The 4 Hour Work Week Summary by Tim Ferriss
Generally, this book acts as a guide to escape the daily 9-5 work schedule. This prison sentence can be avoided using the methods outlined to optimise your lifestyle, centring on enjoyment. The ‘New Rich’, as Ferriss terms, are people who can achieve a near identical pay scale. Yet only work for four hours a week. Instead, they ignore the everlasting 9 to 5, focusing on the present over the future. The New Rich re-orient their life around the principles of DEAL.
Definition
Elimination
Automation
Liberation
Table of Contents
Definition
Markedly, the New Rich have clear goals
Old Models of Success | The New Rich Philosophy |
You can work for yourself | To have others do the work for you |
The ability to work when you wish | Be able to perform the minimum work required for the maximum effect |
To have an early retirement | You can have recovery periods scattered across regular intervals in life between work |
Have the ability to be able to buy everything you wish to own | Be the person you want to be as well as doing all the activities you have dreamed of |
To become the boss instead of the employee | Become the owner and delegate responsibilities to other people |
Meanwhile, the current work model, which ends with the assumption of a prosperous retirement is flawed.
Overall, it assumes that you dislike your current job but are willing to sacrifice all your healthy years. For this reason, it contends that you can enjoy your life at the end.
However, the most discerning among you would have noticed the problem with this scenario.
Conversely, you end up with a finite amount of money to spend when you are old and immobile.
Therefore, how could anyone enjoy retirement, when all they are worrying about is whether their hard earned savings will last?
Accordingly, a more optimal approach is for mini-retirements through life, as you enter periods of productivity followed by rest. Above all, you work when you are most effective, instead of going all out.
Why to Work Less Hours
In short, society stigmatises less time spent working – classifying it as laziness. Yet if the end bank balance remains the same, then surely the New Rich should be seen as crafty adapters.
With this intention, capitalise on your strengths and hone in on a corresponding skill. To begin with, unnecessary time spent on fixing your weaknesses does not lead anywhere.
This lifestyle choice is focused on the positive usage of free time by endeavouring in actions you desire. These activities take precedence over actions you feel obligated to perform.
Nevertheless, absolute income only looks at the money earned but relative income factors in the time frame.
However, the lack of importance you feel in your life won’t be compensated by money.
Ask yourself what would excite me?
As a result, these answers should be a part of your goal since they explain why you work. Significantly, the opposite of happiness isn’t sadness but boredom.
Henceforth, define your exact goals and what steps you are willing to take over the next six months. Specifically, what do your goals actually mean? How much do they cost?
Elimination
On the whole, this section focuses on eliminating the tasks which do not contribute to our income. Different from the to other preferable tasks which are well worth investing our time into.
First of all, we need to differentiate between effectiveness and efficiency.
Effectiveness = actions lead us closer to our goal.
Efficiency = doing tasks in the most economic form possible.
Usually, doing an unimportant task well does not make it important. Likewise, tasks are not important on the premise that they require a lot of time. All in all, these forms of timewasters must be eliminated.
In essence, remember Pareto’s 80/20 principle universal law of life:
80% of the outputs come from 20% of the inputs.
< Etch this into your brain. >
Hence, 80% of our income is a result of 20% of our clients. In any event clients not in the 20% are not important, so time spent towards them should be eliminated.
Similarly, Parkinson’s Law states:
A task becomes more complex and important in accordance with the time given for completion.
Thus, tasks always become doable and prioritised when nearing the deadline. Whereas the same tasks are unimportant and difficult to approach in their infancy.
With this in mind, combine Pareto’s and Parkinson’s laws to realise that:
we must identify the important tasks with the most income and schedule short deadlines for the work regarding these clients.
Provided that our time is worth millions, be ruthless and eliminate activities that are time consuming. At the same time these tasks bring no happiness to YOU specifically.
Automation
In brief, hiring virtual assistants from developing countries allows you to focus on the more important tasks. All things considered, your abilities are enhanced because you learn the leadership skills of communication and remote management.
Ultimately, delegate business projects that do not highlight your companies name or contain financial information. When assigning projects, it is good practise to eliminate unimportant tasks prior to giving the initial task to the assistant.
Normally, the tasks themselves should be unable to be automated. Additionally, these tasks must be well defined and time consuming.
Clearly explain the:
- job needed to be completed
- hours needed to be spent on each task
- deadline.
Minimise potential damage by providing a unique login and password if your virtual assistant needs access to certain websites. Regardless, ensure you do not use debit cards for online transactions.
Virtual Assistant Rules
Without delay, here are the rules of giving a task:
- Instantly, specify the type of virtual assistant to you want the firm to provide. You should ask for someone who can speak excellent English. Amid the enquiry, highlight that emails and phone calls are the main mode of communication.
