He worked to free himself from the need to work, escaping FROM it but not TO something else apart from sitting around the house and taking a few trips.

And that's my biggest beef with this genre of self-help: from Tim Ferriss to Robert Kiyosaki, it's leisure-time all the time. It's also been pointed out that Tim Ferriss probably spends 80 hours a week promoting the four hour work week.

I've been through... three? four? careers since college, depending on how you count, and it's always been about turning a hobby into a profession. I say "retired" but it's not like I don't plan on selling the shit, it just shuts up the normies when they ask when they can buy one because fuck you I had to reinvent casting get off my dick.

I think the idea of squirrelling away money so you can "retire" to do the shit you love is fundamentally flawed. What you should do is invest your time in getting remunerated for a better "job". But that doesn't sell books and doesn't get page views. Ripping out to IMTS in Chicago between shifts mixing television in LA isn't something you can tell anecdotes about on a podcast, it's just hustling.

Some people wanna hustle. Some people don't. No harm either way. But this whole genre of "hustle so you can stare at your belly button and smoke weed" advice is written for the stupid (often, by the stupid).