>

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The sound the universe makes: Janna Levin on TED.com

We think of space as a silent place. But physicist Janna Levin says the universe has a soundtrack — a sonic composition that records some of the most dramatic events in outer space. (Black holes, for instance, bang on spacetime like a drum.) An accessible and mind-expanding soundwalk through the universe. (Recorded at TED2011, March 2011, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 17:43)

Watch Janna Levin’s talk on TED.com where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 800+ TEDTalks.

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12 Lessons Learned While Marketing “The 4-Hour Body”

Charlie’s job entails many things. Feeding tigers not excluded.

Charlie Hoehn first reached out to me through Ramit Sethi in 2008. Almost three years later, he is still working with me.

Here is his initial e-mail routed to Ramit, which I think is instructional for those looking for mentorship of some type:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Charlie Hoehn
Date: Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:25 PM
Subject: Re: Response requested
To: Ramit Sethi

Hi Ramit-

Below is the email I wrote up for Tim Ferriss. Thanks again so much for your insight on how to approach this, and for your willingness to pass it along. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Also, I’d be willing to help you out in any of the ways I outlined below.

Mr. Ferriss-

After visiting your site countless times since May ’07, I’ve come up with a few suggestions that could improve your readers’ experience. Here are two of the things I think you need…

1) A network for your followers: Right now, you have a lot of passionate and devoted readers who comment on your blog. These are people who are likely to spread your ideas. You need a place where your loyal readers can interact with each other more freely, and share their stories about how your book has inspired them.

What it would take: A micro-network. You could frame it as “a crusade against the 9-5 workday.”

How I could help: While I was interning for Seth Godin, I learned how to create micro-social networks for very specific niches. I could easily set this up for you, making it a more exclusive “invite-only,” if you wish.

What the benefits are to you: Allowing your most devoted readers to share their lifestyle design stories will provide you with even more case studies for blog posts (or for a follow-up book). It will also serve as a spot for your readers to get to know one another, and they’ll appreciate that you’ve given them that opportunity.

2) A more dynamic “About” page: Currently, this page starts off with a quote about you from Albert Pope, followed by three thumbnail pictures of your face and a great deal of text outlining your achievements. While your credentials are impressive, this page doesn’t really capture your personality or the lifestyle you’ve designed for yourself.

What it would take: You need a video, between 2 and 5 minutes, that captures the excitement that comes with lifestyle design. The video would showcase exciting things you’ve done (skydiving, tango, motorcycling, etc.), and would be a great way to show your readers that you are the real deal.

How I could help: I can make this video for you for free. I’ve been editing video for more than four years, and started a business in creating movies for special events. All I would need to make your video are great pictures and videos of you. The more they show the human side of you, the better.

What the benefits are to you: Reading something is fine, but an image is far more powerful. This video will establish an even deeper credibility with your new (and old) readers. Even if you end up deciding that it’s not right for your site, you’ll still be getting a great video about you that would normally cost several hundred dollars. If you like my work, we can discuss other ways to implement videos into your site (including higher quality and more exciting videos for your blog).

In exchange for these things, I hope that you’d consider taking me on as an intern (real-world or virtual). I would love to help you out on future projects. Let me know what you think, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Charlie Hoehn
http://www.charliehoehn.com/

MY RESPONSE:

“Charlie! Thanks very much for the suggestions. I currently have the forum and other Ning sites, so I’d be eager to hear how what you propose is different, as I’m always interested in fostering connections between my readers. Last but not least, can you please elaborate on what you mean by “intern”? Would you expect this to paid or unpaid? How many hours per week, etc.? What do you hope the pay-off to be for you during or after the experience? Thanks for letting me know, and for writing. -Tim”

HIS RESPONSE:

Tim- Thanks so much for your response. Here are my answers to your questions:

What I suggest that’s different – I’ve looked at your message boards and Ning sites (I don’t know if you started any of the Ning ones or moderate them). They’re pretty good but they are just places where your readers connect and idly discuss your ideas. The boards and Ning don’t have any call-to-action, really. They aren’t places for your troops to rally for an assignment, so to speak – that’s mostly what you’ve used your blog for. I think you need an exclusive network that has some hurdle to get in (e.g. invite-only).
This could be a group reserved for the people who have actually used and implemented your ideas to create unconventional and extreme lifestyles.

With these people, you compile their stories together and sell it as an ebook (all money going to “Room to Read” or some other good cause). Or you could create a video of the top 3-5 unique lifestyles, following them around and filming them to get a feel for their daily life. This is much more ambitious but something that could turn out really cool. I’d definitely be willing to help you execute these ideas, if you’re interested.

What I mean by “intern” – Non-paid virtual internship for two months, then possibly discussing a real-world internship at the end of the year. For a virtual internship, you could delegate tasks to me, or I could help you with executing ideas you have.

Paid or unpaid – For virtual, unpaid. For the real-world, I’d work for cheap.

How many hours per week – Varies, depending on how busy you are. Five (5) or more for a virtual internship.

