OK I’ve officially been hoodwinked into my first April Fools Day joke. I subscribe to the rss feed of the blog of Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Work Week. Among other things in his lifestyle design recommendations, Tim recommends various methods of “personal outsourcing” as ways to save time and cut corners in our world of information overload and alway-on expectations. Well yesterday he revealed in a posting that he had outsourced his blog to two individuals and that it had been a year since the real Tim Ferriss made a post. WHAT? I alternated between feelings of betrayal, and being distinctly impressed by the fact that such good advice came from the blog in this time period, including such great productivity tips as using a bigger computer monitor (I would add the option of a dual-monitor setup) and only checking e-mail twice a day (I’m working on getting it down to 3X a day anyway, and skipping the autoresponder – would probably be a turnoff to my colleagues and stakeholders).

Thank you, Tim, for owning up to your prank.