- Furthermore, don’t be afraid of asking for a replacement should repeated communication issues arise.
- Don’t assign tasks which are imprecise & indicate what type of client they are doing work for.
- To clarify their understanding of the task, ask the virtual assistant to rephrase the job required before getting started.
- In like manner, ask for status updates between every few hours.
- With attention to the previously established rules, deadlines should be completed with the maximum of 72 hours. But 24 – 48 hours are more optimal.
- Not to mention the obvious, but send tasks one at a time (virtual assistants are human as well).
On the negative side, all the best of us make mistakes. Thus, when a mistake occurs, praise your virtual assistant for something specific and allow them to respond. Then tell them how they could improve afterwards, as if it was just a thought that slipped through your mind.
4 Hour Work Week Summary – The Steps to Make Our Own Business:
1) Pick an Affordably Reachable Niche Market
Answer the following questions:
- Who is your customer?
- What does your audience buy?
- In what small market can you fill the demand?
- What magazines do they read? In essence, profitable magazines are visible by the frequency of ads within them.
2 ) Brainstorm / Discover Products for the Market
Accordingly, when choosing the best products to sell, see if you can explain their benefit in one sentence. Moreover, the pricing should range from £50 to £200. Consequently, this is the mid-range of pricing – being not too expensive or cheap.
With attention to potential worries, make sure your able to explain your product in an FAQ.
In summary, you should chose a product that take at most three to four weeks to manufacture. Notably, specialise in the types of products you sell. Yet, if you can’t locate any manufacturer, then ask industry organisations for referrals.
When selling a product you can either:
- Resell a product after purchasing it at its wholesale price
- Licence a product
- Manufacture a product
More Steps to Make Our Own Business:
3) Micro-test the Product
After you need to test your product, inexpensively advertising your product to the consumer to gauge their response. Coupled with the use of digital marketing – AdWords, SEO, social media you can drive traffic to your website. Additionally, A/B test variables and generate a payment processing link for your website (PayPal cart, Google checkout).
4) Streamline and Outsource Operations
Generally, contact outsourcing companies that specialise in one specific function. Following this, providing them with consent to generate inexpensive decisions without your prior consultation. Thereupon, they have the capacity to coordinate among themselves to solve the problem.
The different phases of shipment:
- 0-50 total products shipped. Granted that orders are low volume, use your own phone number for taking orders. At the same time, the website should be a medium where people can ask questions and take orders.
- 10 units shipped per week. Without delay, it is imperative for you to locate mailing services.
- More than 20 units shipped per week. Finally, end to end fulfilment houses should handle: returns, refunds and the order status. In any event, it is advisable to set up accounts with credit card processers. Straightaway, make agreements with call centres.
Liberation
Altogether, you are now free from the shackles of the workplace due to your passive income stream. You are now mobile, being able to work from anywhere in the world.
Here is the how you turn your job into a remote job:
- Increased investment. In general, make the company invest as much as possible into you. If you were fired the company would suffer. For instance, sign up for all those beneficial extracurricular classes in the guise that it benefits the company. Yet make the company pay for this expenditure.
- Proven increased work output outside the office. First and foremost, choose two days to stay at home in one week. In particular, during both those days double the output of your work. Of course, you ideally should prepare for this in advance. Moreover, contact your boss by leaving them a message to notify them of the evidence regarding the projects completed.
- Prepare the quantifiable business benefit. Compelling evidence must be made of the benefits of remote work. To explain, list your achievements, demonstrating the large scale completion of your assignments outside the office. For example, how many more decisions can you make in a day because you are not commuting to the office.
- Propose a trial period. Namely, take baby steps, proposing to work remote one day per week over a span of two weeks.
- Expand remote time. After showing confidence in your abilities of managing remote work prepare a presentation. The intention behind this is to suggest advancing the remote schedule to four days a week. Later, after two months you can fully request to work remotely.
When negotiating with your boss ask if they’ve made exceptions before when it comes to remote work and why. Usually, position yourself as someone who will still do the work at a breakneck pace. After all, a company does not want to lose its faithful hard working minion.
The ‘Help the Introvert’ Scale
4 Hour Work Week
Rating : 5 Stars
Pros: There is a good justification regarding going remote, as there is a correlation between happiness and time spent on work. In between chapters there are numerous links which will help the reader to get started in putting theory into practise. The lessons learned from managing virtual assistants is an underrated aspect of this book. | Cons: Despite the stellar reputation as one of the go to books for the world of self-help, information is repetitive. Most information can be condensed into the benefits of going remote and how you can set up your own business. The process to begin your business is simplified and the other avenues of digital passive income are not explored in the book. Some of the website referrals no longer work. |
If you want more knowledge on going remote, click here to purchase the book.
Should you desire the necessary conversational skills to communicate with people, read this article.