What’s the pay-off for me – I would learn firsthand about your methods for extreme productivity and efficiency. Reading has given me a solid level of understanding, but actually seeing it would help me comprehend it more fully. Second, you’ve already done what I want to become: an entrepreneur who travels a lot. Working with you would allow me to really mentally shift gears and help move me towards my goals faster.

That being said, I have a great deal of respect for you and the things you’ve done. I think it’d be brilliant to work with you in some way, but if it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings. Thanks for your time, Tim, and I hope to talk with you again soon.

Charlie

Not bad, right? So I decided to give Charlie a shot. He promptly proceeded to f*ck it all up.

My first assignment was: find three possible movie theaters to rent out for the James Bond premiere of “Quantum of Solace.” At the time, Charlie had a horrible cell phone and missed every third word of the task, which I found out later. Rather than ask for clarification, he assumed he had the gist and missed a few critical details.

The reason that wasn’t the end of Project Charlie: He immediately took the blame, hustled overtime, got it fixed, and the event (a thank-you to readers) went off without a hitch.

We both learned a few lessons. I learned to always ask my assistants to briefly summarize what I’ve asked them to do. Charlie learned how to organize a small event, and that erring on the side of too much detail is better than guessing with too little.

Since then, we’ve both learned hundreds of lessons, and Charlie has been able to travel (hence the tiger).

Now, in 2011, Charlie works for me full-time as my “Director of Other.” This is something like a Director of Operations, but Charlie is also responsible for a diverse range of often unpredictable tasks. These motley odd jobs range from identifying revenue opportunities (apps to hard goods), to photoshopping explicit vajajays pics for 10 hours straight to try and make them look like illustrations (See “15-minute orgasm” chapter in 4HB). Publisher’s orders. For those gents who think the latter sounds awesome, I assure you: it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Moving onward…

This post is Charlie’s first guest post on this blog. In it, he describes 12 lessons learned while marketing The 4-Hour Body, as he was involved from the earliest editorial stages straight through to #1 on The New York Times.

For the last two years, my main project has been working with Tim on The 4-Hour Body. While the making of this book brought me countless memories (many great, some hilarious, and a few cringe-worthy), it was a tremendous learning experience that has undoubtedly changed how I will approach any product launch from this point forward.

The most fun period during this whole ordeal was planning the marketing for the book, and witnessing a world-class marketer’s thought process. And now that 4HB has hit the two biggest milestones we were aiming for (#1 New York Times, #1 Amazon overall), it’s time for me to share a few of the things I learned while marketing a bestselling book.

In this post, you’ll find a list of the key elements that made the 4HB launch such a huge success, ranked in order of “moderately impactful” to “extremely impactful.” You’ll notice that this list is missing a lot of the common marketing advice new authors receive. For instance, Tim set these rules for himself early on:

- No book tours
- No paying for access to email lists
- No intense focus on building Facebook and Twitter accounts
- No paying for consultants who buy your way onto the bestseller list
- No email drip campaigns
- No multi-month pushes for pre-orders

Without further ado, here are 12 lessons I learned while marketing “The 4-Hour Body.”

The sheer volume of 5-star Amazon reviews for 4HB caused confusion and outrage. A lot of people just couldn’t imagine how we were able to get more than 140 reviews (over one hundred 5-stars) in the first 24 hours without paying for them. The reality is not as sexy as you’d think.

Tim had sent out more than 1,000 advance copies of the book. He gave copies to friends, companies where he’d been a guest speaker, and people who’d helped or had volunteered to help with the book. At 5:00am Eastern on December 14th (the day of the launch), we emailed all of those people with the word “Urgent” in the subject line, and asked them if they could spare 30 seconds to write an Amazon review within the next 24 hours, whether they enjoyed the book or not (we never asked anyone to leave a 5-star review). Plain, simple, and it got the job done.

Although this generated a fair amount of backlash from skeptics, it was an immense boon for us to have a solid foundation of 200 positive reviews in the first week.* Having a solid Amazon rating gives the book an enormous amount of social proof that can last for years, and (although immeasurable from our end) boosts the conversion rate on the sales page substantially.

[* To put into perspective how ridiculous it is to have this many reviews: The 4-Hour Workweek has been out for almost four years, sold over one million copies, and has just over 1,100 Amazon reviews (Cumulative: 5-stars). The 4-Hour Body has been out for just shy of THREE MONTHS, and now has more than 1,200 Amazon reviews (4.5-stars).]

There are very few phrases that can simultaneously empower and give you an anxiety attack. “I’ll let you figure it out” is one of them. For the last two years, it’s been repeated to me over and over…

Party for 200 Silicon Valley VIPs on a warship in 24 hours?
“I’ll let you put it together.”

Assemble a draft of a magazine article, based on scattered content?
“Please take care of it.”

Edit and rewrite another bestselling author’s work?
“Go for it.”

Act as the sole point of contact for more than 10,000 customers?
“Get it done!”

At first, these kinds of tasks would elicit Tourette’s-like verbal outbursts and generally stress me the hell out. But after successfully getting through each of them alive, I felt confident enough to take on almost anything that was thrown my way.

