Book Summary — The four hour work week
About book — The book is all about how to change the way the ready look at how they live and work and why they should challenge old assumptions.
About author — Timothy Ferriss (born July 20, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster, and lifestyle guru. He became well-known through his “4-Hour” self-help book series including the 4-Hour Work Week, the 4-Hour Body, and the 4-Hour Chef, that focused on lifestyle optimizations, but he has since reconsidered this approach.
Amazon link — Here
If your are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. you are better than you think.
The framework of the book is built with the acronym “DEAL”.
- Definition — Replace self defeating assumptions
- Elimination — Neglect using time productively, figure out how to disregard the irrelevant.
- Automation — learn to put cashflow on auto pilot
- Liberation — creation freedom of locations
Definition — Define the life you wanted to live
Know what will give more happiness, Don’t measure your life through others. Money combined with the value of time and mobility take on a whole new value. It isn’t money this is important, it’s the ability to live in our terms.
Thinking differently means questioning accepted ideas and methods. The book give us ten ways that old assumptions are wrong.
- Retirement is the worse case scenario insurance
- Interest and energy are cyclical
- Less is not laziness
- The timing is never right
- Ask for forgiveness, not permission
- Emphasize the strengths, don’t fix weakness
- Things in excess become their opposite
- Money alone is not the solution
- Relative income is more important than the absolute income
- Distress is bad, eustress is good.
Elimination — Eliminate obstacles
By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable.
1) Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20).
2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).
The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear
deadlines.
Find more time to live the life by stopping the interruptions and refusing to waste time. The book outlines three categories
— Time wasters — those things that can be ignored with little or no consequence. Common time wasters include meetings, discussions, phone calls, web surfing, and e-mail that are unimportant.
— Time consumers — repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high-level work. Example — Customer report, Order tracking and all necessary repeated actions and tasks.
— Empowerment failures — refers to being unable to accomplish a task without first obtaining permission or information.
Automation — Being effective vs being efficient
Successfully defining the life you wanted to live and eliminating obstacles, Now we are ready to put some automation is place to make things easier.
“Being able to quit things that doesn’t work is integral to being winner”
Once the automation is put into motion, the challenge for readers will be to remove themselves from the equation. This can be applied to all the unimportant tasks. Say -
John needs to clean the house and it would require something like 3 hours to make it happen.
- Cost of John’s 60 minutes — Rs. 500
- Cost of Cleaning proficient’s 60 minutes — Rs 200
Most of us will be end up doing the cleaning by ourself to save money(200*3),but the effective way would be to hire the professional and you focus on the important tasks. It’s not that, John can’t clean the house but it’s more about better use of John time.
More automation = more time.
4.Liberation — Liberate yourself from the traditions office environments.
In 2007, remote work was not at all well-known. But today it’s a standard concept and the recent coronavirus crisis forced millions who were used to working at schools and offices into the world of remote work, whether they wanted to or not. It may be that the battle for the possibility of remote work has been unexpectedly won by a crisis, but the key to remote work was Tim’s phrase in the book, “ Work wherever and whenever you want, but get your work done.”
Book outlines the five steps to convince your boss that working remotely is a good idea.
1) Increase investment
2) Proved increased output off site
3) Show the business benefit
4) propose the trial period
5) Expand remote time
Goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.