Tim Ferriss
The 4-Hour Workweek is essentially a manual that could be entitled How to Become Tim Ferriss. Since he's lived through and achieved all the things he proposes in this book, he himself becomes the symbol for the new life people are working towards. He is a member of the New Rich, and his various and impressive accomplishments are all elements that make him into the almost-unreachable symbol of a person who has fulfilled his dreams.
The Chinese National Kickboxing Title
In 1999, despite little to no prior training, Ferriss won the National Chinese Kickboxing gold medal. How? By reading the rulebook and exploiting little-known rules that worked to his advantage. He dehydrated himself to fit into a smaller weight category, then rehydrated for the event, so he was much larger than all of his opponents. He won by just shoving people off the elevated platform, causing him to win automatically. Was this cheating? Ferriss says no, but others might disagree. This event is a symbol for Ferriss's whatever it takes mindset and advice; it's acceptable, even encouraged, to flaunt traditional rules and expectations if it yields a more productive result for you.
The Holy Grail
Ferriss often uses the symbol of the Holy Grail to represent the aspects of life that people generally see as unattainable, such as working remotely or completely automating one's workflow. He wants to emphasize that these things are actually quite feasible, and he does so by saying that the Holy Grail is no longer just a legend: even YOU can find it.
Watching Star Wars
In a letter sent to Ferriss by "W. Higgins," the writer claims that The 4-Hour Workweek must be working for him because when his daughter was asked what her father did for work, she replied, "He just sits around and watches Star Wars all day." Star Wars thus comes to represent the results of living one's life on one's own terms, which is theoretically achievable by enacting the steps presented in The 4-Hour Workweek.
Cheesecake
In the chapter "Beyond Repair," Ferriss has a subsection called "The Cheesecake Factor." In it, he describes a failed experiment with making a cheesecake that resulted in a large pot of somewhat-cheesecake-like soup. Responsibly, Ferriss sat down and consumed this product, 'reaping what he had sown.' The result was, unsurprisingly, a stomachache and a new aversion to cheesecake. He uses this analogy to describe the situation of many workers in jobs that aren't worth keeping. The quality of cheesecake is thus a symbol for the quality of one's job - menial, meaningless tasks that fill a job are the equivalent of soupy cheesecake.
