This amusing book kept my attention for an entire flight back from Egypt.
It's a pretty compelling blurb - 'I used to slave away for 70-hours a week. Now I work four hours a week and earn 10 times what I used to.'

The main thrust is that we spend so much of our time at work doing relatively unimportant things - answering random emails; looking after small, unprofitable customers; dealing with little distractions... And we end up working long hours in the hope of some vague future happiness - one day I'll retire and write songs and travel the globe barefoot.

Tim jostles us to seize the moment now. Create a "virtual" business that only takes a couple of hours a week to run (there's a handbook on how to do this). Focus on the big stuff- the one thing you're going to achieve by 11am, the 5 big customers, the 20% of your friends that give you 80% of your warm, fuzzy feelings. And start your "mini-retirements" now - learn Mandarin, go kitesurfing in Brazil, whatever.

Tim's about my age, and the nice thing about this book is it's an American book that shows that American culture is shifting. People are asking "why"? More and more people are daring to ask the 'American Beauty' / 'Into the Wild' questions. If you spend all your life chasing a dream, what if you don't like the dream when you get there? So try the dream now. Or just stop chasing and opt out.

In the end, Tim's ebullient "join the new rich" sounds a little flat - we beging to sense that the "new rich" are just as angst-ridden as everyone else.
But at least they're not sitting in front of a computer all day.