The 4 hour work week

You can hardly miss this book by Tim Ferriss at the moment, it seems to be everywhere, but the question must be is it just hype or does it live up to its seemingly unbelieveable title?

I read the book straight through when it first arrived and although it seems to set the reader up for a big fall, the author really does live up to his promise; he actually does only work 4 hours a week and checks his email just… once a week.

In fact I ended up agreeing with much of what he has to say. Although I would HATE to work just 4 hours a week, his point is that in todays world you can make a good living which is location independent because of the internet and other communications media and outsource your labour to low cost countries such as India, which frees up your time to do what you want. And If you’ve wondered why I’m suddenly blogging like mad all the time it’s because I have been applying some of Ferriss’s principles to do some more of the things I like doing – playing with technology and seeing what it can do.

In fact one of the reasons I agree with so much of what he says is because I’ve experienced it, although not as radically as he has done. Some personal examples:

• Six years ago I gave up a £45,000 ($90,000) job in London for no job in Barcelona, which reduced my cost of living immensely and also focused my mind on what I was going to do next. I started my internet marketing business, earning mainly from UK clients, another of the author’s points – he talks about earning dollars, living on pesos and paying rupees or something similar.

• I also go on holiday for the whole of August every year – in fact it usually extends to around 5 weeks – and check email just to keep on top of things. I may outsource that to a virtual PA this year and see how it goes, but I don’t get that much work email in August anyway.

• 2 years ago we spent 6 weeks in Puerto Rico and I worked maybe 1-2 hours a day while I was there via a laptop and broadband. None of my business contacts was any the wiser, and even if they had been it was no big deal.

• I usually go to the gym/swim in the morning. It’s much better for me as I have more energy and its not so busy.

And there are some other great take outs from the book:

• don’t check your email 200 times a day, switch off Outlook and reply to all your emails at once – you’ll save a ton of time.

• Don’t bother with unimportant tasks – this is a great one as if they’re really important you’ll do them anyway when they need to be done.

• Don’t start a task until it needs to be done – you’ll be focused on getting it done right first time.

There are many, many more and you’ll have to read the book to find out everything else. So, is it all ok?

To be honest I found some of the exercises to try and push your comfort zone rather dumb and I have no intention of doing them as a result; one of them is lying on the ground in a public place for 10 seconds (you’d be driven off in a straight jacket) and another is asking 2 members of the opposite sex for their phone number every day, whether you mean it or not – his advice is to disgard the number if you don’t want it.

Well, no thanks, I’m happily spoken for and just don’t want to have the hassle. The other side of this is that you’re potentially playing with someone’s feeling; what if the girl whose number you’re going to throw away is really hoping that you’ll call? No, that’s just mean.

So, all in all a great book with some good advice. I’m particularly looking at outsourcing more work at the moment and have been doing so gradually; 2007 seems to be the year of outsourcing and so in that respect this book came along at exactly the right time.

Pick up a copy next time you see it or order it from Amazon or Amazon.co.uk.

Categorised in: books

This post was written by David