The Four Hour Work Week

The four hour work week is a book by Tim Ferriss about minimizing one’s work load to free up time for other activities that one desires more. The central idea that inspired the book was that anyone can set up a system with which to achieve financial stability while using a minimum amount of time and effort. The book covers this concept in four parts that are covered in steps. These parts are summed up by the acronym D.E.A.L where D stands for Definition (or dreamlining), E stands for elimination, A stands for Automation and L means Liberation. Ferriss points out that these four steps to achieving a four hour work week follow in that order but may differ for those who intend to achieve the four hour work week without exiting formal employment.

Definition

Definition is the first step of the D.E.A.L process. In this part Ferriss begins by identifying how various trends in modern life have set up paradigms that work against us. He proposes changing one’s lifestyle to one that maximizes results by making the most use of available time instead of simply appearing busy. With this regard he defines two types of income absolute income and relative income. Absolute income is meant to describe the normal cumulative value of anyone’s income over a year. Relative income refers to the amount made per minimal unit of time and in this case one hour. Using relative income as a measure of income, Ferriss recommends taking this perspective when determining one’s financial status. The richer individual is one who makes more money within an hour. Hence, a measure of how many hours one spends in earning their annual livelihood is essentially necessary. Definition also involves choosing systematically which goals one intends to work towards. Ferriss offers certain criteria for choosing personal goals. The goals chosen should include those that will result in becoming something through learning a new skill, those that involve doing something in particular e.g traveling or starting a project and those that are about acquiring something material.

Eliminate

In elimination, Ferriss explains the need to clear out activities that eat up one’s time without adding real value. This chapter points out that time is the first of the three important ingredients to achieving the four hour work week. To save as much time as possible for achieving defined goals, one needs to identify time wasters, time consumers and empowerment failures. Time wasters essentially are activities that need not be attended to as they are of little importance. Time consumers are activities that are important but can be performed by other people. Empowerment failures, which are more likely to come as a result of offsetting time consumers to other people, are interruptions that arise when these people encounter problems that need further direction. In its own chapter, information is also singled out as a major time and attention consumer. The book provides makes many intrepid examples of various situations where information can become an impediment to progress and how to deal with this. Two critical tools for achieving effectiveness are also highlighted in this part of the book and these are Parkinson’s Law and the Pareto principle.

Automate

Automation covers two main ideas. The new rich who are defined as the younger generation of high earning individuals are said to create wealth by delegating duties that they would much rather not do themselves. Because of this, they hire people to do work in a business that is routine and needs little thought. A business in this chapter is given a different term - a muse. This term is used to mean a business that will need minimal operational management but the proceeds of which will generate enough income to fund the type of lifestyle the owner desires. Several guidelines to creating a profitable muse are outlined as well as different ways of testing the muse’s profitability. Lastly, Ferriss explains how management can be minimized by the use of automation technology and outsourcing to avoid the need to constantly make decisions for day to day business affairs.

Liberation

In liberation, Ferriss shows full time employees how to effectively reduce their office hours in order to free up personal time. He explains the need to justify a request for less work days by an increase in productivity. What is left after this is enough room to work in any part of the world. A number of resources for making traveling much more affordable are provided in the Mini Retirements section. There is also a list of precautionary bits of information that point out certain mistakes one is likely to make while traveling or when preparing to travel.

For those that intend to maintain a day job, the book recommends that the steps be followed in the order D.E.L.A hence liberating before automating.