I’ve been reading about productivity for a year now. I achieved almost everything I set out this year thanks to my productivity system. I was listening to people talking about the book “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss and I was tempted to buy it to see what I could get from it. I read it carefully and extract enough content of the book and what Tim proposes. Here’s a small review on “The 4-Hour Work Week”.
Let it be noted that this is not a book for you to stop working and start procrastinating – it’s a book that teaches you to gain more time and suggest what to do with the time acquired. It also helps and advises you how take control of your life and get out of the 9-5 and even the “Rat Race”. It is for all types of readers from fathers or mothers, single people to young entrepreneurs like me.
Another thing I want you to think about this book is that it tells how the author does his things, Tim explains his techniques and some of them seem so crazy that it could be believed to be impossible. When you read it, you realize that you can’t follow everything exactly as he says – it’s more for reference, so you can extract what is necessary for you and you can create your own system. For that last thing I say, I’d like to apply one of my favorite quotes:
“Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” – Bruce Lee
The 80-20 Rule and the DEAL
In the beginning of the book, Tim tells his story about what happened before taking decisions to get out of the 9-5, persuading us to understand why we need this book and what we can do with what he proposed. The book is based or centralizing most of the time in the “Pareto Principle”, also known as the 80/20 rule. It states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. However, the book proposes the 80/20 rule in a different way – 80% of your productivity comes from 20% of your time, and the other 20% of your productivity eats up 80% of your time. The author uses this as a starting point and surrounded most of the ideas in the book by this principle because, after Ferris learn about this rule, he began his life of NR and lifestyle design.
The fundamental complement of the 80/20 and the proposed variant has of the Ferriss Lifestyle Design system, where most of the Pareto Principle is implemented, is the DEAL. It’s covered across the four chapters of the book, each of which explores one of the components to this lifestyle design.
Definition from getrichslowly.org review:
• Define your objectives. Decide what’s important. Set goals. Ask yourself, “What do I really want?”
• Eliminate distractions to free up time. Learn to be effective, not efficient. Focus on the 20% of stuff that’s important and ignore the 80% that isn’t. Put yourself on a low-information diet. Learn to shun aside interruptions, and learn to say “no”.
• Automate your cash flow to increase income. Outsource your life — hire a virtual assistant to handle menial tasks. Develop a business that can run on autopilot.
• Liberate yourself from traditional expectations. Design your job to increase mobility. This could mean working from home, or it could mean using geographic arbitrage to take mini-retirements in countries with favorable exchange rates.
Extract and Use
Like already mentioned, this book time tells how Tim organizes his life to get out of the 9-5 and create all the system he used now. We cannot use everything exactly as Ferriss proposes it. However, a lot of his ideas can be used, such as:
• How to be more efficient with e-mail.
• How to reduce clutter from your life
• If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it.
• Life exists to be enjoyed — the most important thing is to feel good about you.
• Why we need to look out side the 9-5 and the Rat Race
• Better and cheaper travel
Final Words from me
The 4-Hour Work Week is a good book. I found it useful and even implemented several things that Tim proposed in my productivity system. And Even I am planning to create a company that runs in autopilot, like Ferriss proposes. I reiterate that this is a book to extract useful things – not to follow everything exactly as Tim says here. My recommendation is to read it carefully, take your time and take what most applies to you.
Here I give the link of some more extensive reviews of the book and my source apart from the book to make this review:
www.getrichslowly.org – Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek
www.thesimpledollar.com – Review: The 4-Hour Workweek
www.davidseah.com – A Review of Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Work Week”
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