I finished an abridged 4HB and complete The Miracle of Self-Discipline today, so I figured I’d compare them.
Most of The Miracle of Self-Discipline is the kind of time-worn advice that doesn’t work for anyone: work more, with priority todo lists. Save for retirement.
The attitude behind The 4HWW, and present in the 4HB, helped me to ignore that shit. The actual work is the same, but the implications and strategy are totally different: save for retirement versus retire to save.
The crux seems to be the value each method places on deferred gratification and the nature of happiness: MSD sez, “be virtuous and the kingdom will be yours” whereas 4HWW sez, “the kingdom is yours, be virtuous.”
The idea behind The 4-Hour books is to use an acceptance of reality, via the scientific method, to turn small changes into big results. The MSD is about victim blaming (which some victims quite like).
Note that Ferris did use the scientific method to produce the 4-Hour Body, but the book cannot be said to contain science. The term “science” in contemporary common usage means results that have been certified by the academic establishment – whether or not the researchers involved used the scientific method you learned in highschool is immaterial. The academic establishment hasn’t certified very many results in exercise science, so there’s a gap that Ferris is filling, but many people claim he’s filling it with broscience.
Right right: there’s an old story about a character who manipulates information he doesn’t understand “by its shape”. That’s how I think of Ferris — he understands enough to make some good guesses, but everything in the book is pending verification. He prefaces the whole thing with “do what works for you” — unlike MSD, which asserted “do what worked for others”.