It’s been a long time since I read a book like Timothy Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Work Week”. I read it during a reading binge that lasted for most of 2011. Checking through this Blog I see that I have never referred to it here (over 1,000 posts, over one million words) or an idea from it has stayed with me.

My very first piece on this site (in December 2015) compared how books were categorized at a local bookshop, as reflected in its title: ‘“Smart Thinking” and “Self Help” at the bookshop’. Four years later, this follow-up piece confirmed that the “Self Help” section had gone, to be replaced by something called “Self Care”.

I’ll have to check which section or sections of the bookshop Timothy Ferriss occupies but on Amazon it’s in the following category: Business, Finance & Law > Management > Management Skills. So, nothing to do with “Self Help” or “Self Care”.

My notes from 2011 (typed, like these paragraphs, in a password-protected document in Microsoft Word) show that I read “The 4-Hour Work Week” quickly, in October. I noted down a few quotes (such as “Doing something unimportant well does not make it important”) but not the one that has been on my mind since reading it. It starts something like this: “Let the small bad things happen …”

The idea here is that you let “small bad things” happen to allow big good things to happen. Perhaps that should read “Big Good Things”. It’s a nice concept, but I have a different take on it. My view is that you let “small bad things” happen so that even bigger, even worse things do not happen.

I have put up with “small bad things” for much of my life, and would have liked “Big Good Things” to happen as a result. Maybe they did and I didn’t notice them, but it doesn’t feel that way right now. Instead, “small bad things” have happened and I take comfort in the fact that much bigger and much worse things have not happened. They still could, of course, but so could some “Big Good Things”. And I am happy to report that small good things do happen, pretty much every day.

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