Over at SeoMoz one of the better blog posters, Vingold, has a really good article on 4 Things That Are Wrong With the 4 Hour Workweek.

Of course, besides some of the get-rich-quick (how does that work again?) schemes in the book, the real problem is that after some period of experiences you can’t actually learn much that is actionable from a “normal” business book.

True fact, as my kids say.

Look, Jack Welch is 100 smarter than I am, with 2,000 times more drive, and is worth 30,000 times as much financially. (On the other hand, I still have my first wife, so I’m clearly wiser than he is!) And I read his book(s) and his articles in the biz journals. And I learn almost nothing actionable each time.

What does that mean? Well, Jack put in a 10 year quest for “six sigma” quality. I actually know exactly what that means and used to work in a manufacturing company. Completely useless for my business though. And Jack talks about creating a culture of management excellence through hiring practices and sophisticated 360 degree peer reviews, blah, blah, blah. For a SME that is about as useful as government health reform.

And Vin puts his finger on that exact issue with this “4-Hour-Workweek” thing:

For instance, in the best chapter of the book, titled “Outsourcing Life,” he says essentially this: “Never do a task yourself that you can delegate. Never delegate a task that you can automate. And never automate a task that you can eliminate all together.” You can read volumes of management and business books, and you’d be hard-pressed to find more concise and complete advice on streamlining a business.

That is probably the only thing in that whole book that would have been useful for me to read. (Thanks, Vin, you saved me a ton of time!) Read a whole book for that advice? Wow, what a waste of time.

(One of the things I do when I find a thing like that is to put the book down and try it immediately. I’m a quick twitch Terrier kind of guy, so it is use-it-or-lose it for me. So, even though I think I already to to avoid getting tasks completed the hard way, I’ve just gone back over my daily to-do log and looked for things that really didn’t need to get done. I found a few, maybe there is a pattern in there where I could save myself an hour/month or so. Which is pretty good improvement.)

One book I do read on an annual basis, and have for 20 years or so, is DeMarco and Lister’s Peopleware. It’s not a techie book, it’s about helping people be successful in your organization. And though it was written for the tech industry, nothing in it is dated. Chock-ful-O-wisdom and actionable ideas.