The 4 - Hour Work Week
Timothy Farriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek is an excellent read. More important, it can change your life, if you will let it. Escape 9 - 5, Live Anywhere, And Join the
New Rich is the book’s subtitle. It perfectly summarizes the purpose of the book.
Do you want to spend most of your days sitting behind office desks, till you are 62 or whatever, doing dull, boring, soul-scorching
Work? I f so, do not touch this book. For the book is an operational manual for those who want to do less - as less as a couple of
hours a day - and achieve far more. It is for those who want to live their dreams now and not wait for their retirement to live them. It is for those who want to live the lifestyle of the rich and yet not get tied down to a place or a routine or a dreary schedule.
In fact, the first thing Ferriss - the
author of the book - does is to spell out the process of reinventing yourself as the new Rich. It consists of four steps Definition, Elimination Automation and Liberation - DEAL for short. Definition is about defining the
rules of the new game. Elimination is about dropping the unimportant. Automation is about generating income automatically. And Liberation is about escaping a fixed location and working from wherever you like.
A separate section of the book deals with each of these four steps in detail. Great and actionable detail. Everything the author suggests can be done by anyone who is prepared to push herself out of the comfort zone and step off the trodden path. Actionability and practicability of everything the author prescribes is the strongest point of the book. The book also provides a huge treasure trove of web resources to make it possible for the readers to do what Ferriss suggest they should - or could - do.
Chapter 2 of the book entitled Rules that Change the Rules, which sets out the rules of the New Rich (NR ) is highly thought-provoking and sets the tone for the rest of the book. The new Rich, according to Ferriss, are distinguished from the Deferrers (D), that is, the rest of us - the desk slaves, by their goals. Here are two interesting ones. D work for themselves; NR get others to work for them. D want to be the boss instead of the employee. NR want to be neither the employee nor the boss. They want to own the business.
Among other things, the book tells you how to do away with half of your work in just 48 hours and yet accomplish far more, how to travel the globe without leaving your job, how to outsource dull, uninteresting work even though you are not a millionaire, how to create an automated cash stream, how to get free accommodation world wide, how to leave meaningfully without slaving away at boring jobs.
At the end of each chapter, there is a
Questions and Actions (not Answers) section that asks you some seminal questions and exhorts you to take some actions to ensure that the contents of the chapter have been learnt in the real sense of the word.
Can this really be done? Does Ferriss talk sense? These are the questions that would invariably pop up in a reader’s mind. What Ferriss - a 29-year old has achieved in his own life would answer these questions. In the spirit of the edict ‘Physician, heal thyself!’ the author has healed himself of the 9 -5 syndrome, escaped fixed location and lived his dreams. He has catapulted himself from a $40,000 per year and 80hours per week to $ 40,000 per seven days and four hours per week, raced motorcycles in Europe, acted in a television series in Hong Kong, skied in the Andes, run a multi-national company from various wireless locations, been a national kick-boxing champion, delivered a guest lecturer at Princeton University and created a Guinness Book record in tango dancing. He speaks six languages. All this lends credibility to his book.
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