“I’ll let you figure it out” was not just Tim’s method of dismissing me or passing along work he didn’t care about; he’s always had a very active role in overseeing my daily output. During the book launch, we’d talk constantly about the progress we were making, and usually had a daily analysis over wine/whiskey where we discussed our marketing efforts. Because he had given me free reign to “figure things out,” I was making most business decisions on my own. This would occasionally get me into trouble during our post-game wrap-up (“I would appreciate it if you’d ask me next time”) but more often than not, it helped that I didn’t need his permission so much during the launch. Because there was no decision-making bottleneck, we were both 10X more productive than an entire team of people would have been.

The next time you feel compelled to micromanage someone you’re working with, say the magic words: “I’ll let you figure it out.” You’d be surprised at how capable most people are. Sure, mistakes are bound to happen, but it will ultimately result in more confident, self-reliant workers.

Throughout the writing process, Tim was ruthless when it came to cutting away the inessential. He’d frequently ask me which five chapters I would take out. I’d answer, he’d remove a few of those chapters, and then he’d ask me again. Finally, we reached a point where he’d cut more than 100 pages of material. Everything that remained was necessary for the book to be great. After three years of writing, he finally sent it in to Random House.

After submitting a book, an author will typically get two revision rounds before it goes to print. Tim somehow managed to squeeze out SIX rounds of edits for a 600-page book. By the sixth round, he was still suggesting several hundred minor edits, fine-tuning each page. Even though his publisher probably (definitely) hated him for this, he ended up with the groundbreaking book he envisioned.

Tim’s negotiations have been among the most memorable conversations I’ve heard over the last several months. He makes enormous requests, and almost always gets what he asks for. I’ve watched him get more than $250,000 worth of inventory for free with a 10-minute phone call. When I asked for his best bit of negotiating advice, he said, “He who cares less, wins.”

All of Tim’s negotiating experience came in handy when it was time to promote the book. He was able to accumulate more than $4,000,000 worth of bonus prizes to give out during the launch, a lot of which came from personal phone calls he made.

Most people don’t have the ability to negotiate effectively, simply because they’re not put in enough situations that call for it. I’m a pretty terrible negotiator, but I’ve improved with Tim’s help. He spotted tics of mine early on (I fill pauses with forced coughs, and say “you know?” to finish thoughts), and gave me a bunch of other helpful advice. For instance, replacing the word “um” or “uh” with silence is the fastest way to sound more intelligent, calculated, and crisp while negotiating (or speaking, in general). You can fix this behavior over time by filming yourself on Skype calls and reviewing the footage.

Another bit of wisdom is to place a time constraint at the beginning of each call (“I can only talk for ten minutes”). The longer you stay on the phone, the less likely your desired outcome will be reached. If phone calls are your weakness, you should stick to email for negotiations so you don’t have to respond in real-time.

Most health authors time the release of their books with New Years’ resolutions. Tim was able to dominate his impending competition by launching 4HB two weeks ahead of them. When all the other health books came out in the weeks that followed, Tim’s book was already leading in the weight loss category. His competitors’ promotional efforts were drowned out by the conversations surrounding 4HB.

Having the right timing is just as important as the quality of your promotional efforts. Know what you’re going up against and when. You don’t want to be in the process of creating your position when buyers are most receptive; you want to already be established as the category leader.

Tim elaborated on this on Huffington Post:

After reviewing the top bestsellers in health over the last two years, it was clear that a full third of those books had been published in the traditional “New Year, New You” window, with big promotions rolling out on Janurary 1st. In the below chart, produced when I wrote the proposal, you’ll notice that a full half of the December releases fell at the end of the month for planned Jan 1st promotions.

The first order of business was to somehow avoid the category noise and competition for consumers and media outlets of that window.

Great content is absolutely necessary for long-term sales, but you must also take charge of your “windowing” and finding the best combination of low-noise (relatively lower category competition), high-signal (the best call to action to your base with the highest response rates), along with optimal store traffic is the way to go. So, the strategy in a nutshell is NST: low-Noise, high-Signal, growing-Traffic. I didn’t want to come in at peak traffic and then track to diminishing foot traffic.

What did we do? I pitched hard for a December 14 release date. This required flying from San Francisco to NYC to present my case in person to my publisher, Crown.

I felt it would allow me to mobilize my base for multi-copy purchases for the holidays, starting with pre-orders late November, which would increase initial retailer orders, improve placement (even if unplanned), and then perfectly set up strong in-store promotion starting January 1. Books in the same category would be getting started from a standstill in January, whereas I would, i hoped, be steering an absolute avalanche that started as a snowball more than a month earlier.

The publisher, however, had some legitimate concerns.

Moving the book right into the busiest holiday shopping window would mean a few things: little or no available promotions, and, in some cases, little time for retailers to get books out onto shelves.

Making this move, risky from an in-store promotion standpoint, required taking a Hollywood holiday blockbuster approach to the launch. The unusual video trailer/teaser launched last week was intended as a viral focal point of other base-mobilizing efforts.

