I just finished reading The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich* by Timothy Ferriss. What a fascinating book! I definitely recommend you read this if you are interested in getting some of your life back.

Tim Ferriss is a really smart gentleman who looked at the status quo of working your whole life and then relaxing in your golden years and changed it to one of living the life of luxury by efficiently using time and mobility.  He calls it the currency of the New Rich.

Life doesn’t have to be so damn hard. It really doesn’t. Most people, my past self included, have spent too much time convincing themselves that life has to be hard, a resignation to 9-to-5 drudgery in exchange for (sometimes) relaxing weekends and the occasional keep-it-short-or-get-fired vacation. (Ferriss, 2012, p. 7)

In the rest of the book, Ferriss outlined in quite good detail how he has reorganized his work life so that he can be both nomadic and earning money at the same time. As I read the book, I became more and more envious of the flexibility he has in terms of work location. His outline includes four steps:

• Definition
• Elimination
• Automation
• Liberation

These four steps span 426 pages and 16 chapters. There is also an additional section called Last but Not Least, which spans 125 pages and is the best of his blog. Many of the concepts of this added section were covered in the first 16 chapters; however, there are some gems worth discovering.

Throughout the book, Ferriss included interesting stories used to illustrate reasons why he made the decisions he did. He also uses a lot of attention-getting quotes to either begin a new chapter or to start a new section within each chapter.

Definition

The first section consisting of four chapters focused on defining the difference between the New Rich and the Deferrers, as Ferriss labeled them. As least as I read these chapters, it was about simplifying life to make everything as efficient and effective as possible with as much benefit as possible. This addressed time, energy, and capital. Ferriss stressed the need to understand the rules of the game and use them advantageously. For example, he increased his sales when he figured out how to get around the gatekeeper of a company and get to the decision makers. It was a matter of understanding the system, and then working around it.

In chapter two, Ferris shares a set of rules that set the pace for the rest of the book:

1. Retirement is Worst-Case-Scenario Insurance.
2. Interest and Energy Are Cyclical.
3. Less Is Not Laziness.
4. The Timing Is Never Right.
5. Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission.
6. Emphasize Strengths, Don’t Fix Weaknesses.
7. Things in Excess Become Their Opposite.
8. Money Alone Is Not the Solution.
9. Relative Income Is More Important Than Absolute Income.
10. Distress is Bad, Eustress Is Good.

One of the most important chapters to me was the chapter that addressed fear. With declining enrollment at the community college where I work, there is certainly a fear of being laid off. Fortunately, this chapter and others helped to put things into perspective and provided me with options in case the worst should occur.

At the end of each chapter, Ferriss included questions and answers. These are questions that sum up the chapter and provide an opportunity to ponder what actions you would take. For example, the first question at the end of chapter three was “Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering” (Ferriss, 2012, p. 46).

Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. (Ferriss, 2012, p. 50)

Ferriss challenged the reader to think boldly. What would you do if you could not fail? Write out a plan. He led the exercise with a series of questions to help flesh out the idea. I will need to reread The 4-Hour Workweek with a goal of working through his different exercises.  In this particular exercise, he also included a financial plan as part of the problem.

Elimination

At the beginning of this section, Ferriss admonished to disregard time management as a way to fill up more of your clock. Instead, you should work to create efficiencies to acquire more time in your day to do more productive things… or pursue leisurely pursuits. It is a matter of eliminating time sucks. “What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things” (Ferriss, 2012, p. 70).

In this section, Ferriss talks about Pareto’s 80/20 Principle. Basically, he focused on the 20% that brings him 80% of the results. He also discussed how he fired the clients that caused him 80% of his grief. While I cannot fire my clients, I can certainly give more attention to the 20% who are making my life great. Ferriss also applied this approach to his advertising and online affiliates. Essentially, he reduced his advertising and affiliates to the ones that were bringing 80% of the business.

Ferriss also explored Parkinson’s Law in that projects will fill the time allotted. Simply reduce the amount of time you dedicate to projects and plan projects more effectively.

One chapter in the book I am not entire on board with is Ferriss’ information diet. He advocated for going on a media fast: no newspapers, magazines, news websites, television, non-fiction books, and web-surfing. He stressed the importance of making personal contact. While I do understand what he is trying to achieve, I simply enjoy my time online; however, I do understand it is a time sink and I could be doing more productive things like teaching others how to use social media better.

