The 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss

Summary

This book is the author’s treatise on how to escape the deferred life plan or the idea that you do nothing but work for 40+ years until you can finally retire and enjoy the fruits of your labor. The author offers an alternative that is essentially the automation of income streams to enable you to live the life you truly want now, instead of an indeterminate future. Important aspects of the process involve defining what you truly want, eliminating work that does not add value, automating as much of your work as possible, and liberating yourself from a single work location.

Key Points

Definition

The first step in the process is to define what you want. Traditional life plans essentially boil down to working long enough so you can save all you need to retire and never have to work again. The New Rich work so that they can do what they want—essentially a retired status—no matter where they are in their career. The critical first step is defining what you want. Do you want money? If so, what do you plan to use it on? Trips to exotic locations with the finest food and drink? When you look at what it costs in reality for those experiences, it’s not as much as you think. Do you want free time? If so, what do you plan to do with it? Relaxing may be attractive but it won’t fulfill your life for years to come. Would you ultimately plan to work on a hobby? Perhaps a sport or craft? You can make time for that in your current career by following the next three steps.

Elimination

The rule of elimination focuses on the 80/20 rule which essentially states that 80 percent of your results are delivered by 20 percent of your effort. That is a powerful tool to recognize that you can deliver the majority of the work at the same quality for a fraction of the time and effort you normally dedicate. The key to getting there is recognizing that the opposite is also true. The remaining 20 percent of your work consumes a massive 80 percent of your time and attention. This is usually the repetitive, mundane, but seemingly necessary tasks like email, meetings, zoom/phone calls, etc. We all feel tied to these seemingly fundamental building blocks of the every day responsibilities we call work. However, in reality, many of us can deliver the outcomes called out in our job descriptions with only that small fraction of our attention. This effectively increases the value of your own earnings by increasing the amount you earn per hour you work.

First, identify what tasks are in which category and then begin to ruthlessly eliminate the ones that are not critical. If email isn’t helping you complete the important functions of your job, do whatever you can to set it aside. The author recommends batching these more tedious tasks so they end up taking less time overall. Instead of checking your email constantly and letting it distract you from the truly crucial parts of your responsibilities, check it only once a day, or once a week! It seems impossible but it can be done. This elimination allows you to win back time for yourself that can be allocated to new endeavors.

Automation

This step is all about taking yourself out of the equation as much as possible. Whether you are an employee or a business owner, the goal is to automate as much of your own work through delegation—including the use of personal assistants, the use of technology, and any method that gets you the same result at a lower cost of time or money. After all, time savings is effectively financial savings—especially if your goal is to have the time to pursue your hobbies at your leisure. This ensures that the income you need to fund your new life is flowing in without the need to have your constant attention.

Liberation

Liberation is the final step in achieving the New Rich lifestyle. This liberation is freeing yourself from a single location. By enabling yourself to work remotely, you give yourself the freedom to be anywhere at any time. This means that your income can drastically change its value just by changing your location. Similarly, the opportunities to use your own income expand when you are not limited to a single location. This enables mini-retirements where no work needs to be performed and the fruits of your hard labor can be enjoyed spread out throughout your life instead of deferring your life to a point where you are too old or unhealthy to truly enjoy it.

Great Quotes

“For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn't conspire against you, but it doesn't go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. "Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it "eventually," just do it and correct course along the way.”

“What would you do if there were no way you could fail? If you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world?”

“People will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”

“A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”

“Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner”

“Our goal isn’t to create a business that is as large as possible, but rather a business that bothers us at little as possible.”

“There is no sure path to success, but the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone.”