The video worked beyond all expectations. [more on this later]

Offering incentives is Online Marketing 101. Offering $4,000,000 in bonus gifts for a book launch is online marketing on steroids.

The Land Rush post Tim put up a week before the book came out had a huge impact on sales. It took a few weeks to plan out, but ultimately resulted in more than 15,000 pre-orders over the span of three days.

The basic premise was to offer 2-10X more value in bonus gifts than the number of books being purchased. For instance, if you bought $16 worth (1 book), you’d get $140 in bonus gifts (8.8X value). If you bought $480 worth (30 books), you’d get $1,623 in bonus gifts (3.4X value). This pushed prospective buyers off the fence to impulsively buy multiple copies of the book.* It was a win-win for everyone.

However, Tim and I think we could have sold a lot more copies. The problem with The Land Rush post was that there were WAY too many choices. Tim had gathered so many bonus gifts to give away that we ended up with 16 different book packages. If we were to do it again, we would have had five different price tiers at most. Everything worked out great, of course, but we could have been smarter about it.

In any case, the takeaway here is that if you want to get people to buy copies of your book, give them something of high value in exchange. Make their purchase a no-brainer by over-delivering.

[* We received a fair amount of flak for encouraging bulk orders. There are two things that need to be taken into consideration: One, almost every author you know already does this, but in a less organized fashion; Two, if you think bulk orders were the sole reason we hit #1, you're dreaming. Our bulk order campaign was to drive pre-orders for 72 hours (Dec 9-12), and we ended up moving about 15,000 copies. By the end of The 4-Hour Body's debut week (Dec 14-20), more than 70,000 hardcovers had been sold in the US, an additional 25,500+ in Kindle, and another 32,000 overseas. In the seventh week after pub date, 4HB sold about 30,000 hardcover and 8,000 e-books. The 4-Hour Body also hasn't dropped off the NY Times list since it came out: three weeks at #3, two weeks at #2, and six weeks at #1. There are very, very few books in the world that can reach and sustain those numbers.]

This was not so much of a “lesson learned” as it was merely having my beliefs reaffirmed. Before 4HB, I’d witnessed video teasers boosting sales upwards of 10X. Video converts like crazy when it effectively highlights the product.

The 4HB’s trailer wasn’t just great; it was fantastic. Adam Patch put together a professional teaser that looked good enough to be shown in a movie theater:

Immediately after releasing the trailer, the book’s Amazon rank jumped from #150 to #30, and hasn’t dropped below that number since.

If you’re going to make a teaser video for your product, spend the extra cash on a professional videographer. It is absolutely worth it.

Tim announced his book in September – three months before it came out. After the initial announcement, he ensured that the content on his blog stayed interesting and varied, while keeping the “Buy my book!” posts to a minimum.

Take a look at the sequencing of his posts between announcing The 4-Hour Body and launching it (bolded titles are 4HB-related):

The New Book Unveiled: The 4-Hour Body (Sept. 29)Zen, Tea, and the Art of Life Management (Oct. 5)How to Buy a Round-the-World Plane Ticket (Oct. 8)Have a Good Eye for Ads? Try the 4-Hour Body Experiment (Oct. 13)The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne (Oct. 19)How Tim Ferriss Makes Money (and Other Things) (Oct. 28)20 Things I’ve Learned from Traveling Around The World for Three Years (Oct. 30)How to Email Virtual Assistants: Proven Templates (Nov. 2)8 Exotic Destinations You Can Afford (Nov. 4)4-Hour Body Promo – Half-Naked Girls, Erections, and Stickers (Nov. 17)Clinton’s “Reality Distortion Field” Charisma (Nov. 21)How to Become a Model Photographer in Brazil (Nov. 25)Engineering a “Muse”: Case Studies of Successful Cash-Flow Businesses (Nov. 28)The 4-Hour Body – Official Movie Trailer (Dec. 1)The 4-Hour Body – Sample Chapter and Full Table of Contents (Dec. 6)The Land Rush: 48 Hours to Claim $4,000,000 in Prizes (Dec. 9)Engineering a “Muse” – Volume 2: Case Studies of Successful Cash-Flow Businesses (Dec. 11)The 4-Hour Body is NOW OUT – Live Q&A Today, New Trailer, Free Books, and Much More (Dec. 14)

Tons of great content, and more than half of it had nothing to do with the new book! Tim kept the promotional efforts for his readers to a minimum, as they already had a high likelihood of buying. As a result, he didn’t annoy his readers and all the promotions on his blog seemed crazy, fun, and spontaneous when they finally happened.

A lot of marketers promote their product for several months before they release it. This is not only exhausting for them, but it’s also far less effective than a highly concentrated effort over the span of a few weeks.

Tim’s strategy for marketing on other sites was to deluge readers with quality 4HB-related content. He wanted people to open their RSS on December 14th to find five to ten posts on 4HB, all from different blogs. In order to do that, he had to make sure that all of these sites were promoting “exclusive” 4HB-content in sync with one another.

