The 4-Hour Workweek
I know, I know, another bestseller… this one recommended by my good friend M.
The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss Ferriss undertakes, quite ambitiously, to show how just about anyone can go, as he did, from making $40K a year to making $40K a month, with spending much, much less time working. Everyone I’ve told this to has thought that it’s a joke. It’s not. .Ferriss says that life is too short to spend our best years doing things we hate; that a comfortable retirement is an illusion in this day and age, and that living dreams now costs less than most people think. To get the ball rolling, Ferriss starts with “dreamlines”, breaking dreams down into realistic steps and figuring out how much they would really cost. He walks through making your work 80% more efficient (realizing that 80% of results typically come from 20% of our efforts, so focusing on that productive 20%), making it less stressful, outsourcing and delegating, and how to negotiate a distance working arrangement with your current job. All of these solutions make sense and would make work take less time with more satisfaction for most people with office jobs. Also, it frees up time for the final step. Every chapter includes exercises to get you on your way, starting with confidence-building and moving on to things directly related to the chapter. The most radical middle chunk helps you develop and market a product which will finance your “new rich” life. Once that is in place, you can either continue your traditional job with greatly reduced hours, or have the financial freedom to quit. But Ferriss doesn’t leave you rich and unoccupied. He talks about how to travel - really, live abroad - for less: where it’s safe and affordable, how to do it with children, suggestions for things to learn, how to build a social life once the work social life is taken away, and how to get used to living without feeling a need to run from one thing to the next.
It sounds wonderful. Do I think I can do it myself? Well, I'd have to want to give up my job, which I actually love. But - for my love, and for any number of people I know who either don’t like what they do, would like it much better if it took up much less of their time, or just need to get away, this book has some great ideas. The two key points are having enough chutzpah to try to do it in the first place, and coming up with the idea for your break-through product. Though he offers plenty of coaching for every step, it’s still not going to happen without some serious effort on your part. Try it anyway. Isn't your life worth it?