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Summary: The 4 Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
The 4-Hour Workweek ...in 30 minutes is the essential guide to quickly learning how to break free from the 9-5 and embrace the revolutionary New Rich world as outlined in Timothy Ferriss's bestselling book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.
Understand the key ideas behind The 4-Hour Workweek in a fraction of the time:
* 12 essential insights and takeaways
* 6 chapter-by-chapter synopses
* 10 basic rules of the New Rich
* 4 strategies to achieving success outlined
In The 4-Hour Workweek, bestselling author Timothy Ferriss asserts that anyone who is willing to adopt a new set of rules--one that centers on creating freedom and automated income rather than relying on conventional concepts of wealth--can successfully embrace the New Rich lifestyle.
Outlining four clear steps to achieving a liberated life, The 4-hour Workweek provides the tools for utilizing the currency of the New Rich--time and mobility.
Whether you are a time-strapped workaholic or feel trapped by your 9-5, The 4-Hour Workweek offers Ferriss's formula for a life of passion, learning, service, excitement--and extremely minimal work.
A 30 Minute Expert Summary of The 4-Hour Workweek
Designed for those whose desire to learn exceeds the time they have available, The 4-Hour Workweek summary helps readers quickly and easily become experts ...in 30 minutes.
Understand the key ideas behind The 4-Hour Workweek in a fraction of the time:
* 12 essential insights and takeaways
* 6 chapter-by-chapter synopses
* 10 basic rules of the New Rich
* 4 strategies to achieving success outlined
In The 4-Hour Workweek, bestselling author Timothy Ferriss asserts that anyone who is willing to adopt a new set of rules--one that centers on creating freedom and automated income rather than relying on conventional concepts of wealth--can successfully embrace the New Rich lifestyle.
Outlining four clear steps to achieving a liberated life, The 4-hour Workweek provides the tools for utilizing the currency of the New Rich--time and mobility.
Whether you are a time-strapped workaholic or feel trapped by your 9-5, The 4-Hour Workweek offers Ferriss's formula for a life of passion, learning, service, excitement--and extremely minimal work.
A 30 Minute Expert Summary of The 4-Hour Workweek
Designed for those whose desire to learn exceeds the time they have available, The 4-Hour Workweek summary helps readers quickly and easily become experts ...in 30 minutes.
42 pages, Paperback
First published November 28, 2012
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195 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 25, 2013
The title of this book can be a little deceiving and in a way make it sound like a scam or a fraud. But it is anything but; Timothy Ferris introduces us to an array of new concepts and ideals and squashes the old concept of retirement and saving for the future. He brings light to living for the now and not waiting for when you are old and grey to enjoy. The 4-Hour work week is a blueprint for escaping the rat race.
December 24, 2012
Favorite Quotes:
Money alone is not the solution.
There is much to be said for the power of money as currency (I'm a fan myself), but adding more of it just isn't the answer as often as we'd like to think. In part, it's laziness. "If only I had more money" is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment — now and not later. By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves the time to do otherwise: "John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant e-mail to reply to before calling the prospects who said 'no' yesterday. Gotta run!"
Busy yourself with the routine of the money wheel, pretend it's the fix-all, and you'll artfully create a constant distraction that prevents you from seeing just how pointless it is. Deep down, you know it's all an illusion, but with everyone participating in the same game of make-believe, it's easy to forget.
The problem is more than money.
— Chapter 2: Rules That Change the Rules, page 35 — Tags: interesting
Just a few words on time management: Forget all about it.
In the strictest sense, you shouldn't be trying to do more in each day, trying to fill every second with a work fidget of some type.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, page 65 — Tags: interesting
Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, page 73 — Tags: enlightening, interesting
Learn to Propose.
Stop asking for opinions and start proposing solutions. Begin with the small things. If someone is going to ask, or asks, "Where should we eat?" "What movie should we watch?" "What should we do tonight?" or anything similar, do NOT reflect it back with, "Well, what do you want to ...?" Offer a solution. Stop the back-and-forth and make a decision. Practice this in both personal and professional environments.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, page 81 Tags:
Four years ago, an economist changed my life forever. It's a shame I never had a chance to buy him a drink. My dear Vilfredo died almost 100 years ago.