Brace yourself for the mother lode. Below is a list of promotional blog posts leading up to the launch, along with all the press pieces that followed them:

11/8/10
- BODYBUILDING – The 4-Hour Body Book Promo

11/26/10
- HUFFINGTON POST - America Needs The 4 Hour Body: A Look Inside The New Book by Timothy Ferriss

11/29/10
- WIRED MAGAZINE – Tim Ferriss Wants to Hack Your Body

11/30/10
- HUFFINGTON POST – Tim Ferriss’ New Book ’4 Hour Body’ And Crazy Video

12/1/10
- BUZZFEED – Tim Ferriss’ New Book: 4 Hour Body

12/7/10
- APPSUMO – Healthy Holidays Bundle Part 2: Manly Man

12/12/10
- NEW YORK POST – The 4-Hour Body: Advice from the guy who knows everything

12/13/10
- TECH CRUNCH – Keen On… Tim Ferriss: How To Turn Your Body Into A Startup (TCTV)
- GIZMODO – 4-Hour Body – The Principle of the Minimum Effective Dose
- NATE GREEN – Become Superhuman: Nate Green and Tim Ferriss
- LIVING SOCIAL – Tim Ferriss Book Package for $16
- BODYBUILDING – Tips from “The 4-Hour Body”: Overview
- BODYBUILDING – The Kettlebell Experiment: Bring one to life for $10
- BODYBUILDING – Activate Superhuman Glutes
- BODYBUILDING – Tracking Results
- BODYBUILDING – Kettlebell Swing
- BODYBUILDING – Top Secret Contents Of A Mad Scientist’s Gym Bag

12/14/10 – Launch Date!
- HUFFINGTON POST – The 4-Hour Body: How Do You Follow Up A #1 Bestseller Without Repeating Yourself?
- GIZMODO – 4-Hour Body – The Slow-Carb Diet
- LIVESTREAM – Live Chat with Timothy Ferriss
- MIXERGY – (Quickly) Hacking The Human Body – with Timothy Ferriss
- 37 SIGNALS – Tim Ferriss explains how “The 4-Hour Body” came to life with Basecamp and Highrise
- ZEN HABITS – The 4-Hour Body: The Tim Ferriss Interview on Zen Habits
- ROBB WOLF – The Paleo Solution – Episode 58 (Tim Ferriss Edition)
- MICHAEL PORT – Tim Ferriss interviewed by Michael Port (Part 1)
- CRAIG BALLANTYNE – Tim Ferriss and the Four Hour Body

12/15/10
- COPYBLOGGER – Tim Ferriss on How to Reinvent Yourself with Blog Marketing
- BUSINESS INSIDER – The Guide To Dieting And Sex That Every Trader Should Read
- GIZMODO – Six Minute Abs
- I WILL TEACH YOU TO BE RICH – Sample: The 4-Hour Body: From Geek to Freak
- DRAGON DOOR – Interview with Tim Ferriss, RKCII, about Kettlebells, Preparation for the RKC course, and his New Book The 4-Hour Body
- ABC NEWS – Brr! Can Frigid Temps Lead to Weight Loss?
- CNN REPORT – Exclusive: Tim Ferriss talks with Chris Ashenden about The 4-Hour Body

12/16/10
- ZEO – Children of the Revolution: Tim Ferriss and Zeo
- ABC NEWS – Lose 20 Lbs. in 30 Days? A 15-Min. Orgasm?
- ABC NEWS – Faceoff: Superhuman Bodies, 15-Minute Orgasms

12/17/10
- MIKE GEARY – How GLUT-4 shuttles calories into muscle instead of fat
- PDF PEN – Case Study: Tim Ferriss

12/18/10
- YANIK SILVER – How to Make Yourself Superhuman and Super Productive

12/19/10
- TERRY LAUGHLIN – How Tim Ferriss Learned to Swim in 10 Days

12/20/10
- TERRY LAUGHLIN – Could Tim Ferriss turn The Situation on to Swimming?
- GALLEYCAT – How Timothy Ferriss Hit the Amazon Bestseller List
- FOX AND FRIENDS – Become Superhuman
- SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE – Consumers Turn to Custom Diets to Achieve Their Perfect Bodies for 2011

12/21/10
- EVERNOTE – How Tim Ferriss used Evernote to write The 4-Hour Body
- CNN REPORT – Five Holiday Time Savers
- FORBES – Weighing In On Worst Words On Diet, Exercise And Body Image
- FORBES – Names You Need To Know In 2011: Tim Ferriss

12/23/10
- BLOOMBERG – ’4-Hour Body’ Author Ferriss on Rapid Weight Loss: Audio

12/27/10
- SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS – Author Timothy Ferriss says his book holds key to weight loss, great sex

12/29/10
- CNN REPORT – How one man’s shame sparked a 300-pound weight loss

1/4/11
- NEWSWEEK – Tim Ferriss’ Latest Book Wows
- DUCT TAPE MARKETING – The 4-Hour Entrepreneurial Body

1/7/11
- NEW YORK TIMES – New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life!

