A first look at the beta-cover of The 4-Hour Chef. Let me know what you think.

The magic elves and I have been hard at work on an early Christmas gift for you all. In fact, there are quite a few goodies in this post, including 50 free Kindle Fire devices!

Let’s start with one of the most time-sensitive…

The 4-Hour Chef is Live!

The 4-Hour Chef is now on sale on Amazon!

I’ve been keeping things under wraps, but there is one big surprise. For the last 5 years, the most frequent request from blog readers has been a guide to mental performance. In other words, answering the question: how do you deconstruct and learn any skill?

Well, I’ve been listening all along, and that book is here!

Here’s the complete title: The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life. Intended to be “the cookbook for people who don’t buy cookbooks,” The 4-Hour Chef will use food as a vehicle to teach the art and science of meta-learning–the skill of learning skills. Whether you want to learn a new instrument or a new sport (or anything in between), you’ll have a field-tested and research-backed blueprint. In addition to insight from world-class chefs, we’ll have an unreal cast of characters helping you to multiply your learning potential.

For a limited time, to celebrate the announcement, you can pre-order The 4-Hour Chef for 50-80% off. Instead of $30 for print, you can reserve a copy for $15. Instead of $22 for Kindle, you can get it for $5.99.

You can cancel anytime up to ship date, so there is no downside, only locked-in savings.

Sidenote…

Why might you buy the physical book, even in addition to the Kindle? Three reasons:

1) It will be gorgeous, a wonderful tactile experience, and truly unlike any cookbook you’ve ever seen.

2) I’ll be thinking up bonuses for people who buy the print edition early.

3) It would really help me out. Inexplicably, The New York Times excludes all advice/how-to books from their e-book bestseller list, so only the print edition counts towards the bestseller list. Silly, but there you have it!

See the full book description, sneak-peek photos, and more here.

A Christmas Countdown Experiment: The 4-Hour Chef Teaser

Next, I present to you the first Kindle Fire book teaser and app!

100% free and titled “A Christmas Countdown Experiment: The 4-Hour Chef Teaser,” it includes a seven-day Christmas countdown advent calendar, with unusual tips that allow you to enjoy wine, cookies, and all the other holiday vices… while losing fat.

From strategic yo-yo dieting and tequila hot chocolate, to exploding cows and tattoos, it’s full of surprises. Here’s are a few screenshots and the introduction video, followed by the download link…

Main menu – just tap any food for the recipe and much more.

I love advent calendars! Tap any day for your prescription or reward.

Download The 4-Hour Chef Teaser here. Please note! This version is limited to Kindle Fire at the moment, but the iPad (iOS) and general Android versions are almost done. They’ll be coming along shortly, and I’ll keep you posted.

But… why not get yourself a free Kindle Fire? That’s next.

50 Free Kindle Fire Devices

If you don’t yet have a Kindle Fire and would one for free, I’m giving away 50 of them. This is a thank you for providing so much helpful feedback over the last six months.

Here’s how to get one:

1) Just spread the word in the next 48 hours! Send people to this blog post or The 4-Hour Chef page on Amazon. Here are some ideas: Facebook like, Facebook sharing, retweets, Twitter, e-mail, e-mail signature, street miming. The last one doesn’t scale as well as the others.

2) By 11am PST this Thursday (Dec. 1), leave a comment on this post telling me what you did. If possible, quantify the impact (clicks, page views, etc.), and be sure to follow these two rules, which are required for your entry to be valid:

– In the first line, tell me what you’d most like to learn in The 4-Hour Chef.

– Keep the entire comment to 200 words or fewer, so use bullets!

We’ll consider the first 300 submissions, and a few judges and I will choose the 50 we think did the best job (subjective, I know). Then we ship them off! Void where prohibited, Martians under 21 not allowed, etc., etc. Winners will be announced next week.

Happy holidays!

Much more to come…

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The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 500 million downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.