Tim Ferris and the Agile/Lean movement

13 September 2013

A lot has been written about Tim Ferris' book on the four-hour week concept. Tim is an incredible marketer, and he was right in pitching the title as being able to work four hours a week to make 40k/month and travel around the world. But then, if you look closer there is a much deeper message there, I think.

Tim's approach seems to be that there is always an easy way to do things, and that people should go for the low-hanging fruit. Although this is stated in a completely different way, there is a ton of parallels here with the Lean/Agile movement, when they say that you should start with the simplest possible hack or minimum viable product. If it doesn't work you toss it, if it does work you take it from there in multiple iterating cycles where each cycle delivers a functional but likely ever incomplete product.

But then I think that Tim adds one more essential component to this. If I have an idea and I put this idea inside an Agile cycle, I am basically missing one of the most important steps, which is to search for the perfectly hackable idea. In other words, it's not really about trying to get a hack out of a certain area, but instead trying to find areas where a hack is likely to turn things around. Searching with a hacking mind then implies discarding a lot of ideas before you even get started. Essentially, you toss out everything that might not seem like is waiting to be easily disrupted. This search, and the focus to keep it simple later on is the real hacking art, I think.

by Ricardo Pietrobon

About Me

My name is Ricardo Pietrobon and I am interested in big data and situated cognition applied to immersive distance education.