Vilfredo Pareto was a wily and controversial economist-cum-sociologist who lived from 1848 to 1923. An engineer by training, he started his varied career managing coal mines and later succeeded Léon Walras as the chair of political economy at the University of Luasanne in Switzerland. His seminal work, Cours d'economie politique, included a then-little-explored "law" of income distribution that would later bear his name: "Pareto's Law" or the "Pareto Distribution", in the last decade also popularly called the "80/20 Principle".
The mathematical formula he used to demonstrate a grossly uneven but predictable distribution of wealth in society — 80% of the wealth and income was produced and possessed by 20% of the population — also applied outside of economics. Indeed, it could be found almost everywhere. Eighty percent of Pareto's garden peas were produced by 20% of the peapods he had planted, for example.
Pareto's Law can be summarized as follows: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs. Alternative ways to phrase this, depending on the context, include:
80% of the consequences flow from 20% of the causes
80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time
80% of the company profits come from 20% of the products and customers
80% of all stock market gains are realized by 20% of the investors and 20% of an individual portfolio
The list is infinitely long and diverse, and the ratio is often skewed even more severely: 90/10, 95/5, and 99/1 are not uncommon, but the minimum ratio to seek is 80/20.
When I came across Pareto's work one late evening, I had been slaving away with 15-hour days seven days per week, feeling completely overwhelmed and generally helpless. I would wake up before dawn to make calls to the United Kingdom, handle the United States during the normal 9-5 day, and then work until near midnight making calls to Japan and New Zealand. I was stuck on a runaway freight train with no brakes, shoveling coal into the furnace for lack of a better option. Faced with certain burnout or giving Pareto's ideas a trial run, I opted for the latter. The next morning, I began a dissection of my business and personal life through the lenses of two questions:
Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
For the entire day, I put aside everything seemingly urgent and did the most intense truth-baring analysis possible, applying these questions to everything from my friends to customers and advertising to relaxation activities. Don't expect to find you're doing everything right — the truth often hurts. The goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so that you can multiply them.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, pages 69-70 — Tags: interesting
Go on an immediate one-week media fast.
The world doesn't even hiccup, much less end, when you cut the information umbilical cord. To realize this, it's best to use the Band-Aid approach and do it quickly: a one-week media fast. Information is too much like ice cream to do otherwise. "Oh, I'll just have a half a spoonful" is about as realistic as "I just want to jump online for a minute". Go cold turkey.
If you want to go back to the 15,000-calorie potato chip information diet afterward, fine, but beginning tomorrow and for at least five full days, here are the rules:
No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, or nonmusic radio. Music is permitted at all times.
No news websites whatsoever (cnn.com, drudgereport.com, msn.com, etc.).
No television at all, except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening.
No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction pleasure reading before bed.
No Web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary, not nice to have.
Unnecessary reading is public enemy number one during this one-week fast.
— Chapter 6: The Low-Information Diet, pages 86-87 Tags:
(I haven't found exactly where it occurs yet, but I remember thinking that this book contains the best abstract ever on the reasons and great advantages to putting process at the center of building a business. The material was probably in Chapters 5-7: "Step II: E is for Elimination", in reference to most e-mail distractions being a failure to capture such activities and interchanges within a process.)
— Somewhere in Chapters 5-7?
Money alone is not the solution.
There is much to be said for the power of money as currency (I'm a fan myself), but adding more of it just isn't the answer as often as we'd like to think. In part, it's laziness. "If only I had more money" is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment — now and not later. By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves the time to do otherwise: "John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant e-mail to reply to before calling the prospects who said 'no' yesterday. Gotta run!"
Busy yourself with the routine of the money wheel, pretend it's the fix-all, and you'll artfully create a constant distraction that prevents you from seeing just how pointless it is. Deep down, you know it's all an illusion, but with everyone participating in the same game of make-believe, it's easy to forget.
The problem is more than money.
— Chapter 2: Rules That Change the Rules, page 35 — Tags: interesting
Just a few words on time management: Forget all about it.
