Update : Catch Timothy Ferriss on The Scoble Show.

Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek is one of those business books that use counter-intuition as a badge of merit. Much of it is so batty and over-egged you wonder if you’re not wasting your time reading it.

And yet the core message is a powerful one, and it contains much food for thought for anyone stuck in a boring career, or running an ailing business.

The subtitle is, “Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”.

New rich, or NR, is an important refrain throughout the book. And yes, acronyms abound. DEAL — D for Definition, E for Elimination, A for Automation, L for Liberation, makes for tiresome reading sometimes, as does the author’s CV.

Did author Timothy Ferriss really become national kickboxing champion of China by using a loophole in the rules allowing him to push his opponents out of the ring a few times to eliminate them from the competition? And if so, is that the way you want to run your life? Your call.

He also claims to have been a motorcycle racer in Europe, Argentine Tango champ in Buenos Aires, a scuba diver in Panama and a skier in the Andes. Oh, and a language teacher in Thailand and Japan and … much more. Bear in mind he’s only 29, or was when he wrote the book.

Well, maybe so, but these boasts don’t add much to his basic thesis. And thesis it is, for Ferriss is a very smart cookie. His main ideas, like the low-information diet (down with RSS), outsourcing the boring stuff, reducing work to what you do best, have much in common with the 80/20 principle, but go that extra mile to the very limits of absurdity. The brakes screech on at the last moment, though, and he avoids complete overturn — just. Maybe that’s his motor-racing experience coming through.

The book is also interestingly interactive. We’re referred to his website for the latest, or most detailed information. It’s a good way to drive traffic as those of us who advocate print/online synergy have been saying for a while. Be aware, he also embeds passwords in the text for the most intriguing documents online. This is a total tease, but one way of making sure you read the whole book.

By now you will have realized that Timothy Ferriss is a bit of a flamboyant sort of chap. While that may be the new blue in business book style, the main question for this reviewer is : does it contain enough meaty nuggets of new ideas and information to justify trawling through the whole book with umpteen visits to the website?

I would say, yes. It certainly made me rethink many of my lazy, received-wisdom notions about business … and even life. Wow, I didn’t think I was going to write the L word there. That’s what Ferriss does, he gets you branching out laterally in ways you never intended.

Whether any of his schemes will stick enough to actually change anything remains to be seen. I also have to say, that some of them appear to be marginally illegal, at least where I am. So, if you can’t afford a lawyer … well, I’m not one either, so I’m not going to advise you.

Judgement : I would emphatically recommend this book if you have a taste for the extraordinary and don’t mind flouting conventions and doing things “your way”. Of course, if you do ‘em his way, you may find yourself perched on a giant Ferris wheel unable to get off. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.