The 4- Hour Work Week - Timothy Ferriss | SUMMARIZED BOOKS

The 4- Hour Work Week

Mindset Surgery: Any rule not set in course by nature or your government can be bent or broken

Here's the life cycle of a typical human: go to school, study hard, get a good job and have a family; continue working, save up for retirement then wait until you die. There is really nothing wrong with this arrangement if it's something you enjoy. But a lot of people become disinterested few years into their jobs. They just feel like the job is sucking away their lives. They rarely have time for friends, family or any fun activities. Literally, they are stock.

Many people desire to break out of this prison, but only a few succeed at it — and it all boils down to the fear of the unknown. Who would want to lose their job if there's no tangible hope of getting something that is better on the scales of time and freedom?

But, if you truly desire to have freedom to live the lifestyle you deserve, then Tim Ferris can show you how. The 4 – hour work week is a lifestyle design that millionaire entrepreneur and podcaster, Tim Ferris, created for his personal life, and began teaching others once he successfully tested the effectiveness of his new approach to life. Countless people all over the world have achieved the lifestyle design of their choice simply by understanding and implementing the strategies in this book; and you're about to join the number.

The New Rich (NR) is the name Tim calls the category of people who don't wait for retirement to make things happen for themselves; these people have learned to defy the rules of the normal world and create a lifestyle design they enjoy. To join the NR league, you only have to start seeing things differently from others.

For the vast majority, retirement happens only when you've reached the age or have saved enough money to start a sustainable business. But the New Rich see things differently. They believe in creating mini retirements that enable them to cool off from work and have fun doing those things they love.

The New Rich don't concentrate on becoming the boss or employee. Their goal is to become the owner and have others work for them.

They don't see money as the major currency; time and mobility are.

The New Rich consider relative income above absolute income, because absolute income measures only the amount earned, whereas relative income measures the amount earned plus a more important variable: time.

If two people earn $100,000 a year, but one is working 80-hours a week, while the other works 10-hours, who is richer? It's definitely the latter because he has more time to explore other aspects of his life.

Similarly, Diane who earns $60,000 a year working 80-hour weeks is not richer than Mike who earns $40,000 annually working 6-hours weekly. The goal of the New Rich is not more work, more money and less time, but to work on jobs you like, outsource some business and have the time to enjoy the life you deserve.

You will be learning all the tactics you need in the summaries below, but it is important you understand that living life on your own terms is really possible.

Of course, it's natural to have fears and reservations here and there, so the next thing we will treat is how you can overcome your fears. Afterwards, we dig into eliminating the baggage that will keep you from enjoying the new lifestyle design, then we go into income automation, and finally, liberation: how you can escape your office without regrets.

“Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn’t require being unethical.” ~ Tim Ferriss

How to move beyond your fears and create the lifestyle you really want

Tim Ferriss once had a business that sucked his time away. It was rewarding financially, but he had to work 15 hours daily. That was a major challenge to him at the time because he wanted freedom.

After brainstorming for some time, Tim realized taking a year vacation in Europe would help cool his head. But, like the majority of us, the fear of losing his business kicked in.

Because of that, he shoved away the idea of taking a year long vacation. He continued working himself out on his business, even though he disliked it. But, one day, the light bulb switched on: what would be the worst case scenario should he take the vacation, despite all odds? A lot of things may possibly go wrong — his business may crash, he may go broke in a strange country, or even more sinister things could happen.

Tim noted all those down. He then thought deeply about possible survival strategies. It dawned on him that he could actually make a living outside his business. Things would definitely be rough at first, but he could take a menial job and cut down on luxuries such as eating out. Not so bad.

So he took the trip. His vacation lasted 15 months, and surprisingly, his business thrived more in his absence. The moral of the story: your fears aren't always as bad as they seem.

If you truly want to experience the New Rich lifestyle, you will have to master the art of overcoming your fears.

Is the fear of the unknown limiting you from making a major change in your life and career? Do you really want to change? If yes, pick up a pen and paper, write down all the possible worst case scenarios as well as the things you can do to overcome them.

It also helps to focus on your plan for the future. This will lead you to find inspiration. Tim suggests that you set high unrealistic expectations for the things you would like to be, do, and have between now and at least the next six months. After that, begin finding out ways you can bring those things to pass. Draft out a complete plan for manifesting your unrealistic expectations.

