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 enlarge | Author: Ernie J. Zelinski
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $8.89
You Save: $8.06 (48%)
New (30) Used (26) from $4.94
Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 30898
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 6.6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1580085520
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.38
EAN: 9781580085526
ASIN: 1580085520
Publication Date: October 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: -BRAND NEW- DIRECT FROM DISTRIBUTOR- LIGHT SHELFWEAR- REMAINDER MARK
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| Customer Reviews:
 My new found Bible... November 11, 2005
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
After coming to the US fifteen years ago I moved up from maintenance worker at a golf course with $5/h rate to a senior programmer analyst at Wall Street company with six-digit salary. And at some point I've realized that I am not happy and I need to do something about it. It took me about two years to come to some interesting discoveries about life, job and happiness. I finally found possible solution to get out from this 'tunnel without cheese'. And when I was finally ready to make this big change in my life, I found this book. I wish I would found it two years ago. It has confirmed all my ideas and proved that I am not crazy (like some of my friends started to think). Do not expect to find in this book detailed information about how you can be happy, but it will give you the idea that it is possible. And when you feel that you are loosing the faith on the long road to happiness - just open the book again.
A Fun, Inspiring Read October 13, 2005
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
I discovered this book at a very low point in my career and after reading it, I was inspired to stop stressing out in my workplace and to place more focus on what makes me happy in life. By no means can everyone just pick up and quit their current careers or go into semi-retirement but that is not the intention of this book. Mr. Zelinski's message is to enjoy your life more. Whether in your job, unemployment, home life, or leisure time. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!
 A brief comment August 8, 2005
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
Mr. Zelinsky is an engaging, funny, and persuasive writer on the evils of overwork and being gainfully employed, and the advantages and joys of retirement, but unfortunately, I have to agree with several of the other comments here that he is long on praise and short on practical advice on how to actually do it.
Some of his examples of people who did it are not realistic for most of us (for example, the guy who is biking around foreign countries on $6000 a year). If you have a wife or a family, forget it, $6000 a year isn't going to cut it. And for most of us, cutting back on our work schedule in one's forties or even fifties is a very serious decision. If you end up being fired and unemployed because of that, and later decide that you don't have enough money to retire, you will be faced with getting a job in your 50s after having been unsatisfactorily terminated from your last one because you were following Mr. Zelinsky's appealing but misguided advice. Somehow, I don't think your prospective employers will be impressed if you show them a copy of Mr. Zelinsky's book as justification for your happy but premature departure from the workplace.
This book best serves as a pep talk for those who have the financial wherewithal, creativity, and perhaps intestinal fortitude to go it alone and have probably been thinking about it for some time. For those people, there is some good info and advice here. For that it serves well as an enthusiastic and even exhortatory and inspiring book on taking that great leap into a more joyful but probably financially more modest and downscaled retirement.
 Without a doubt, one of the worst books I have ever read. May 28, 2005
24 out of 34 found this review helpful
Self-help ideals without any substance to back it up. He titles chapters such as "Financial independence on less than twenty dollars a day" and then never gets around to telling the reader just how one would do that. If you want to learn how to be a happy street person, this is the book for you.
A Book for Winners and Not Whiners May 24, 2005
24 out of 26 found this review helpful
This is primarily an inspirational book on living life to the fullest and not a guidebook for lazy people on how to live off the system. Throughout the latest edition of The Joy of Not Working, and in a special section at the end, the author has included numerous letters from readers all over the world who have taken this book to heart and improved their lives immensely. You can also read other letters about the book and actually download an E-book with the equivalent of two chapters of the book on The Joy of Not Working Website - www.thejoyofnotworking.com - but you will have to buy the actual book from Amazon or elsewhere since Zelinski does not sell it on his interesting and content-rich website.
Above all, The Joy of Not Working is for winners and not whiners. Ernie Zelinski stresses that a day lived to its fullest is worth far more than any money you could hope to earn by sacrificing it. He is also a proponent of the invaluable advice that originated with Confucius: Find a calling you love and you will never work a day in your life.
I take exception to the two or three recent negative reviewers of this book who say things like "Should Be Titled 'How to Live In Poverty Forever.' " These negative readers have obviously missed the whole point of The Joy of Not Working. It was never meant to be a book to show everyone in this world how not to work and still have a comfortable lifestyle.
How the negative reviewers of this book can expect that it should tell them how to pay their health care and plan out their financial lives for them is beyond me. One of the negative reviewers even goes so far as to deride Zelinski for giving an example in his book of a man who lives on $500 a month and is one of the happiest people he knows. Yet this negative reviewer cites the book Your Money or Your Life as a much better book. Interestingly enough, the late Joe Dominguez, one of the co-authors, lived happily in Seattle on less than $500 a month and, as Zelinski, maintained that financial independence is simply having more money come in that goes out.
The subtitle of The Joy of Not Working states that it is "A book for the retired, unemployed, and overworked." Zelinski should have clarified that this book is not for the negative people of this world. Michel de Montaigne stated: "Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible." The Joy of Not Working will help many people get over their poverty of goods and their poverty in the workplace, but it will not help the negative people get over their poverty of soul. No book or amount of money can do this.
I lost my passion for conventional work and the typical workplace many years ago. The Joy of Not Working reinforced my strong beliefs that there are many ways to combat emptiness in life and none of them involve working long and hard hours at a job you don't like all that much. Zelinski also reinforced my belief that the work ethic taken to extremes is a terrible mistake. It is promoted most vehemently by employers who either want to exploit you or by pathetic workaholics who are trying to justify why they work so many hours and have no real life.
No doubt as it has already, The Joy of Not Working will help tens of thousands of people around the world escape the insanity of the extreme work ethic and reclaim their creativity and their lives. At the same time, this book will show people how to find success, prosperity, and happiness on their own terms.
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