I’ll admit when I saw the title of Tim Ferriss’ book The Four Hour Work Week, I rolled my eyes too. I mean, come on. But here’s the thing, while it may not be completely practical in your business / personal life, there are some great ideas in here.
Certainly, time management is not an easy skill to learn. We all struggle everyday with finding the right amount of time to do all these things we need to do, and along the way we are bombarded with recommendations. Much of it falls into cliché advice like finding time for what’s “really important” in your life.
Tim Ferriss, however, has a different kind of advice to offer you in his new book, “The 4 Hour Workweek.” Based on his life experiences at the age of 29, Ferriss offers useful advice on topics like outsourcing your life, creating a “low information diet,” getting your boss to value performance over presence and taking “mini-retirements.” Each on its own represents an interesting way of looking at life, but together they form the premise of his promise to you that a 4-hour workweek might be well within your future.
Some take aways:
- Learn to delegate - it forces you to have clarity on what your goals are and maximizes your time to think at a higher level
- Thin out your processes, your activities, your ‘things’ as much as possible– force simplicity
- Outsourcing isn’t evil — but there are plenty US companies that can help you take on a lot of administrative tasks if you prefer
- Spending too much time working for work’s sake can and will hurt your profits.
In preparation for his work, Ferris spent more than five years learning the secrets of what he terms the “New Rich,” a quick-emerging subculture that has abandoned the “deferred-life plan” and instead mastered the new currencies—time and mobility—to create luxury lifestyles today.
Some of the key statistics he cites to make Ferris’ case for a revolutionized lifestyle include:
- 63% of all employees want to work less, up from 46% in 1992
- 26% of adult Americans report being on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown
- 40% of workers describe their office environment as “most like a real-life survivor program.”
- Only 14% of Americans take two weeks or more at a time for vacation. The average American therefore spends more time in the bathroom than on vacation.
- 61% of Americans check email while on vacation
- 53% of employees would opt for a personal assistant rather than personal trainer
- 62% of workers routinely end the day with work-related neck pain, 44% report strained eyes, 38% complain of hand pain, and 34% report difficulty in sleeping due to work-related stress
- 88% of employees say they have a hard time juggling work and life
- 70% of working fathers and working mothers report they don’t have enough time for their children
In reality, Ferris concedes that most people won’t get down to a four-hour workweek, but following many of his tips should shave five to 15 unproductive hours off a week. Nonetheless, he offers valuable tips, from how to eliminate 50% of your work in 48-hours using the principles of an Italian economist to sharing the management secrets of successful “remote control” CEOs.
A champion of the low-information lifestyle, Ferriss exemplifies productivity. The basic premise of “The 4-Hour Workweek” is this: You can do more, by doing less. Much less. It is this core thesis that Ferriss walks through many different ways to simplify our lives, in order to do more, effectively and efficiently.
For further reading, visit www.4hourworkweek.com.
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