Book of the Week: "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferris (PART I)

I've always heard others mentioning Tim Ferriss and his concept of The 4-Hour Workweek, but I never picked up the book until a few weeks ago. A third of the way through the book, I came to discover there is so much information that one post wouldn't do it justice. Too many things connect to other materials I have either read or viewed.

But first I want to say one thing about Tim. He is an "out of the box" thinker, dating all the way back to his time as a kindergartener in the early 1980s. He is the type of person that doesn't want to learn something for sake of learning it (rote learning), he wants to know "why." Why is he learning? This thinking carried forward into many of his jobs when he would question his supervisor as to why something was being done and never satisfied with the the response "because I said so."



He is an exceptionally bright guy, after all he did graduate from Princeton, but he also liked to challenge authority. But it's ok to be difficult sometimes. It shows you're assertive and after some time, you will start receiving preferential treatment. It's 'ok' to speak up.

While the idea of a working only four hours a week seems super cool and would have many people saying, "sign me up," it isn't what it appears to be. Ferriss' lifestyle and lifestyle of the New Rich (NR), as he calls them, isn't for the faint of heart. It is grueling with many challenges.

More importantly, what I took from the book has little to do with working only four hours per week. Most of Tim's teachings many people can take with them into their daily 9-5 job, such as time management.

One thing from his chapter that particularly jumped out and made the connection to the man responsible for the title of this blog was the importance to doing the right things over doing things right. As the late Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch said in his time management lecture "it doesn't matter how well you polish the underside of the banister."

Figure out where you need to start putting your energies and direct it towards that. It's simply using the 80/20 Rule - the rule that says 80% of your revenue/results comes form 20% of your clients/effort.

Take for example the YouTuber, Mr. Beast. His channel went through a lot of changes, as depicted in last Monday's video of the day from Charisma on Command "How To Become Successful." Mr. Beast (or Jimmy Donaldson as he is known in the real world) started his channel making "Mindcraft" videos, but he slowly evolved depending on what the viewership wanted.

It's no different in the world of business. You have to constantly adapt to what your audience wants. Figure out what in your industry is the new norm and go towards that - even if it makes you anomaly and ostracizes you from the current norm, it will set you apart in the long term.