The 4-Hour Workweek

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🌈 3 Sentence Summary

1. The New Rich have abandoned the deferred-life plan, and to create luxury lifestyles in the here and now by achieving the lifestyle of a millionaire, without having a million dollars in the bank.
2. To become part of the New Rich, DEAL: Definition, Elimination, Automation, Liberation.
3. Be effective, not efficient - Focus on being productive instead of busy, doing something unimportant for a long time does not make it important.

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💡 Thoughts

The 4-Hour Workweek looks and smells like a scam. But as always, Tim Ferris delivers incredibly high-quality content in an interesting way. The core ideas are quite simple (but not easy), and a lot of this book is just personal stories (I skipped a few).

It broke my conception of what being rich actually means. People don’t want to be millionaires; they want to experience what they think only millionaires can buy. The question, therefore, is how can you achieve the lifestyle of a millionaire, without having a million dollars in the bank?

This book is not about how to save, or about finding a dream job; it’s about how to free up the most time, and automate your income. From what I gather, Tim's life can be summarised by the 80/20 Rule.

👤 Should You Read It?

This book should be read by everyone. It has unlimited potential. You'll probably enjoy it more if:

• If you want to escape the 9 to 5, live anywhere, and join the New Rich.
• If you're interested in entrepreneurship of any sort.
• If you want mini-retirements - take the 20 years of retirement and spread them out throughout our life.

🚀 Actionable takeaways

• Define: Convince yourself that your New Rich lifestyle is not about money, it's about gaining the elusive power of unrestricted freedom and mobility.
• Eliminate: Think about which 20% of tasks can get you 80% of the results. Eliminate or delegate the rest.
• Automate: Eliminate, automate, then delegate. Never automate something that could otherwise be eliminated, and never delegate something that could be automated.
• Liberate: Prove to your boss that you are more productive working remotely, and enjoy life. Relocate, have mini-retirements, continue learning exciting things, and give service others.

✍️ Summary + Notes

🎨 Definition

"The New Rich are defined by a more elusive power than simply cash—unrestricted mobility.

The New Rich are different than "deferrers" (i.e., those saving up all of their money for retirement) by their guiding philosophy:

• Deferrer = I want to work for myself
• New Rich = I want to have others to work for me


• Deferrer = I want to work whenever I want to
• New Rich = I prevent work for work’s sake and do the minimum to get the maximum


• Deferrer = I want to retire young
• New Rich = I want to regularly distribute adventures and recovery periods throughout my life. Inactivity is not the goal, but doing what is exciting is


• Deferrer = I want to buy all the things I want
• New Rich = I want to do all the things I want to do


• Deferrer = I want to have a lot of money
• New Rich = I want to make a lot of money for specific reasons with defined dreams


• Deferrer = I want to have more
• New Rich = I want to have more quality and less clutter>

Ferriss states that money is multiplied in practical value according to the four W’s: What you do, When you do it, Where you do it, Whom you do it with.

This means that an investment banker making $500,000 a year for 80 hours a week, is less “powerful” than a member of the New Rich working 20 hours a week for $40,000, but who has complete freedom over the when, whom, where, and what of their lives. It’s the ability to choose that is our true power.

Here are the 10 fundamental rules that the New Rich abides by:

1. Retirement is the worst-case-scenario insurance. It rests on the assumption that you are doing something you dislike for the ablest years of your life rather than enjoying those years now.
2. Interest and energy are cyclical. Alternating between periods of rest and activity is essential. The New Rich distribute ‘mini-retirements’ throughout their life, instead of hoarding it all for retirement.
3. Less is not laziness. Despite spending fewer hours in the office, the New Rich produce more meaningful results than a dozen deferrers combined.
4. The timing is never right. Holding out for the perfect moment to make a decision will rarely come to fruition. Waiting for ‘someday’ means that you will take your dreams to the grave.
5. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. People deny things according to their emotions, but they can learn to accept them after the fact.
6. Emphasize strengths. Don’t fix weaknesses. By improving your strengths over your weaknesses, you focus on multiplying the results as opposed to incrementally fixing your flaws.
7. When things are done to excess, they often take on the characteristics of their opposites. Too much and too often of what you want will soon become what you don’t want.
8. Money alone is not the solution. We often use not having enough money as a scapegoat for not self-reflecting and working out what we want out of life.
9. Relative income is more important than absolute income. Relative income looks at both money and time, whereas absolute income only looks at money. The former is how the New Rich assesses their current worth.
10. Distress is bad, eustress is good. Distress refers to harmful stress that makes you weaker. Eustress refers to the type of stress that helps you grow. The New Rich seek out eustress and reject distress.

⌛ Elimination

Just a few words on time management: Forget all about it.

Ferriss utilizes Pareto’s 80/20 Principle: The idea is that 80 percent of output will result from 20 percent of input. Often, being busy is a form of laziness as it prevents you from thinking.

He also uses Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. A great quote I heard from Peter Theil is to ask yourself "How can I achieve my 10 year goals in 6 months?". You won't get there, but you'll achieve a whole lot more than you imagine.

Combining the two together, identify the few critical tasks that create the most income (80/20), and then scheduling them in with very short, clear deadlines (Parkinson’s Law).

The most mind-blowing I got from this book is the concept of Selective Ignorance. I consume massive amounts of content, and now I'm beginning to rethink that. Ferris says to ignore all information that is irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most information is time-consuming and redundant. I should critically assess whether it contributes to my goal or not:

• Go on a one-week media fast immediately. This means, no newspapers, magazines, news websites, television, non-fiction books, and unnecessary web surfing.
• Develop the habit of asking yourself if you will use this information for something that is both immediate and important.
• Learn when to stop absorbing. If you’re reading a poorly written article, don’t continue to read it.