Remember, they have to be unrealistic. Keeping your goals realistic is the fastest recipe for demotivation.

While doing all these, beware of optimistic fears — the refusal to take action and change your situation in the hope that things will change by themselves overtime. For instance, the fact that your job is just uninspiring and not a living hell can be a good excuse to not act, in the hopes that things will change in the near future. This is optimistic fear. What if nothing changes after a year or two?

“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, 'Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,' and an optimist who says, 'Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.' Either way, nothing happens.” ~ Yvon Chouinard

How elimination is the key to productivity

Forget anything that has to do with time management. This is probably the worst productivity advice you're getting, but the idea of time management — doing more in less time — has kept many people busy without actually moving.

Productivity is not always about being busy. To be productive, you have to be busy doing the exact thing you should be doing per time. Don't get too lost in the idea of filling time with activity, and not accomplishing the most important things at the end of the day.

As a would be NR, you should be more concerned with being effective than efficient. There's a world of difference between the two. Efficiency is being busy doing stuff which isn’t necessarily contributing to your grand goal, but when you're effective, every task you do is moving you toward your end goal. For example, you can be busy replying to emails for 3 hours, when you could easily outsource that at a lower cost and focus on doing more important activities that will lead you to your end goal. Replying to your emails may be a part of your job description, but spending hours on that alone doesn't make you any more efficient.

Wherever you are in your life, productivity is important if NR is the goal.

There are two laws you can incorporate into your life to rapidly boost your personal and professional productivity: the 80/20 law and the Parkinson's law.

Let's start with the first. The 80/20 law or principle states that, about 20 % of activities account for 80 % of the results we get. To put it more practically, as an employee, roughly 20 % of your time is responsible for 80 % of your office work. No employee is really productive 8 hours every day, a good part of that 8 hours is used for relatively unimportant tasks. This is explained by Parkinson's law, which states that, “a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.”

If something urgent has come up, you will most definitely be able to finish your daily tasks before the standard 8 hours is over. This should be your goal as an employee who wants to live the New Rich. Use the 80/20 law to focus on your most productive activities, get them done in time so you can focus on other things. Apply Parkinson's law by setting yourself a deadline that's earlier than what was cut out by your employer.

Doing this will not only increase your productivity, it will make you valuable to your organization and at that point you can negotiate remote work, a salary raise or both.

Similarly, the entrepreneur or business owner can apply both principles to increase sales and save more time.

In the previous chapter, we talked about Tim Ferriss working 15 hours a day and how things changed when he decided to make a move. One of the things he did was apply the 80/20 principle to let go of some customers who weren't contributing much to the progress of his business. He realized he was wasting too much time on them, and that was responsible for his long working hours. He saved time when he decided to stop chasing this category of customers, and instead focused on how he could satisfy and attract more of the type of customers that moved his business. The result? He lost some revenue in the first few weeks, but quickly began earning more in less time.

Simple hacks for putting your work on autopilot

Outsourcing is the lifeblood of the New Rich. Don't forget the goal is to be in charge of your life and have others working for you while you focus on the activities that matter most to you. And as we've reiterated countless times, anyone can do this. It doesn't matter if you're on entrepreneur, employee or a student.

Before we go into how you can outsource effectively, here are a few short rules to help you make the most of it.

Rule number one — and everything hinges on this — do not delegate tasks that can be eliminated. This is so important. You'll be wasting your resources (time and money), if you violate this rule.

Rule number two — every task must be both times consuming and well defined before it can be delegated.

Having made that clear, let's delve into how you can begin outsourcing your tasks.

You have two options here. You could choose to use either a local or remote virtual assistant. Tim recommends using remote VAs from developing countries like India because the cost of service is less, and because of the time difference between both countries — you will be sleeping while your VA is working for you. So let's say you have a presentation to give the following morning. All you need to do is contact your VA early enough, give them clear instructions and a deadline you both can work with (keep Parkinson's law in mind when doing this). If things go well, you will wake up to your presentation waiting in your email. How awesome is that?

In order to avoid any disappointments, it's good you don't hire a new or sole VA. Working with a VA organization with a good reputation will save you all the stress of finding a great VA. The two most common VA organizations providing remote services are YourManInIndia (YMII) and Brickwork, also based in India.

Now it's time to set your income on autopilot!

This is the part you've been waiting for!