1/13/11
- 37 SIGNALS – Tim Ferriss on tolerable mediocrity, false idols, diversifying your identity, and the advice he gives startups

1/14/11
- THE VIEW – The 4-Hour Body

1/15/11
- TECH CRUNCH – The 4-Hour Body: The Real App You Are Working On Is An App Called Yourself (Review)

1/24/11
- DOCTOR OZ – Four Hours to Your Perfect Body

1/26/11
- HUFFINGTON POST - Why The 4-Hour Body Was Years in the Making

1/27/11
- ASK MEN – Tim Ferriss Interview

1/28/11
- FORBES - Success Secrets of ’4-Hour’ Guru Tim Ferriss

1/31/11
- MACLEANS - Fat loss, Great Sex, and Lentils

2/9/2011
- THE NEXT WEB - ‘My book was yanked from Costco shelves because of explicit sex chapters’

2/22/2011
- CBS LOS ANGELES – Author Says Taking Ice Baths Will Keep You Trim

The following internet marketers and health/fitness specialists emailed their lists the week of December 14th.

[Warning: Several of these links direct to squeeze pages.]

- Buck Rizvi
- Chad Tackett
- Craig Ballantyne
- Eben Pagan
- Isabel Del Rios
- Joe Polish
- Joel Marion
- John Romaniello
- Jon Benson
- Josh Bezoni
- Josh Waitzkin
- Kareem Samhouri
- Michael Lovitch
- Michael Port
- Mike Geary
- Neil Strauss
- Pavel Tsatsouline
- Rob Poulos
- Vince Del Monte

[If I left anyone out, please let me know in the comments!]

If you look closely at how many bloggers helped Tim promote the book, you’ll realize it would have been impossible to do if he’d approached them in a sleazy “Pitch my book to your audience!”-kind of way. This behavior is actually very common, but Tim avoided it like the plague. In fact, I don’t recall him asking anyone to promote the book as a favor. He would just tell them about it, and they’d usually want in. Of course, Tim wrote 4HB in such a way that his buddies would want to write about it. In the early stages of creating the Table of Contents, before he’d written anything else for the book, Tim was coming up with chapter titles based on what he thought would make great guest blog posts for his friends.

Most of those bloggers wanted to see Tim and his book succeed, simply because he’s developed meaningful relationships with so many of them. In my mind, this is what separates Tim from a lot of the other online marketers, who might be great at selling and making money, but never do anything truly remarkable. Tim has worked just as hard at building good karma among quality friends as he has at promoting his work, and the former has enriched his life far more.

Most online marketers have a short attention span, a weak filter, and an inability to communicate face-to-face. They salivate when they hear the word “viral” and send out 40 links a day to their friends on Facebook and Twitter. They unknowingly sabotage their own credibility and ensure people won’t pay attention to them when they need it most.

The marketers who will last are the ones who think relentlessly long-term, put out quality content, and recognize the value in building deeper, real-life relationships with their peers. Tim is one of these marketers, and I believe the root of The 4-Hour Body’s rapid success can be attributed to this underlying philosophy.

Before/After of Antonius Momac, who did the Slow-Carb Diet and “Geek to Freak” workouts

The 4HWW markets itself with a great title and a loyal fan base. Most people hear about it through friends who say it changed their life. As a result of word-of-mouth, the book has been on the bestseller list for four years.

The 4HB is far more effective at marketing itself because the content in the book can physically transform the reader in a short period of time. If you lose 20 pounds of fat or gain 30 pounds of muscle in a month, all your friends will be approaching you saying “What the hell did you do?!” I know this because both of my parents lost 25 pounds on the diet, and everyone in their social circles was asking them for advice. Their response: “Pick up a copy of The 4-Hour Body.” BAM, even more books sold!

The beauty of “offline viral” is that it can result in spill-over on Twitter and Facebook. In our case, we see tons of messages every day about 4HB. Here’s a small sample:

“First week on the slow-carb diet done. I’m 5lbs lighter with no added exercise. Now 6 people I know are working with your book.” – Frank Johnette

“Two of my Soldiers lost a combined 35lbs in just over two weeks thanks to @tferriss. Thanks for helping me keep my men in shape!” – Matt Bragoni

“Started @tferriss slow-carb diet on 12/31. Down 20 lbs in 34 days. The Four Hour Body is the book that may just save my life.” – Eric Discher

When you can actually see a book’s effects right before your eyes – when a person looks like the “After” in a Before/After photo – well, there’s no form of marketing that’s more powerful than that.

Tim will readily admit that his greatest asset is his blog. In terms of sheer traffic, it’s in the top 0.001% of all blogs online (top 1,000 of more than 120,000,000). With the push of a button, he has access to hundreds of thousands of people, many of which are influencers (e.g. New York Times journalists) and folks who are willing to help. But how did he build such a huge following of quality readers?

