Too much info? Ignore it

The author of a bestseller is telling the geeks how to clear the overwhelming tech clutter

As one of Silicon Valley8217;s most respected entrepreneurs, Marc Andreessen is something of a connoisseur of what he calls 8220;productivity porn,8221; or techniques to maximise personal productivity. In recent months, Andreessen, a founder of Netscape Communications, has become enthralled with an unlikely purveyor: Timothy Ferriss, a motivational author whose curriculum vitae includes stints as a competitive kickboxer and tango champion.

Ferriss8217;s business lessons, focused on cutting out useless information, have been culled from his six years of running a modest sports nutrition company. Andreessen does not seem to care.

After reading Ferriss8217;s recent best seller, The 4-Hour Workweek, Jason Hoffman, a founder of Joyent, which designs Web-based software for small businesses, urged his employees to cut out the instant-messaging and swear off multitasking. 8220;All of a sudden,8221; Hoffman said of the results, 8220;their evenings are free. All of a sudden Monday doesn8217;t feel so overwhelming.8221;

Without appearing on Oprah Winfrey8217;s show or doing a book tour, Ferriss has seen his book become a bestseller and become a pet guru of Silicon Valley, precisely by preaching apostasy in the land of shiny gadgets: just pull the plug. His methods include practicing 8220;selective ignorance8221;8212;tuning out pointless communiqueacute;s, even world affairs Ferriss says he gets most of his news by asking waiters. Work crisis? Pay someone else to worry8212;ideally in Bangalore.

Not everyone in the Bay Area is sold. Po Bronson, author of The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley, agreed that Ferriss8217;s book had made a mark in the tech world. 8220;You can8217;t seem to go two hours without someone mentioning it,8221; he said. Still, he didn8217;t know anyone who had read it, much less abandoned a cubicle to study horseback archery in Japan, as Ferriss did last month.

Ferriss gives readers a dramatic back-story filled with the grim days. He rebounds out of a work-induced nervous breakdown with a vow to eliminate everything that was standing in the way of happiness8212;starting with his Treo. He turned ruthless against e-mail. He hired assistants in India and the Philippines to respond to most of the mail, and ignore the rest. Even today, he typically checks e-mail messages only once a day, at 2 p.m.

Unsurprisingly, some Tim Ferriss acolytes found that sticking to his information crash diet brought a shock to the system. Ryan Carson, 30, who runs technology conferences around the world from his headquarters in Bath, England, said that since reading The 4-Hour Workweek, 8220;it takes me two or three days to get back to people on e-mail. They get a little angry.8221;

Story continues below this ad

Critics might argue that Ferriss is hardly the first self-improvement guru to preach the clutter-free life. Indeed, Ferriss makes little pretense of practicing what he preaches, at least if you count self-promotion as 8220;work.8221;

8220;If your definition of work is financially driven that you would like to do less of, like with my company, I spend far less than four hours a week on it,8221; he said. The other stuff8212;lecturing at campuses of Google and PayPal, blogging incessantly8212; that8217;s, well, 8220;evangelising8221;.

Which is not to say he plans to tour relentlessly and hawk DVDs on late-night infomercials. 8220;I8217;d be better off putting my time into three or four really good blog posts,8221; he said. But, of course. That would take much less work.

-Alex Williams NYT