I have a recipe for writing self-help books:

1 Person Who has Come Across Success.
40 Pages of Common Sense
40 Pages of Ridiculous Ideas
40 Pages of Good Ideas
References to Website or Community
Real Life Examples of People Who’ve Done Ridiculous Things
Quotes from Famous Authors (optional)

Begin by preheating the oven to 450.

Stir together the ridiculous ideas and real life examples, whip until the ideas sound reasonable.  If necessary sprinkle in stories from  the person who has come across success.

Grease printing press and place two pages of common sense on top of a page of ridiculous ideas.  Repeat until you’ve used all your common sense.  Close with a mixture of good ideas and remaining ridiculous ideas.

Coat with a thin book jacket about the person who has come across success.  Add quotes from famous authors to taste, they should make the common sense taste sharper and dilute the sour hints from the ridiculous ideas.

Bake at 450 until gooey center is boring enough to sleep on.  Sprinkle with references to website or community to ensure the consumer will buy another book or watch a lecture.

After the Jump, how each ingredient maps to the 4 hour work week.

In The Four Hour Work Week the ingredients were:

1 Person Who has Come Across Success – Tim Ferriss.  He worked diligently 80 hours a week  building a business (a business that made him rich).  After he was done building the business he walked away from it and it didn’t fall down.   Now that his work weeks are 4 hours, he doesn’t see why you shouldn’t be able to have them too.

40 Pages of Common Sense – Did you know that if you don’t ask for an alternative work schedule, your boss probably won’t give you one?  Another example, to avoid having fear of approaching people you could try randomly forcing yourself to approach members of the opposite sex.

40 Pages of Ridiculous Ideas – Start a drop-shipping company in your spare time, it’s sure to fund your “dreamline”.  You, like Tim Farris, can help Olympic athletes train.  If you play your cards right, any job can allow you to work a few hours a week from China.

40 Pages of Good Ideas – Don’t confuse this review, with ALL criticism.  I love the idea of outsourcing common tasks to a virtual assistant (VA).  Some of the marketing ideas in here are great to (pick a niche, find a way to target them).

Reference to Website or Community – I found nothing of value at fourhourworkweek.com.  The only story that I thought was useful, turned out to be in the book as well (about how the editor of Esquire made use of a pair of VAs).

The last two (quotes from famous authors and real life examples) are sprinkled throughout and sometimes they are quite interesting.