“The 4-Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss is probably the most influential book that changed my thoughts and beliefs of what my life should be. This is powerful book on lifestyle design for anyone that knows there has to be a better way.
I really love that Tim Ferriss is not afraid to be his own guinea pig and that’s how he found his way. He shares his story of how he did it, how you can also design your ideal lifestyle and how to get there. He combines eye-opening insights and compelling stories with detailed guides and resource lists. The result is a book so full of practical life changing advice.
Tim Ferriss makes it sound so simple that it can be easy to dismiss as unrealistic or unattainable. I was a Property Manager for thirty years and when I first read it I didn’t believe it but my boyfriend and I started to put the book to work and now we have the best life. We are the New Rich.
This book opened my eyes to a radical shift in worldview and for many people, it will mean changing many comfortable habits and beliefs. That process alone is a long, sometimes scary one of gradual experimentation. But the rewards of experimentation and persistence are worth the effort. Don't give up on yourself.
Do like I did, take action on Tim’s suggestions. Pretend that this is an experiment and just do it. They may not make you an overnight millionaire that works four hours per week but they will change your life. This book completely changed mine.
Most people don’t want the work that goes into being a millionaire, they want the freedom that it can buy. This book shows you how to easily achieve it. The 4-Hour Work Week is divided into 4 major parts of the acronym DEAL.
D: Definition
What exactly do you want from life? If you had unlimited money and resources, what would you be doing right now? That’s your goal.
The idea is to have mini-retirements throughout your life, where you can go for vacations for 3 months or even a year to relax, without being worried about your work.
E: Eliminate
Cut out whatever isn’t helping you grow. From now on, everything you do is to get you to your goal.
Apply Pareto’s 80/20 Principle to multiply your effectiveness by using 20% of your efforts to yield 80% of your results.
20% of your problems cause 80% of stress in your life. Find out what your big issues are and get rid of them. Are you house poor, car poor, lifestyle poor? I was all of these things and was so stressed out to keep up with the lifestyle that society pushed on me. I made great money but I spent it all on the life I was supposed to have. I gave up everything for a new kind of life and now I have the freedom to do whatever I want, to go wherever I want, when I want, to see friends and family and to spend all of my time with my favorite person.
Relative income is more significant. There are two job options. Earn $100,000 salary and work 100 hours a week or earn $50,000 and work 30 hours a week. The latter one is richer in this case because of freedom.
A: Automate
Do outsourcing. Look into UpWork. I’ve hired people in the United States and three different countries to help me meet my goals. Hire a virtual assistant. You will get more work done in a shorter period of time.
The corporate world applies Parkinson’s principle, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. 40 hours a week, 8 hours a day even though work can be completed in two hours. This is the old world industrial style of work. Force yourself to work in a hard deadline, and you’ll see your productivity increasing. If you respect your own time, others will respect it too.
L: Liberation
Create freedom.
Negotiate your position, find a new job or create a job as an entrepreneur where you can work from anywhere at anytime.
Cultivate the habit of selective ignorance. You can only have a few topics in your mind about which you can worry. No more news, magazines, or anything that causes stress.
The New Rich live by a “Freedom multiplier” and the factors are:
What you do
When you do it
Whom you do it with
Where you do it
The amount of “W’s” you control = how free you are!
The New Rich values time as their most precious commodity.
The New Rich value time over money, knowing they can make more money, but can never make more time.
When my boyfriend and I first read this book 6 years ago, we started to see the light and realized that we didn't have to work 60 hours a week during the best years of our lives. We took a chance and started, very slowly, making changes according to Tim's suggestions. It worked perfectly. Last year, as we were exploring most of the US National Parks, we noticed how many older people were out exploring and the difficulty they were having hiking the long trails, stairs and just getting tired. That happens natuarly as we age. We are taught that we have to work really hard all of our lives and once we retire at 72, then we can travel and live our lives. That is so absurd, I know this now. You would not believe how grateful I was to be able to travel the entire continental United States and Hawaii while we're young and healthy. Now we have started a new, exciting adventure and we have so many amazing adventures to come.
Do it now, live your life to the fullest now. This book is a road map of how to do it.
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