🤖 Automation

The most important skill for becoming a member of the New Rich is the learn to communicate and to manage remotely, and replace yourself within a system.

Unless a task is well-defined and vital, Ferris states that no one should do it. This ties in with Ray Dalio's advice to build the organisation around goals, not the people. Define the goal first, then choose people to fill the slots.

Eliminate before you delegate. Never automate something that could otherwise be eliminated, and never delegate something that could be automated.

To learn how to automate, Ferriss suggests:

• Hire an assistant—even if you don’t need one.
• Start small but think big. This means looking at what’s been on your to-do list for the longest time, examining what causes you the most frustration or boredom, and delegating these tasks.
• Identify your five top time-consuming, non-work tasks, and five personal tasks you could assign, just for the fun of it.
• Keep in sync by using scheduling and calendars.

The key to working 4 hours a week isn’t to run a business. It’s to own a business and spend no time on it through outsourcing. This means that:

• The target product can’t cost more than $500 to test.
• It must be able to be automated within four weeks.
• When established, it can’t require more than one day per week of management.

Here's a step-by-step method to do that:

1. Pick an affordable niche market. Don’t create a product then go looking for your customers. First, find a market and identify your customers, then develop a product for them. To be successful, you should be a member of your target market. This makes the process significantly easier.
2. Brainstorm (and don’t invest in) products. Choose two industries that you’re familiar with that both have their own magazines where a full-page advert costs $5000 or less. Now brainstorm ideas for products that could be effectively advertised in both these magazines. The product should cost between $50 and $200, shouldn’t take more than three to four weeks to produce, and should come accompanied with a thorough online FAQ. Then choose whether you want to either resell a product, license a product, or create a product.
3. Then micro-test your products. Micro-testing uses cheap advertisements to test if there is a demand for your product before manufacturing it. Do this by assessing the competition and creating a more engaging offer than them. Then test the offer using short advertising campaigns before deciding which of your potential product ideas to back.
4. Once you have a product that sells, it’s time to automate it. The architecture of your business needs to ensure that you’re out of the information flow, instead of at the top of it. To do this, contract outsourcing companies as opposed to freelancers and ensure that all of your outsourcers communicate with each other to solve problems.
5. Assess the value of each customer. Identify those customers who spend the least and yet ask for the most (i.e., adhering to the 80/20 rule) and cut them out. They cost far more time than they are worth. Those customers you do keep on, treat well, as if they were in an exclusive club.

🕊️ Liberation

This all sounds great, but how can I enjoy unrestricted remote living of the New Rich if I'm currently an employee? Here are some things Ferriss suggests:

1. Increase your employer’s investment in you. This could mean asking for the company to fund you through a training course. The psychology behind this is that the more a company invests in you, the greater the loss if you quit.
2. Prove increased output when out of office. You could call in sick for two days but then work from home, doubling your work output and creating tangible proof of your efforts to show your employers how well you work when not in the office.
3. Prepare the quantifiable business benefit. This means creating a bullet point list that showcases how much more you achieve when not in the office.
4. Propose a remote working trial period. This could start at one-day-per-week.
5. From here, gradually increase your remote working time. Do so by ensuring that your remote working days are your most productive then set a meeting with your employer to discuss the results.

Since Covid-19, many employers have seen the benefit and increased productivity of working remotely, and have continued its practice. Nevertheless, the principle of increasing productivity and proving it to your boss extracted from these 5 steps should still be upheld.

Now that you're able to work remotely, why not take the usual 20-30 year retirement and redistribute it throughout life instead of saving it all for the end? You can go on several mini-retirements, which means relocating to another place for six months. You'll re-examine your life every time you do so, unshackling yourself from the materialism and comparative mindset that is integral to a speed- and size-obsessed culture.

After subtracting work, there will be a gaping void in your life, which happens frequently to those who retire. Fill the void by adding life after subtracting work. Overall, the most important things in life are to enjoy yourself and to feel good about yourself. While Tim cannot offer a single answer to the question of how to enjoy life and feel good about yourself, two components are fundamental to the New Rich: service and continual learning. Learn new things, and teach what you learn.

Here are some of Ferriss' suggestions to ease into the New Rich lifestyle.

• Revisit ground zero: Do nothing. You cannot escape your inner demons before you face them. Consider attending a short (three – seven day) silence retreat in which all media and speaking are prohibited.
• Anonymously donate to a service organization of your choice. This can help give you ideas of what type of service you’d like to contribute to in the world.
• Combine a learning mini-retirement with local volunteering. While on the trip, note any self-critical or negative self-talk in a journal, and if you get upset or anxious, ask yourself why.
• Revisit and reset your dream lines. Your mini-retirement may have given you a greater perspective on what you want to get out of life.
• Based on the results of steps one to four, consider trying out a new part- or full-time vocation. A vocation is different from work. A vocation is a true calling or a dream occupation.

✋ Conclusion

Once you discover that life is not a problem to be solved or a game to be won, a real world of opportunities opens up.

The one who barrels down the highway in a Lamborghini is not necessarily happier than the one who stops to smell the flowers.

Recapture your childhood, rekindle friendships, live the exciting life you previously could only ever have dreamed of.

And if you'd like to read more, you might find these interesting:

• My Favourite Productivity Apps
• Principles by Ray Dalio - My favourite book of all time, and the one I recommend the most to people.

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