RE: The 4 Hour Work Week Is Nonsense - Here's why...
Cheers for the mention!
My post was intended to avoid having the same discussion over and over with friends who had much the same objections as you without reading it. I agree that the setup of the book is a bit clunky and could have been written better.
For me the main take-away of this book was that we have a lot of assumptions about our working life that cease to be true.
It particularly resonated with me at the time I read it because I had made my mind up to go travel and gave up a well paying job to do it. I lived in Geneva making double the salary of my peers in Belgium, lived in a very scenic place but I was not particularly happy or satisfied.
This book was very helpful to question some assumptions about life.
For me at least it worked, and I know many friends who are effectively living a 4 hour work week and can afford a good lifestyle. Is it for everyone? Probably not, you have to make some concious choices.
I have not have had a 9-5 job since 2010. I have travelled all over the world mostly being paid well for it. When I was employed I was paid a pretty decent wage in the UK, and lived in Spain where my cost of living was 40-50% less. Geo arbitrage. (btw probably worked effectively 4-6 days a month effectively on average)
Since 4 year I am freelancing, I made a concious choice to earn less and have more free time.
Have not calculated it, because there are ups and downs but I probably worked 8 weeks a year, in Greenland, Vietnam, Cambodia, Brazil and all over Europe. So yeah probably 8 hour workweek.
The thing to realize is that the world is increasingly non-linear. You have limited time on this planet.
The 4 hour work week is about thinking how to get the maximum output for the minimum input.
Outsourcing is one leverage tool to achieve that, technology and communications another. Check out my article on finding leverage in your life
Smart design (in the engineering sense not the interioir decorator sense) of the variables in your lifestyle to optimize for your unique intentions can help to achieve that.
We are largely programmed by society that you "have to grind" and "work" to make a living.
Sorry that is simply less and less true. Is it easy? Of course not! Is it possible? Much more than you think probably and getting easier each passing year.
Excellent response as always @the-traveller.
I hope I've done a good enough job separating the 4HWW concept from the substance in the book?
Like I said; there is great stuff in there if you look at the notes from Derek Sivers.
I want to talk about time and leverage more in a future article. I think that is also an area where 4HWW is lacking. You don't always need to hire outsourcers in order to leverage time. You just need to make a product that does.
I'll probably do that article next. The entrepreneur related ones take me a while longer to put together because I like to make sure they're properly sourced and that I'm not using any "guru speak".
Specifically the 4 Hour moniker is something he says later on he regrets. It was a result of a title A/B test and has been haunting him. Bit of a two edged sword, it obviously helped sales but it does the book a disservice. As Tim stated, he is not opposed to hard work, but feels that the work that you do should have a big impact. A lot of people are just "punching their ticket" as they say, going through the motions to justify their salary. If you look at most people's work, there is a lot of ineffective nonsense we have accepted as "work" which actually does not really contribute to results.
Tim Ferriss is no particular genius in that he did not invent most of these concepts, but his books are a great work of curation in that he has concepts that he tested which together form an impressive toolkit.
Will that toolkit work for you? Only if you apply it and start experimenting and find out.
The book is not really only about outsourcing. There are quite a lot of other techniques.
For proper case studies of people doing applying these concepts in real life:
The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau is a much better example driven book.
http://100startup.com/
and another thing :)
The billionaire types would be the first to apply these techniques, else it would be totally impossible to become billionaires. Of course it also requires a kind of relentless focus. The 4 HWW asks: becoming a millionaire by working yourself to death ? What for really? Why not earn less, spend less and have a high quality life....
Haha! I read about that a/b test thing somewhere. Might have been in one of his blog post where he talked about it.
It's actually great marketing, but it obviously leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths.
"Will that toolkit work for you? Only if you apply it and start experimenting and find out."
That's a great point, taking action is the key. There's another post in that topic alone...
The $100 Startup is pretty good too! I've been tempted for a long time to do a challenge where I start from literally $0 and work my way up based around some of those principles.
In regards to the billionaires, I guess what I meant by that is could you imagine; Musk, Buffet, Trump, Whoever else only doing a 4 hour work week? I can't.
Delegating parts of their businesses to the right people though? Of course they do. A better book from that point of view will probably be Tim's newest book (I say probably because that's on my to-read list), or something like "the effective executive" which is interestingly one of Ferris' top 5 books. (I wonder where he got some of his ideas from?)
"Why not earn less, spend less and have a high quality life...."
I guess my version would be:
Why not earn more, spend less and have a high quality life?
I'll cover the "earn more" part soon too.