Ferriss also stressed the importance of eliminating time wasters, time consumers, and empowerment failures. One specific example is to limit email. Ferriss has reduced checking his email to once a week. For some, that can be quite extreme; however, he did indicate that your productivity will increase if you check it less per day and turn off alerts. In the past I have written about email productivity:

• #ATD2015 Session: Time Management is Dead & Get Control of Email and Outlook
• Mastering my email with Boomerang and a couple of other tweaks
• Email and vacations are like oil and water
• 10 Tips and tools for harnessing fleeting time

Additionally, he addressed other time wasters such as telephone calls and meetings.

To control for time consumers, Ferriss encouraged batching processing so that you are working on one process completely rather than splitting attention between many processes. For example, answer email or returning calls all at one time. Another example is writing social media posts at one time to be scheduled for release throughout the week.

Finally, in this section, he encouraged organizations to reduce bottlenecks where they occur by empowering people to make decisions at the appropriate level.

Ferris included a number of tools to help with efficiency and effectiveness. I am using a number of these tools or similar to help keep my life on track.

Automation

The automation section was another interesting section that had a lot of impact on me. Ferriss talked about how to automate and outsource tasks. He looks at different tasks and debates whether he should do them based on his high salary or outsource them at a lower salary. At the present time, I do not have the capital to outsource some of the tasks I would like. However, this idea intrigues me so much, that I am seriously looking to create the conditions so I can. Ferris wrote extensively about virtual assistants (VAs). Why he uses them, where he gets them, and how he assigns tasks to them. As he noted, “This is an investment, not an expense, and the ROI is astounding. It will be repaid in a maximum of 10-14 days, after which it is pure timesaving profit” (Ferriss, 2012, p. 128).

When using VAs, you must ensure each task is well defined.  Ferriss provided exercises to get your feet wet using VAs. He included ideas for using VAs as well as scripts to manage the process.

As Ferriss discussed creating an income and automating the process, he described how to develop a product to sell. Rather than develop a product you want to sell, develop a product that others are willing to buy. This is a big difference. The interesting part of the chapter was that you do not have to be an expert when you start. He provided ideas for becoming a topic expert in a very short time to deliver a product that met and exceeded user needs. An important part of this section was the idea of micro-testing your product to see that it was viable.

Chapter 11 focused on another really important discussion—how to create a system and process so perfect that you can actually remove yourself from the equation and simply benefit from the rewards. Ferriss walked through a process on how to make a business scalable. He started by describing a company delivering 0-50 units per week and moving to consistent bulk shipments. He explored call centers, distribution centers, order placement, and much more. He also included a number of great resources to help with automation.

Liberation

In the last section, Ferriss outlined a process to convince your boss to work from home. He included a case study showing the steps to slowly work more and more days away from the office. Remember this is not about getting out of work, it is showing you can have better productivity outside the office and creating the conditions to work anywhere in the world.

Chapter 13 is about taking the big step away from a secure position and going it alone. In the definition section of this post, I talked about the possibility of being laid off. I don’t think this will happen in my near future, but you never know. A friend was recently laid off and it certainly caused me to think about what I would do. In this chapter, Ferriss looked at reasons why people do not quit:

1. Quitting is permanent.
2. I won’t be able to pay the bills.
3. Health insurance and retirement accounts disappear if I quit.
4. It will ruin my resume.

Ferriss provided options for each of these fears. As he continued, he suggested ways that New Rich could take advantage of mini-retirements. One story stood out that I want to share is called The Businessman and The Fisherman. Ferriss was able to show that it could be cheaper to live and work outside the U.S. than within. If you are not stuck in your office, what is to say you cannot work in another part of the world. He also shared a strategy for traveling light.

The final chapter is called The Top 12 New Rich Mistakes. Basically, once you create a new way of living, go live your life and stop interfering with your well-defined process.

Summary

I think The 4-Hour Workweek is a wonderful book with new insights on virtually every page. I have taken notes and created action items because of something I read in each chapter. As a wrote this post, I made more notes as new items caught my attention. If you are trying to get off the hamster wheel, I think this book will help you. It drives home the point that there is more to life than work, and if you have to work, there are ways to do more with less effort and better results. It is another book that I will be referring to often.

Other Tim Ferriss Books

• Book Review: Tools of Titans-The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-class Performers
• Book Review: Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World
• Book Review: Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself

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