The Book

The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated by Timothy Ferriss

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

Opinion on the book

This is very new but is already a classic and you probably have heard of it. Basically the idea behind it is to live the life you want, and do what YOU want on a daily basis. The book isn’t that big but it’s full of useful information and tips so I’m going to separate it in two parts. This week you’ll get the concepts from the book, and next week you’ll get my notes on how to create a muse (a muse is passive income, income for which you don’t need to work. You’re sleeping and you’re earning money. Sweet program hu?)

The Book in One Sentence

Re design your lifestyle with Tim Ferris.

Quotes

“Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?”

“Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action”

Notes

# Is that really the life you want?

Most people’s life plan is to work, get money, retire, and enjoy what they love doing. But why don’t you do that now? And beside, what is it you would do if you could retire RIGHT NOW? Take a paper, and write that down. Where do you live? With who? What do you do in the morning? During the day? Etc… Then calculate what it would cost you for a year. Divide by 365 and you’ll get your daily necessary income, which is probably much lower than you would expect (as long as you don’t want to live on a yacht or on the moon). Even if it is, you’re probably better off pursuing that NOW than waiting to be old. To do this you need 4 steps :
- D for Definition : Defining the lifestyle you want (what we did)
- E for Elimination : Killing all the unimportant stuff to regain control of your time
- A for Automation : Create automated income
- L for Liberation : Leave the life you want, free of boundaries

# Do what you want

This type of journey, trying to have the lifestyle you want, will set you apart and that’s not easy. But you’re really better off doing YOUR thing in life. Beside, don’t follow the crowd : most of the time there’s a better way than the way things are done now. Find it. Be unreasonable, go for what you want, and don’t be sorry about it.

# Do less

Relative income is more important than absolute income. If I earn $1000 a month by working a couple of hours every week, then it’s much more than someone who earns $10 000 every month but works his ass off 50 hours a week.
So one of the key of the book is to not try to do more each day, but try to do what has to be done in less time. See the difference? There are always ways around, found them and apply them.

# Pareto’s law

The law of 80/20 : 80% of the output is produced by 20% of the input. This apply EVERYWHERE. From sport to school learning to apple trees. And here : for time management and business.
When you do something always look for the 20% of clients that reprensent 80% of the sales. Or for the 20% of your work that produce 80% of the results.
OR also for the 20% of problems that are causing 80% of your unhapiness.

# Parkinson’s law

Parkinson’s law states that a task will expand in in perceived importance and complexity in relation to the time you allow for its completion. Which means that you could do something in 24 hours or a month depending on the deadline I give you. So to use this :
- limits tasks to the important, to shorten work time (80/20)
- shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (parkinson)

# Outsource your life

Tim Ferris advises to use an assistant. Find a cheap but reliable middle-sized company from Indi for exemple, on elance.com or another similar website.
Then you save time (and don’t have any more excuse to go online and waste time multitasking) because you can give him everything to do, basically, that does not require physical intervention. Cool stuff, I haven’t tried it yet but I know I will. Soon.

Why you should (or should not) buy that book

This book is interesting as it is really full of useful tips, as well as giving you the little ‘push’ you may need. Starting with the author’s blog ( http://www.fourhourblog.com/ ) is a good idea, there are a lot of articles, on a very broad range of subject. But it’s a life philosophy book, and you can summarize that, but you can’t communicate it.
Also the book talks about how to apply those concepts when you’re an employee and want to stay so while still being able to have the life you want, which I didn’t keep notes about.

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~Thomas

 

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What about you? Have you read that book? What did you think of it?