The answer is that his blog gives WAY more than it takes. A lot of bloggers are constantly trying to extract from their readers. They are in a perpetual state of pitching products and injecting ads. Tim rarely asks for anything; he just focuses on putting out quality content that his readers will like. When he does make a big ask, he’ll do it in a way that rewards the reader if they take action. For instance, “Help me promote my book” becomes “If you help me promote my book, you can win a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world.” Every “ask” Tim makes is a painless win-win, and after years of doing this, he now has a loyal army that’s ready to help whenever he needs it. Their assistance is called upon when he’s doing something ambitious (getting the book to hit #1 on NYTimes) or something small and random (having two people show up in a Texas airport to sell him their MacBook chargers). His readers go above and beyond what’s reasonable to help in any situation. That kind of loyalty can’t be bought.

If you don’t believe that the blog is Tim’s greatest asset, consider this: what author in their right mind wouldn’t think of using their 100,000+ subscriber email list during a book launch? Tim didn’t, because his blog is more powerful.

Most of the advice aspiring authors seek out is on how to market their material, but marketing is actually the easy part. The hard part is producing worthwhile content, and holding your writing to a higher standard than everyone else on the playing field. I believe this is why 4HWW and 4HB will continue to do well for years to come. Tim held both works to the extremely high standard of “Will this be the defining book in its category, and will it be just as valuable five years from now?”

Tim will be the first to admit that he’s not the greatest writer, but he has more empathy than just about anyone I’ve ever met. He knows what people want, and he knows how to give them the least painful solution they need, all while minimizing confusion. Put simply, he knows how to make great content.

In the end, that’s what everything boils down to: great content. Without it, marketing is nothing more than flash and noise.

###

Posted on March 10th, 2011

View the original article here

The Productivity Tricks and Daily Habits of Famous People

Famous visionaries often develop a reputation for having a few eccentricities. However, for many people, these small eccentricities are part of a larger group of daily rituals that help them to be at their most productive and prolific. While not all these tips, tricks, and rituals will work for you, they help to shed light on what some of our most beloved cultural icons and historical figures are willing to do in order to stay on top of their demanding workloads.

Writers

1. Addicted to Notecards: Vladimir Nabokov used 5- by 8-inch index cards to compose and order the scenes in his novels. This allowed him to experiment with the order of the chapters before transcribing the final manuscript.

2. Slow and Steady: Stephen King has explained that he always writes 10 pages a day, every day of the year (even holidays). His slow and steady approach to project management has ensured that he has a steady stream of new works entering the marketplace, and he is one of the most prolific modern authors working in America today.

3. Get Up Early: Writers like Mary Higgins Clark and Sylvia Plath started writing at 5 am and 4 am each day, respectively. Both women had small children, and those early moments in the day were the only time they had to pursue their writing careers. Writer Denison Hatch forced himself to write just 500 words per day before starting his day job, and ultimately sold three novels.

4. Get Centered With a Favorite Book Passage: Some writers need to go through the ritual of touching base with a favorite literary totem. For example, Somerset Maugham would read Voltaire’s “Candide” before starting work, while Willa Cather read the Bible.

Businessmen and Entrepreneurs

5. Be Impulsive: In business, if you have a good idea, you need to move quickly to keep ahead of your competition. In the words of Bill Gates, “When you find a good idea act on it right away.”

6. Get Ahead By Making It Personal: “Big businesses will always try to crush small upstarts. To beat big businesses, use the strengths of being small. Big corporations are impersonal; staff are often not treated well. At a small company, you can make sure your staff are proud of working for you and then they’ll work hard to be successful. And small companies are more nimble.” – Sir Richard Branson

7. Work Long Hours Now, Reap the Benefits Later: Ben Franklin knew the benefits of working long hours, as well as being known among his peers as being a person who worked long hours. This work ethic was essential for growing his printing business. He also had a routine of asking himself questions during the day. Ben Franklin asked himself each morning (at 5 am), “What good shall I do today?”; every night before bed (around 10 pm), “What good have I done to-day?”

Thinkers and Artists

8. Get Extreme: Architect Bernard Tschumi avoids procrastination by working at one of two extremes. “I work best either under pressure or by emptying my brain over the weekend,” he explains. “That blank state is helpful. It is like an athlete before a competition.”

9. Force Yourself to Stay Focused: Greek orator Demosthenes would force himself to stay focused on composing his orations by shaving off half of his hair, making him look so ridiculous that he wouldn’t be tempted to procrastinate by leaving his home. Victor Hugo would do something similar, forcing himself to meet his daily writing goals by having his valet hide his clothes. Yup, the guy who wrote “Les Miserables” liked to work in the nude.

10. Never Take Your Eyes Off Your Competition: Playwright Henrik Ibsen would work at a desk decorated with a portrait of arch-rival playwright August Strindberg. Try keeping a picture of your competitors face or company logo on your desk to spur you to new heights.

11. Use Caffeine (But Don’t Abuse It): Mathematician Paul Erdös used the last 25 years of his life to devote 19 hour days to the pursuit of higher math. To stay alert, he amped himself up with 10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrine or Ritalin (along with strong espresso and caffeine tablets.) “A mathematician,” he said, “is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.”