In the strictest sense, you shouldn't be trying to do more in each day, trying to fill every second with a work fidget of some type.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, page 65 — Tags: interesting
Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, page 73 — Tags: enlightening, interesting
Learn to Propose.
Stop asking for opinions and start proposing solutions. Begin with the small things. If someone is going to ask, or asks, "Where should we eat?" "What movie should we watch?" "What should we do tonight?" or anything similar, do NOT reflect it back with, "Well, what do you want to ...?" Offer a solution. Stop the back-and-forth and make a decision. Practice this in both personal and professional environments.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, page 81 Tags:
Four years ago, an economist changed my life forever. It's a shame I never had a chance to buy him a drink. My dear Vilfredo died almost 100 years ago.
Vilfredo Pareto was a wily and controversial economist-cum-sociologist who lived from 1848 to 1923. An engineer by training, he started his varied career managing coal mines and later succeeded Léon Walras as the chair of political economy at the University of Luasanne in Switzerland. His seminal work, Cours d'economie politique, included a then-little-explored "law" of income distribution that would later bear his name: "Pareto's Law" or the "Pareto Distribution", in the last decade also popularly called the "80/20 Principle".
The mathematical formula he used to demonstrate a grossly uneven but predictable distribution of wealth in society — 80% of the wealth and income was produced and possessed by 20% of the population — also applied outside of economics. Indeed, it could be found almost everywhere. Eighty percent of Pareto's garden peas were produced by 20% of the peapods he had planted, for example.
Pareto's Law can be summarized as follows: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs. Alternative ways to phrase this, depending on the context, include:
80% of the consequences flow from 20% of the causes
80% of the results come from 20% of the effort and time
80% of the company profits come from 20% of the products and customers
80% of all stock market gains are realized by 20% of the investors and 20% of an individual portfolio
The list is infinitely long and diverse, and the ratio is often skewed even more severely: 90/10, 95/5, and 99/1 are not uncommon, but the minimum ratio to seek is 80/20.
When I came across Pareto's work one late evening, I had been slaving away with 15-hour days seven days per week, feeling completely overwhelmed and generally helpless. I would wake up before dawn to make calls to the United Kingdom, handle the United States during the normal 9-5 day, and then work until near midnight making calls to Japan and New Zealand. I was stuck on a runaway freight train with no brakes, shoveling coal into the furnace for lack of a better option. Faced with certain burnout or giving Pareto's ideas a trial run, I opted for the latter. The next morning, I began a dissection of my business and personal life through the lenses of two questions:
Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
For the entire day, I put aside everything seemingly urgent and did the most intense truth-baring analysis possible, applying these questions to everything from my friends to customers and advertising to relaxation activities. Don't expect to find you're doing everything right — the truth often hurts. The goal is to find your inefficiencies in order to eliminate them and to find your strengths so that you can multiply them.
— Chapter 5: The End of Time Management, pages 69-70 — Tags: interesting
Go on an immediate one-week media fast.
The world doesn't even hiccup, much less end, when you cut the information umbilical cord. To realize this, it's best to use the Band-Aid approach and do it quickly: a one-week media fast. Information is too much like ice cream to do otherwise. "Oh, I'll just have a half a spoonful" is about as realistic as "I just want to jump online for a minute". Go cold turkey.
If you want to go back to the 15,000-calorie potato chip information diet afterward, fine, but beginning tomorrow and for at least five full days, here are the rules:
No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, or nonmusic radio. Music is permitted at all times.
No news websites whatsoever (cnn.com, drudgereport.com, msn.com, etc.).
No television at all, except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening.
No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction pleasure reading before bed.
No Web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary, not nice to have.
Unnecessary reading is public enemy number one during this one-week fast.
— Chapter 6: The Low-Information Diet, pages 86-87 Tags:
(I haven't found exactly where it occurs yet, but I remember thinking that this book contains the best abstract ever on the reasons and great advantages to putting process at the center of building a business. The material was probably in Chapters 5-7: "Step II: E is for Elimination", in reference to most e-mail distractions being a failure to capture such activities and interchanges within a process.)
— Somewhere in Chapters 5-7?
April 19, 2015
A great book worth reading. Good that the author has shared resources as well. A guide to relook at our mechanical life.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews