The lowdown: The 4-Hour Work Week will give you the blueprint to change the way you think about work and design your ideal lifestyle.
Frustrated by the lack of free time and frustrated by working stupidly long hours, Tim Ferris took a sabbatical to Europe.
In this time, he found efficient ways to manage his time and his workload.
This book was an accumulation of various lectures and other content that Ferris later developed.
All in all, 4-Hour Work Week has sold well over one million copies, catapulted Ferris into entrepreneur stardom and was a New York Times Bestseller for four years.
- Audible Audiobook
- Timothy Ferriss (Author) – Ray Porter (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
- 12/28/2008 (Publication Date) – Blackstone Audio, Inc. (Publisher)
The three key lessons from 4-Hour Work Week are:
- The D.E.A.L. principle that millionaires use
- When it comes to productivity, less is more
- Hire a virtual assistant to make your life easier
Lesson One: Let’s make a D.E.A.L.
Rather than work until you’re 65 and retire, take control of your destiny. If you work until you’re too old to enjoy your retirement you’ve wasted so many years.
Instead, many of the new age millionaires live by the D.E.A.L. formula and set out to escape the rat race.
The D.E.A.L formula stands for:
- Definition
- Elimination
- Automation
- Liberation
To make sure that you work less and make more, then you have to define your end goals. Make your end goals big and seemingly unrealistic. You should reach for the stars here.
Then you need to eliminate what doesn’t help you get there (more about that later) and automate as much of the process as you can.
Lesson Two: When it comes to productivity, less is more
Have you ever thought that most of what you do seems like busy work that gets you nowhere?
The 80/20 rule dictates that on average, 80% of what you achieve will come from only 20% of your actions.
Think of the time you spend in the office or at home working. How much time do you spend checking your emails, sitting in useless meetings, or walking from cubicle to cubicle?
Rather than spend 80% of your time doing work that hardly moves the needle on your goals, eliminate as many time-draining tasks as you can and focus on what drives you closer to your goals.
You should focus on one key action every day. One task that if you completed nothing else, it would still be a productive day.
This one thing becomes your number one priority.
Make sure that is the first thing you do every day. Set yourself up to complete it before noon; eliminate all distractions.
Lesson Three: Hire a virtual assistant to make your life easier
Automation doesn’t only mean setting up auto-responder email replies and sales sequences.
You should look to make your day as hands-free as possible.
Hiring a virtual assistant can take a lot of time-consuming tasks out of your hands and put them into somebody else’s. A virtual assistant is someone you hire (or employ) to do set tasks. The scope in which you hire them and the jobs they complete can vary.
Ferris suggests hiring virtual assistants from India, but you can find them almost anywhere.
By finding a virtual assistant you can trust to complete specific tasks, you can ensure that you’re putting effort into the most critical functions for your business.
While there is a cost of hiring a virtual assistant, when you factor in the cost of your time, it is a bargain.
Put it into action today
To start putting the The 4-Hour Work Week into practice, you should look at all of the processes and tasks that you do every week in your business.
Choose one of these that you can automate, and do it.
Perhaps you’re still doing manual data input and can hire a VA to do it for you. Maybe you’re still uploading your social media rather than invest in a program that does it for you.
My Personal Takeaway
Like so many, I really love the premise of the 4-Hour Work Week.
I do need to let go of some of my workload, as I find myself too often spending hours ‘moving the small rocks’.
By finding a virtual assistant who can complete some of my tasks for me, I will free myself up to tackle bigger jobs in my business.
This Book Is Perfect For…
The 9 to 5 worker who is looking for something more.
The entrepreneur who is working their fingers to the bone and still not enjoying the benefits of owning their own business.
Anyone who takes on too much at work.
a Swedish university student, marketing professional, and life-long learner. Here at BookSummaryClub I summarize my favorite non-fiction books into easily digested posts. Hope you like what you’re reading!
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