12. Blow Off Some Steam: King Otto, ruler of Bavaria from 1886 to 1913, shot a peasant every morning to start his day. Thankfully, his two advisors were kind-hearted: one gave the king a rifle filled with blanks, and the other dressed as a “peasant”, acting out death throes when he was “shot”. While shooting people is absolutely NOT okay, never underestimate the stress relief you can get from a few rounds of Call of Duty.

Conclusion

These examples of the daily routines and productivity tricks of famous people may not be ideally suited for your busy lifestyle, but they are certainly worth keeping in mind the next time you are stuck on a project and need help powering through. And seriously, don’t pull a “King Otto”. That would not be cool.

Resources and References

http://notorc.blogspot.com/2006/05/work-habits-of-highly-successful_23.html

http://writetodone.com/2008/09/04/learn-from-the-greats-7-writing-habits-of-amazing-writers/

http://www.fastupfront.com/blog/business-tips/35-business-tips-from-famous-entrepreneurs/

http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/

http://www.trivia-library.com/c/weird-behavior-of-famous-people-part-1.htm

http://wehrintheworld.blogspot.com/2010/04/day-jobs-and-working-methods-of-famous.html

Tucker is a writer and social media professional living in New England. When she's not staring into a tiny electric box, she engages in pointless acts of stupidity at BadBoozeReview.com and posts daily at MargeryJones.com

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Are You Working Harder, or Working Smarter?: Looking at the 40 Hour Work Week

So many people talk about boosting productivity, and making the most of their 40 hour work weeks. And yet, outside of the United States, not every country adheres to the “standard” 40 hour work week…which begs the question: should we be working harder, or working smarter?

The History of 40 Hour Work Week (And the 8 Hour Work Day)

As most people know, the 40 hour work week (and 8 hour day) both have their roots in the industrial revolution, when labor reformists began to push for shorter hours. At the turn of the 19th century, it wasn’t uncommon for some factory workers to be on the job for 16 hours a day, and so the 8 hour work day was quite a relief indeed. While some advances were made during the 1800s by workers who wanted shorter days, the 8 hour work day wasn’t widespread on a global scale until the first half of the 20th century.

In fact, it wasn’t until the International Labor Organization held its first conference in 1919 that the 8- or 9-hour work day was somewhat firmly established. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed into law. This established the five-day, 40-hour work week as the American standard for working hours.

Criticisms of the 40 Hour Work Week

MIT’s Eric Rauch noted in his paper “Productivity and the Workweek” that “An average worker needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much as one working 40 hours in 1950.” Additionally, “polls and surveys have shown that people in countries with the standard of living that the US enjoyed in the 1950s are no less satisfied than today’s Americans.”

Elsewhere in the US, some states are switching from a 5 day week to a 4 day week. For example, Iowa’s state employees made just such a move in order to cut energy costs, as have Hawaii and Washington state.

One 2010 study actually proposed that a 21 hour workweek might be the best of all. According to the UK’s New Economics Foundation, “A much shorter working week could help to tackle a range of urgent and closely related problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life. It would enable many more people to join the workforce and allow for measures to reduce damaging levels of inequality….We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours. And we could even become better employees: less stressed, more in control, happier in our jobs and more productive.”

Compared to Other Countries

Looking at other countries around the globe, it’s clear to see that the 40 hour work week is anything but standard.

For example, the average work week in South Korea is 44 hours, while France has a law that states that 35 hours per week is the maximum allowable. European Union member countries have all agreed to cap the maximum hours worked per week to no more than 48. The work week in the Netherlands and Norway is 27 hours long, while workers in Australia and New Zealand work an averages of 33-34 hours per week.

Conclusion: Work-Life Balance

More and more, those Americans who are still employed are working longer hours, either to stay in the good graces of their bosses, or because they are overwhelmed by increased workloads due to layoffs. Either way, it seems like many Americans are working long hours to endear themselves to corporate supervisors, without guaranteeing additional job security.

According to Forbes, “To get ahead, a 70-hour work week is the new standard…Just how bad have things gotten? 1.7 million people consider their jobs and their work hours extreme, thanks to globalization, BlackBerries, corporate expectations and their own Type A personalities.” In fact, some experts say that a BlackBerry can extend your working week by as much as 15 hours.

That data is backed up by a similar study conducted by the International Labour Organization, which found that “one in five workers around the world – or over 600 million persons – are still working more than 48 hours a week, often merely to make ends meet…an estimated 22 per cent of the global workforce, or 614.2 million workers, are working “excessively” long hours.”

While many Americans are just happy to have a job, it seems that during a recession, it is even more important to work smarter, not harder. Long hours do not always equal greater productivity, and indeed it seems that working excessive hours can actually diminish productivity and quality…which is a problem that will affect both the worker and the employer equally.

Tucker is a writer and social media professional living in New England. When she's not staring into a tiny electric box, she engages in pointless acts of stupidity at BadBoozeReview.com and posts daily at MargeryJones.com

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