The secret of all NRs is building a business around something they love, and keep it simple and automated so they can enjoy doing other things. The goal is not business, but fun.

The easiest way to get into this is to find a product you can sell to a particular target market. And you don't want to spend too much time researching about a product or its market, so just find a niche you already know well. Look at your past or current experiences and try to locate a problem your product can solve.

When Tim created brainQUICKEN, his target market was students and athletes. It was easy to create something they will love because he was a student and athlete, too.

Now, don't let the word “create” scare you. That word has been largely overrated by the media — but as you will see soon enough, it's not hard to create products people will love. And just in case the idea of product creation doesn't at all fascinate you, there are two other awesome ways to get a product for your target market. But before going into those two other ways, let's hammer on product creation.

After picking a target market and determining what problems they have, the next step is to think of a product you can create to meet this need. If what you have in mind is a hard product, you can leverage on private labeling; simply contact experts in the field to manufacture the product in a way that it will suit your target market, then stamp your unique label on it. Another option is to create information products.

The other two ways of getting a product are: reselling and licensing. To resell a product is simple — in fact, it's the easiest way to get a product — just that the profit margin won't always be great as there are usually many other people reselling the same product, and probably at lower prices. But reselling is a good place to start. If it interests you, there is only one vital step to take: contact the manufacturer, negotiate the wholesale price, and presto — you're in business.

Reselling is similar to licensing in a way, but licensing requires more effort and is more profitable. Licensing is all about granting others the right to produce, hundreds of products with a brand's name and image, in exchange for a percentage of the sales.

Many top brands use licensing in one way or another. A good example is Red Bull — that energy drink came from a tonic in Thailand.

So how can you take advantage of licensing? There are two possible ways: become the inventor or the licensee. Most NRs are the latter. They obtain licensing deal from inventors and use that to easily push their products to their target market.

Decide on any of the approaches that suits you, but don't fall into the naive trap of setting low prices. Your product shouldn't cost less than $50, and ideally, no more than $200. A good price saves you the stress of dealing with low end customers who will always give you a headache. If you're sure your product is worth it, don't be afraid to set high prices.

Now you can quit your job and live the NR lifestyle

If you've followed all the steps above — particularly if you've started outsourcing and the side business you created with your spare time is beginning to roll in consistent cash — you're near the point where quitting your job is feasible. But first, you will want to negotiate remote working conditions so you can test your lifestyle of freedom while still having money from your job. You will need the remote work especially if your business is yet to comfortably cater to your financial needs.

Earlier we discussed how being super productive will make it easier to negotiate remote work; but you need something more than productivity — you need a strategy, because it's not always a walk in the part to talk management into allowing you to work from anywhere in the world. What your company's management needs to see is how your working from home will contribute more to the organization than working from the office. And it's the duty of your strategy to show them that.

Consider Sherwood's experience with his boss. Because of his plan to negotiate remote work, Sherwood started putting in the effort to increase his productivity — and consequently, his value to the company.

Additionally, he ensured the company invested in him so that it would be hard for them to let him go. Next, he called in sick for two days. Sherwood used these days to do his office work remotely. He made sure he performed more than he usually did at the office. He resumed after two days and was ready to negotiate remote work. He started by asking for two remote workdays — Monday and Tuesday — he used that approach because it's much easier for his boss to accept two days of remote work than all five days at once.

The result? Sherwood did his best to impress his boss, then leveraged on his super performance to negotiate four days remote work, and then complete remote work — the entire five days a week.

He is now only required to show up at the organization during crucial meetings.

You can apply his strategy too. The most important things are your ability to show a high degree of competence and reliability.

Conclusion

You no longer have to pour out your life into your job or business, forgetting that work is simply a means to living and not the goal itself. All the strategies outlined in this book are targeted at one thing: helping you work to live, not just work for work's sake. Begin your journey into the world of possibilities and adventures by deciding you deserve a better life — a life of cash and freedom. Then begin eliminating all the clutter that will stop you from joining the NR league. After that, automate your work and income.

1. Outsource excess work that cannot be eliminated.
2. Start a profitable side business.
3. Liberate yourself from the 9-5 shackles and live like the NR you are.

Find more information about the New Rich lifestyle. There are also tons of real-life stories of people who successfully created the NR lifestyle for themselves. You sure will learn a lesson or two from their stories.