What makes you different from Tim Ferriss?

Fixed.

I'd say that the major difference between me and Tim Ferris is that I just don't care enough.

I don't know that Ferris has some tremendous reservoir of determination and drive that you or I lack.

We fill our days doing something. Isn't it odd that we choose such unproductive things?

When forced by time and other constraints to be productive, I will be, and I enjoy it. Recently, I've had such constraints, and I've been pretty productive. For me, at least. I've been working on my car recently, and find that work begets the desire for more work. I'm looking for more things to fix. I'll be off to the auto store today to get more parts. I don't have to wrestle my desires to make myself think of my car, I do, and I want to fix it.

Ferris seems to find a problem, or an opportunity, and do something about it. What could seemingly be more natural, yet actually be more rare?

It's probably not a case of self control as much as habits in thought and action. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and believe that whole time period, were big on virtue as the habit of right action. It's probably nothing more complicated, nor emotionally significant, than habit.

It does not help to be told that if I was thinking right, then I wouldn't care how I was feeling.

It might if someone said it right. I had similar unproductive internal monologues, and unproductive feelings as well. But eventually I determined that the feelings themselves weren't the problem, it was the "I'm defective" death spiral I engaged in when I felt those feelings that was the real problem. Why do I feel bad? Why can't I do this? What's wrong with me? Blah blah blah blah blah. The feelings weren't hurting me (much), my reaction to them was (a lot). The reaction I've promoted, and which has helped, is "It's just a feeling. It sucks, but it won't kill me."

It feels like this text was incompatible with the audience I choose for it multiplied by my (in)competence. Either I was too confusing on writing, or else there is a general dislike of using specific examples here both because of this one example generalization and because of other optimizing.

In any case, just not to leave in blank, what I intended to do was making people notice that their own doubts fall into one of the three categories, and, upon that reflection if they thought "Oh, now this seems worth trying" they would try one of those things.

Seeing your link made me think though that a danger of the whole idea of being more rational by learning specific rationality things may end up becoming a danger because it gives a person the perfect defense for every thing they may be inclined to think. Made me think of this rule from a Cracked text:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person_p1/

The human mind is a miracle, and you will never see it spring more beautifully into action than when it is fighting against evidence that it needs to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer after layer of defense mechanisms designed to shoot down anything that might keep things from staying exactly where they are -- ask any addict.

So even now, some of you reading this are feeling your brain bombard you with knee-jerk reasons to reject it. From experience, I can say that these seem to come in the form of ...

*Intentionally Interpreting Any Criticism as an Insult

"Who is he to call me lazy and worthless! A good person would never talk to me like this! He wrote this whole thing just to feel superior to me and to make me feel bad about my life! I'm going to think up my own insult to even the score!"

*Focusing on the Messenger to Avoid Hearing the Message

"Who is THIS guy to tell ME how to live? Oh, like he's so high and mighty! It's just some dumb writer on the Internet! I'm going to go dig up something on him that reassures me that he's stupid, and that everything he's saying is stupid! This guy is so pretentious, it makes me puke! I watched his old rap video on YouTube and thought his rhymes sucked!" *Focusing on the Tone to Avoid Hearing the Content

"I'm going to dig through here until I find a joke that is offensive when taken out of context, and then talk and think only about that! I've heard that a single offensive word can render an entire book invisible!"

*Revising Your Own History

"Things aren't so bad! I know that I was threatening suicide last month, but I'm feeling better now! It's entirely possible that if I just keep doing exactly what I'm doing, eventually things will work out! I'll get my big break, and if I keep doing favors for that pretty girl, eventually she'll come around!"

*Pretending That Any Self-Improvement Would Somehow Be Selling Out Your True Self

"Oh, so I guess I'm supposed to get rid of all of my manga and instead go to the gym for six hours a day and get a spray tan like those Jersey Shore douchebags? Because THAT IS THE ONLY OTHER OPTION."

And so on. Remember, misery is comfortable. It's why so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.

Also, courage. It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created.

It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That rich guy is shallow. This restaurant sucks. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website fire him. See, I created something.

Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create -- be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship -- you will find yourself immediately surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career.

Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing. "Why should I create anything when the things other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to wait for something good, I don't want to write the next Twilight!" As long as they never produce anything, it will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. Or if they do produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their real effort would have been amazing. Not like the shit you made.

Read our article comments -- when they get nasty, it's always from the same angle: Cracked needs to fire this columnist. This asshole needs to stop writing. Don't make any more videos. It always boils down to "Stop creating. This is different from what I would have made, and the attention you're getting is making me feel bad about myself."

Don't be that person. If you are that person, don't be that person any more. This is what's making people hate you. This is what's making you hate yourself.

o how about this: one year. The end of 2013, that's our deadline. Or a year from whenever you read this. While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!" I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake. Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno. Adopt a superhero persona and fight crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Write for Cracked.

But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make happen to you ("I'm going to find a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ..."). I want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly more interesting and valuable to other people. "I don't have the money to take a cooking class." Then fucking Google "how to cook." They've even filtered out the porn now, it's easier than ever. Damn it, you have to kill those excuses. Or they will kill you.

If you want to make note of your project in the forum thread or the comments and check in this time next year, knock yourself out. I'll be curious to see if even one person actually does this, but if so we'll look back, not just on whether or not we actually followed through, but why. You have nothing to lose, and the world needs you.

David Wong - end of quote

Not that I think this has anything in particular to do with you. It just made me realize that rationality techniques may be dangerous for me... anyway, sorry for wasting your time, I'll think more about being clear next time.

and not "What the great Tim Ferris has done, even a schmuck like you can do too!", which is probably closer to your intended meaning.

Really? That interpretation doesn't seem compatible with the first sentence.

I suspect those micro-judgments are the reason people like TF or Warren Buffet consistently succeed but cannot consistently help other people succeed to the same degree.

Those and "actually starting then continually applying focussed effort".

I suspect everyone continually underestimates "have powerful allies", and that this effect is larger than mico-behaviors, because surrounding yourself with powerful allies begets better micro-behaviors anyway, in addition to myriad other benefits(you are the average of your surroundings).

The problem for most self-help books like Tim's is that the author usually underestimates what one might call "micro-judgments," the tiny, largely subconscious decisions that we don't even realize we are making.

I don't think so. Ferriss is all about maximal results in minimal time. In general, his plans require you to do something for some limited time a day, not control your actions 24hours a day. You don't have to make so many microdecisions, just one macrodecision, and then a limited number of microdecisions to follow that macrodecision.

I've been aware of Ferriss and Pavlina for some years, and that is my impression as well, of both. And as one of the metabolically privileged (this body does not accumulate fat) I have little personal use for his Four Hour Body material.

This is actually a very traditional kind of over-caution. It's being lazy by pretending not to be, and never actually doing anything. You learn more about how effective a diet is for you by trying it for two months than you do by studying nutrition science for 4 years, but one is a scary difficult life change and the other you can leave to the experts and do nothing.

He's put in way more time and effort into figuring out his own body and its reactions to things than you ever will. What's lazy about this? It may be inefficient or incorrect if you believe in the primacy of research, but in what universe does it count as lazy?

Personally, I don't find Timothy Ferris' motivation level that impressive- on the contrary, I think he's dangerously lazy.

You are wrong. Any definition of 'lazy' which makes your claim true would be ridiculous. And, in case you were wondering, suicide bombers aren't cowards either.

but he's just copying methods from already published books

Bravo.

that he doesn't understand well

Unsubstantiated claim that I have no reason be believe. His understanding seems to be more than adequate, even if oriented more towards practice than theory.

He's using relatively dangerous and ineffective techniques

This seems false (except the parts that explicitly say "this is dangerous", "don't do this without medical supervision").

I used to think that making failure more costly might be a good source of motivation as well. I ended up failing out of college and spending several months in a haze of depression and total apathy about life.

I'm doing a lot better now, but I've learned my lesson, and no longer use negative incentives as sources of motivation. For a person of my mindset, there is no such thing as "failure so costly one can't help but succeed."

The idea, of course, is to make failure so costly that one can't help but succeed.

To be fair to Nick Winters, he gives several warnings before introducing this tactic and (if my memory doesn't fail me) suggests using it only as a last resort.

I've also seen a claim that he doesn't include self-promotion in his 4 hour work week. Does this seem plausible to you?