For English subtitles, choose “Danish” from the “Choose Language…” drop-down.
There is a misconception that lifestyle design is just for entrepreneurs or CEOs.
In reality, the principles — borrowed from economics and behavioral psychology — can be applied within organizations and groups with even more dramatic effects.
Just watch the 25-minute segment above from the Danish equivalent of the BBC (DR1), where lifestyle design is tested by both an employee at insurance giant Codan and by the CEO of a fast-growing microbrewery. For English subtitles, choose “Danish” from the “Choose Language…” drop-down.
Who made more progress? The boss or the person with a boss? The results might surprise you… Read More
Is it possible to get good at swimming late in life? Yes. (Photo: Shutterhack)
Swimming has always scared the hell out of me.
Despite national titles in other sports, I’ve always fought to keep afloat. This inability to swim well has always been one of my greatest insecurities and embarrassments.
I’ve tried to learn to swim almost a dozen times, and each time, my heart jumps to 180+ beats-per-minute after one or two pool lengths. It’s indescribably exhausting and unpleasant.
No more.
In the span of less than 10 days, I’ve gone from a 2-length (2 x 20 yards/18.39 meters) maximum to swimming more than 40 lengths per workout in sets of 2 and 4. Here’s how I did it after everything else failed, and how you can do the same… Read More
“Nothing bothers me more than sloth. The objective is to fix mistakes of ambition and not make mistakes of sloth. I work my ass off.”
-Tim Ferriss, from the new issue of Men’s Journal, Sept. 2008
Since I’m going nuts preparing for Burning Man, this post will be a short one.
The quote above is from the latest issue of Men’s Journal, where the main editorial cover story is a profile of me and the rise of The 4-Hour Workweek. There are also fascinating profiles of John McEnroe (awesome insight into his tennis strategies) and Gavin Newsom, as well as a cool snapshot of Tonny Sorensen, CEO of Von Dutch and former world champion in Tae Kwon Do.
The journalist, Larry Smith, spent almost three full days with me and covers a lot of details that haven’t been covered before, including background and education; core tenets of lifestyle design and common misinterpretations; interviews with family, professors, and friends; experiments involving critics; even how I organize my environment and home… Read More
Derek Sivers is a stud. I thought I’d share the conversation we had at SF MusicTech Summit. Dozens of topics covered include:
- Testing asssumptions vs. cheating
- PR and reaching out to unreachables
- Micro-testing ideas and products: from The 4-Hour Workweek to Trent Reznor
- Personal outsourcing for creatives
- Filling the void and creating meaning outside of the inbox and office
Derek is a programmer who lost his stage fright by doing more than 1,000 gigs as a circus ring leader. He is also the musician who started CD Baby, the world’s largest online music store for independent musicians. Here are some current numbers:
- 242,846 artists sell their music at CD Baby
- 4,574,622 CDs sold online to customers
- $83,590,381 paid directly to the artists
With more than 2 million digitized tracks under management, CD Baby is also the largest provider of independent music for iTunes… and it all started as a hobby.
How does it work now that it’s enormous? From Derek’s blog:
When I was the owner and president of CD Baby, it ran without me, and I hardly spent 4 hours on it in the last 6 months. It’s wonderful.
Here are a few snippets from our conversation… Read More
