The Four Hour Work Week
After hearing all the buzz about the latest book “The Four Work Week”, I dedcided to pack the family in the Crowley minivan and head on over to Barnes and Noble for my first book store purchase in over a year. I am not a bookstore purchasing kind of guy. I read tons of online reports and e books and buy all my “traditional” books on amazon or b&n.com. It takes something special to get me out of the house in rush hour traffic to battle for a parking spot and stand in line for a book.
This book was worth it.
I was first introdcuced to the author after receiving a forum mesage from Yanik Silver asking me to listen to a 90 minute interview he conducted with the author, Tim Ferriss. Tim is a Princeton graduate, serial entrepreneur and ultravagabond. He speaks six languages, runs a multi-national firm from wireless locations worldwide and has been a world record holder in tango, a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, and an actor on a hit television series in Hong kong. He is 29 years old.
The sub title of the book is “Escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich.” Tim and I share so many of the same views on corporate America and life in general, it is eerie. I had to keep checking the title of the book to make sure it didn’t say Everyday Is Saturday. He challenges the status quo on so many different levels. The book is a step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design. Tim shows you how he went from earning $40,000 per year and working 80 hours per week to making $40,000 per month working 4 hours per week.
In this day and age of useless corporate stiffs who hide behind desks, blackberrys and other electronic leashes, Tim shows you how to live your life on your terms right now. Not thirty years from now, when you have half the gas left in the tank to enjoy anything. Tim explains how he outsources his life to make time for all the exotic experiences he describes in his book. One excerpt talks about utilizing personal assistants in India. You can email them specific instructions at 5pm U.S. time for a document you need completed and have it in your email when you get to your desk at 9am the next morning.
Another challenge Tim throws out is to go cold turkey from email for a week. He did this and what he noticed was nothing happened except an epiphany that email is not that important. He gradually worked his way beack to checking email twice per day and offers this suggestion about checking your email: Set up an auto responder to let people know that you check email at 11am and 4pm and you will be getting back to them at that time. If their message is of an urgent nature, they can reach you on your cell phone and provide them with that number. What this does is set the expectation with the person that you will not be repsonding to their email ASAP and also forces them to evaluate if their message is urgent enough for them to call you. Tim never receives a call on his cell phone.
I could go on and on about all the awesome learnings from this book, but I’ll let you discover for yourself if you feel it is worth a $15-18 investment. All I can say is if I had 40 Tim Ferriss’ as sales reps back in my corporate management days, I would have put my feet on my desk and read the newspaper, all my worries would have gone away. Tim is a no-nonsense genious who made a difference versus making excuses.
You can find out more about The Four Hour Work Week at www.fourhourworkweek.com.
Defend Your Dream
Sam Crowley
