At the time, having a 9-5 job and hoping to one day retire was the paradigm that I was operating from. It's what I was sold by society, and I didn't know any better. The 4 Hour Work Week really opened me up and shifted my way of thinking. I was deeply inspired by Tim Ferriss' lifestyle of having the ability to travel the world and focus on doing the things he loved, while only having to work 4 hours a week. How is this possible? Isn't that a dream come true for most people? It's definitely a reality, and I've been very fortunate and having achieved it for certain stages of my life years after reading the book.
(Click here to watch the video on YouTube)
The book is all about how to “Escape the 9 to 5, live anywhere, and join the new rich.”
Most people spend their entire lives WORKING and looking forward to retirement, which is when they'll finally get the opportunity to travel and be free to do the things they really want in life. Whereas Tim believes that retirement isn't the goal, but rather we should LIVE and ENJOY our lives today.
That'd be great, except most people live in the cultural hypnosis that we need to work 40+ hours per week to be successful and wealthy. Or that we need to go to college or university and then afterwards find a job and work until we're 60 until retirement.
Less Is Not Laziness.
“Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.”
In The 4 Hour Work Week, Tim talks a lot about focusing on being productive instead of busy. Most people allow meaningless tasks and chores to consume all of their time and energy. Instead, there's a better solution: Outsourcing.
The concept of outsourcing, which is talked about in the chapter Outsourcing Life was an intriguing one to me. Instead of doing all of those time-consuming tasks yourself, what if you could get someone else to do them for you? Wouldn't that be nice. The idea of outsourcing is to hire other people to take care of those things for you, so that you have more free time. And who doesn't want more free time?
Hiring a virtual assistant from India, Phillipines, or anywhere else in the world for as little as $3/hour, can do the following for you:
- Scheduling interviews and meetings
- Web research
- Following up on appointments, errands, and tasks
- Online purchases
- Creation of legal documents
- Website maintenance (web design, publishing, uploading files) that doesn't require a professional designer
- Monitoring, editing, and publishing comments for online discussions
- Posting job vacancies on the web
- Document creation
- Proofreading and editing documents for spelling and formatting
- Online research for updating blogs
- Updating the database for Customer Relationship Management Software
- Updating invoices and receiving payments
- Voicemail transcription
… And basically whatever else you can possibly think of.
In fact, Tim Ferriss even outsourced his dating life and has different assistants to handle practically every aspect of his business. To me, this was fascinating at the time and a huge game-changer. There were tons of things that I did for business that wasn't directly related to making profit, but had to get done. I started to think, “What if I could focus my time and attention on the things that MATTER and are IMPORTANT to me, and the things that actually produce the RESULTS, rather than consuming all my time with all this other nonsense?” That made a lot of sense to me.
Since reading The 4 Hour Work Week, over the years I've had several virtual assistants that I've hired from websites such as oDesk.com. I've had virtual assistants from India and the Philippines (I currently employ a VA from the Phillipines and it's worked out beautifully) for as little as $2-3/hour. I also use websites such as Fiverr.com to leverage myself and get many tasks done for my business for only $5. This has allowed me to leverage myself in so many ways and have my internet businesses run on auto-pilot, making me a consistent passive income. And with this consistent passive income, I've been able to have the freedom to travel to and live in different countries around the world, while only being required to work less than 4 hours a week.
Another thing that I really liked about The 4 Hour Work Week is the “How To” approach with everything. Almost every chapter of the book is concluded with a “Comfort Challenge” or “Questions & Actions”, or a variety of different resources. This makes the advice and information easily applicable and very practical. You can put things into action immediately.
In fact, Tim tells you in-detail almost how to do everything.
An important section of the book is on creating Automated Income, which is how to create and set up a product to sell online which can generate passive income while you're asleep. And Tim actually goes through the simple process with you, showing you how you can do it for yourself.
Imagine being able to quit your job, have an automated income and cashflow managed by virtual assistants, giving you the freedom and time to do whatever it is that you want in life. Sounds really cool, huh?
That's the life of Tim Ferriss. He travels the world, is a New York Times bestselling author, speaks six languages, runs a multinational 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. And he's only thirty years old.
The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss is an outstanding book. There's a lot of ideas and aspects that I got from the book that I was able to apply to my own life that has made me more effective and productive, freeing up a lot more time and also ways to generate automated income for myself.
Here is a cool summary of The Four Hour Work Week with Tim Ferriss that I found on YouTube:
(Click here to watch the video on YouTube)
The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss is a must-read for anyone that is looking to achieve a lifestyle of freedom. I couldn't imagine going through life without this book, and I'm so grateful for the opportunities it's provided for me in my life. The book will really open up your mind to the possibilities in your life and give you some practical steps on how you can get more from your life. You can get your copy at Amazon.com by clicking here.