Business Book Review: The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss

The 4-Hour Body is a buffet of choice in how to redesign your body. In Ferriss’ style, it focuses on what minimal effort will have the maximum results. Avoiding any waste along the way. 

My Rating: ★★★★

Length:  592 pages

Publisher: VERMILION - MASS MARKET 

Released: 2011

Key Takeaways for Personal Branding 

The 4-Hour Body is another remarkable demonstration of thought leadership by Timothy Ferriss. The author of the iconic The 4-Hour Work Week shares his obsessive quest to determine what tiniest change has the biggest results on your body. To bring you The 4-Hour Body, Ferriss worked with hundreds of participants, athletes and doctors, all while conducting his own obsessive personal experimentation. 

The focus is not on minor improvements, but rather a “body redesign”, the kind that will have your friends asking what you’ve been doing. All with minimal effort, of course. 

The book covers everything from diet to workout plans and everything in between in jaw-dropping detail. Ferriss says it’s designed as a buffet of choice. Take whatever you need. The science is prolific, but you’re also invited to “skip the science” as you wish.  

The Tim Ferriss Brand 

Perhaps the biggest takeaway for personal branding is what Ferriss, as an author, has demonstrated through his own personal brand. In a genius move, he pivoted from the superficial understanding of his personal brand as a productivity expert into health - all while staying on brand:

“The wider world thinks I’m obsessed with time management, but they haven’t seen the other - much more legitimate, much more ridiculous obsession.”

While the world had Ferriss pegged in productivity, Ferriss understood the true power of his personal brand. And the answer to his pivot lay in what he’d already created in his personal brand journey thus far. The secret was not in the “work week”, but in his “4-hour” brand. As a follow-up to The 4-Hour Work Week, he embodies the lifestyle - and its focus on well-being -  he has created for himself through his 4-hour Work Week brand.  

Minimum Effective Dose

On brand for Ferriss, The 4-Hour Body highlights the idea of a minimum effective dose (MED). That is the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. Anything beyond the MED is considered wasteful.

By now, most in business have heard of ‘Pareto’s Law’ or the 80/20 principle. This means that 80% of results come from 20% of your efforts. Ferriss goes further. He has designed the book with the intention of giving you the most important 2.5%. 

Why 2.5%? Ferriss believes that Pareto’s Law can be disproportionate. Instead, he highlights the example of learning Spanish. To be fluent in conversational Spanish, you need an active vocabulary of 2,500 words. This will allow you to comprehend 95% of all conversations. 98% comprehension would require five years of practice (instead of five months). 2,500 Spanish words is a mere 2.5% of the estimated 100,000 words in the Spanish Language. 

To summarise: 

• 2.5% of the total subject matter provides 95% of the desired results. 

• The same 2.5% provides just 3% less benefit than putting in 12 times the effort. 

Whether it’s for your body, work or business, this is an idea worth applying wherever you can.  

Naps and the “Uberman Method”

Of all the many ideas in The 4-Hour Body, I’ve chosen to highlight this for the complete paradigm shift in thinking it creates.  

Like our ancestors and some countries still know best, Ferriss highlights the power of naps. Adding just one 20-minute nap during the day shaves 1 hour and 40 minutes of your total sleep requirement. 

Most people experience the REM phase of sleep (the most beneficial phase) for 1-2 hours per night. However, naps can help force the brain to enter REM sleep and skip other phases. This is known as polyphasic sleep. 

“The Uberman Method” is one example. It’s likely not possible for 9-5ers working for others. But, if possible for you, it involves six evenly spaced naps in total and no core sleep. That’s two total hours of sleep per 24 hours.   

Of course, the catch is the more your total sleep is based around naps, the more strict you must be with keeping to your scheduled sleep times. 

What would you do if you could be awake 22 hours of the day? 

Favourite Quotes 

“You can have your cheesecake and eat it too, as long as you get the timing right.”

The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss:  Available on Amazon.