After reading The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
As capo pointed out in a comment in an earlier, unrelated post, the title of this book would make one think it is just another of the millions of get-rich-quick recipes that work only for the authors of those recipes. But, this book is absolutely not like that. It is filled with solid and valuable life management principles, including:
- How to really set goals (Mr. Ferriss talks about setting Exciting Goals, and gives us methods of working through the identification and implementation of those goals).
- Eliminating tasks and activities that do not serve you well.
- Using the Pareto Principle (the 80-20 Rule) to focus on the 20% of the tasks and clients (and …) that give you 80% of your profits/benefits, and to eliminate or downplay the 20% that give you 80% of the headaches without corresponding gains.
- Sensibly outsourcing things you don’t want to do and that suck up your time (or things that have been on your To Do list forever).
- Avoiding the wasting of your time from soaking up so much information that does not serve you well. He notes that so many of us spend so very much time checking out news sources on the internet, reading books that are not worth our time, and filling our heads with useless information. This sounds somewhat at odds with my post on Being a Continuous Learner, which describes how leaders like Jeff Immelt and Steve Jobs are voracious readers and how they benefit from that. But, Ferriss is very much pro-learning, just anti-wasting-time. After reading his thoughts on this, I have killed off half a dozen blog feeds in my Google Reader to sites that posted tons of posts but delivered little direct value to me. I am simply not going to waste my time looking at their posts again. One of these sites was in the links section on this blog’s sidebar, but it ain’t there now. I may kill off another couple for the same reason.
- Using automation to reduce time spent on tasks.
The first half or so of the book contains this type of information, while the latter parts of the book describe how to make money to support a new lifestyle, if desired. (There are some really good tips in there, and I may well try some of them out at some point.)
On top of all the great, well-written detail that Ferriss provides, he throws in neat unrelated freebies as well, such as how to speed read. But, if you pay no attention to the latter part of the book, you will still get more than your money’s worth from the first half of the book. By the way, if you are a retiree, like I am, you may be interested in a chapter he sneaks in near the end of the book: “Filling The Void.” I personally don’t have a void to fill, but this chapter was still a great read.
I am not alone in being impressed with this book. It is getting great reviews from all over the web. The reviews on the Amazon site are pretty spectacular, too. Jack Canfield says “This will be huge.” Dr. Stewart Friedman, adviser to Jack Welch, says “This is a whole new ballgame.”
A while back I wrote a post entitled Is GTD a dying trend? I didn’t know anything about Ferriss’ book at the time, but my sense was that something like it is needed. My sense was, and is, that millions have implemented GTD, have found it to be helpful, but still feel that their lives are crammed with too much crap and unimportant stuff. I have been a huge fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
I am grateful to Tim Ferriss for making this phenomenal book available. I expect I will read it several times, and I am ready to start my second reading of it now, this time taking a lot of notes and working through all of the exercises.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
capo 05.07.07 at 8:43 am
wow, you must be a speed reader yourself. Having little time to read but lots of time to listen, I downloaded the unabridged version from iTunes last week and have been listening pretty steadily. I’m about halfway through. I’m not sure what the actual value of the book will be to me personally because of the nature of my employment space (which I won’t get into here). However, I agree with many of Ferriss’ points and would be very interested in applying them if I were a self-employed consultant or working for a more progressive employer. I’ve consumed a lot of self-help material over the years and have found it generally encouraging but of little or no specific help beyond being encouraging. I’m hoping this book won’t be another in that series. Interestingly, I also listened to GTD some time ago but managed to delete the iTunes download. Wanting to review it, I bought a CD audiobook copy of GTD last week and it’s next in line after 4 Hour Work Week. I think the two can peacefully co-exist - the key is to be productive and not just busy. As Ferriss says, are you shuffling papers and banging on a keyboard all day or are you making a difference in the world? A very good question.
bruce 05.07.07 at 9:16 am
Excellent point, capo, about GTD and T4HWW being capable of peaceful coexistence. It is of course possible to use both.
How to get them to best peacefully coexistent is something I have to work out. I am printing out my task list this morning and will think a lot about how to best “lay it out” so that I always know what the most valuable 20% are (Ferriss recommends re-evaluating the 80-20 stuff about every two weeks, as priorities and values of activities can change). I also expect to give this list a pruning, to ensure I don’t have tasks on that are of no value to me. Anyway, I still have some “how” details to work through, but in principle, I shouldn’t have to totally toss GTD in order to implement T4HWW. I am a big believer in the 80-20 Rule, but I don’t think I have applied it as well or as often as I really should. Nor do I prune the crap often enough.
My focus on my second reading of the book is going to be purely on the life management aspects of T4HWW, not on the money-making aspects (although he provides great info in this area).
Mike 05.07.07 at 9:29 pm
Capo & Bruce - both of you make excellent points on the fact that a lot of people confuse busy-ness & activity with effectiveness, when they can been far apart. I know that in 2006, I changed / removed things in my career that were meaningless & replaced them with effective tasks & it turned out to be a record year for our company. I also am encouraged / reminded by reading Bruce’s ongoing comments re: eliminating tasks that have been on my To Do lists for a long time, they must not be that important. I too agree with the 80/20 rule. Thanks for the posts. The 4 hour work week sure seems nice.
On a side note, I have been visiting with several parents that I respect re: home-schooling children, & not meaning to give pros & cons of this, I only say that these children complete more in 2 hours at home, with no homework, than the conventional schools do in 7+ hours + homework. This is probably similar to the 4 hour workday / week model. Looking forward to tomorrow’s posts! Mike
bruce 05.08.07 at 7:03 am
Tanks for the testimony on the value of eliminating meaningless tasks. It’s natural for us to have them as we all want to be successful and equate successful to busy and equate busy to having more tasks — we add many worthless ones without even realizing it.
Regarding home schooling, a dear friend adopted several children over the past twenty years and used home schooling for all of them. There was a time when he swore by it, but I think he has been less well-spoken of it of late: it requires tremendous effort, and of course deprives the children of valuable interactions (in addition to the “bad interactions” it works to avoid). I know I am disappointed in the educational system in the US.