The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss

The 4-Hour Workweek | Timothy Ferriss 04.17.2023 Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to reflect. Anyone who lives within their means suffers from the lack of imagination. What does a igloo-dwelling millionaire do that a cubic-dweller doesn't? Follow the uncommon set of...

The 4-Hour Workweek | Timothy Ferriss 04.17.2023 Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to reflect. Anyone who lives within their means suffers from the lack of imagination. What does a igloo-dwelling millionaire do that a cubic-dweller doesn't? Follow the uncommon set of rules. Gold is getting old. The new rich are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the new rich, time and mobility. This is an art and science that we are going to call Lifestyle Design. People don't want to be millionaires, they just want to experience what they believe only millions can buy. Asking yourself: How do your decisions change if retirement isn't an option? What if you could use a mini-retirement to sample your deferred-life plan reward before working 40 years for it? Is it really necessary to work like a slave to live like a millionaire? All these questions will lead you to an uncommon conclusion. The commonsense rules of the "real world" are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions. Start with a single importance of being a "dealmaker." The manifesto of a dealmaker is simple. Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken, and it doesn't require being unethical. The word DEAL also being an acronym: D for Definition turns the misguided common sense upside down and introduces new rules and objectives into the game. This explains the overall lifestyle design recipe-the fundamentals. E for Elimination kills the obsolete notion of time management. It shows how you turn 12 hours a day into 2 hours in 48 hours. Cultivation selective ignorance, developing a low-information diet, and ignoring the unimportant. This creates the first of three luxury lifestyle ingredients: Time. A for Automation puts cash flow on autopilot using geographic arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of nondecision. This provides the second ingredient of a luxury lifestyle: Income. L for Liberation is the mobile manifesto for the globally inclined. Liberation is not about cheap travels, it's about breaking the bonds to confine you in a single area. This delivers the final ingredient for luxury lifestyle: Mobility. An expert is a person who has made all the mistake that can be made in a very narrow field. 04.18.2023 Step 1: D is for Definition Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. So, what makes the difference? What makes the new rich different from the deferrers. It begins at the beginning. The new rich is separated from the crowd based on their goals, which reflect very distinct priorities and life philosophies. Deferrers: To work for yourself. New Rich: To have others work for you. D: To work when you want to. N: To prevent work for work's sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect ("Minimum effective load"). D: To retire early or young N: To distribute mini-adventure in your life, realizing that being still is not the goal, but doing things which excite you. D: To buy all the things you want to have. N: To do all the things you want and be the things you want to be. If this includes tools and gadgets, so be it, recognize that they are either means to and end or bonuses, not the focus. D: To be the boss or the employee; to be in charge. N: To be neither the boss nor the employee; To be the owner. D: To make a ton of money. N: To make a ton of money with a specific reason and defined dreams to chase. What are you working for? D: To have more. N: To have more quality and less clutter. To have a huge financial reserve but realizing that the things you want spend on are just wants and justification for spending your time on things that don't really matter. Does your life have a purpose? Are you contributing anything to this world, or are you just shuffling around? D: To reach the big pay-off. Whether a pot of gold, IPO, retirement, or acquisitions. N: To think big and ensure payday comes everyday; cash flow first, big payday later. D: To have freedom from doing that which you dislike. N: To have freedom from doing that which you dislike, but also the freedom and resolve to pursue your dream without reverting to work for work's sake. The goal is to not only eliminate the bad, this will only lead you in a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world. 04.19.2023 Getting off the wrong train The first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. If you can free your time and location, your money is worth 3-10 times as much. Money is multiplied by the number of W's you control in your life. What you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. This is called the "freedom multiplier." Options-the ability to chose-is real power. The options for being one of the New Rich is limitless, but each path begins with the same step: replacing assumptions. New players for a new game civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them. Rules that change the rules I can't give you the formula to success, but I can give you the formula to failure: try to please everybody all the time. Everything popular is wrong. Beating the game, not playing the game In 1999, the author of the book won the gold medal at the Chinese kickboxing national competition. How did he win? By playing in an uncommon manner that was within the bounds of the rules. 1. Weigh-ins were the day prior to the competition- he would use the dehydration technique and weigh in 167 pounds on the day itself, and hydrated back to 193. 2. There was a technicality in the fine print- If one combatant fell off the elevated platform three times in a single round, his opponent wins by default. But, isn't pushing people out of the ring outside the bounds of ethics? Not at all. The important distinction is that between official rules and self imposed rules. Sports evolve when sacred cows are killed, when basic assumptions are tested. The same is true in life and in lifestyles. Challenging the status quo vs being stupid Most people walk with their legs, does that mean I walk with my hands? No. Different is better when it is more effective and more fun. If everyone is defining a problem or solving it in one way and the solutions are sub-par, why not do the opposite? Don't follow a model that doesn't work. If the recipe is bad, it doesn't matter how good of a cook you are. The basic rules of the New rich are predictably divergent from what the rest of the world is doing. The following are the differentiators to keep in mind throughout the book: 1. Retirement is worst-case-scenario insurance Retirement planning is like planning for insurance. It should be viewed as nothing but a hedge against absolute worst-case scenarios. Retirement as a goal or financial redemption is flawed for the following reasons: a. It is predicated on the fact that you don't like what you are doing during the most physically capable moments of your life. This is a nonstarter-nothing can justify that sacrifice. b. Most people won't be able to retire and maintain even a hotdog-for-dinner standard of living. In a span of 30 years, inflation lowers your purchasing power 2-3% a year. The math just doesn't workout. c. If the math does work, your one ambitions, hardworking machine. But guess what? One week into retirement you'll be so damn bored you'll start thinking of getting another job or starting a business. Kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it? This doesn't mean you won't plan for the worst case scenario. Just don't make retirement the goal. 04.20.2023 2. Interest and energy are cynical If you were offered 10,000,000$ to work 24hrs a day for 15 years, would you accept it? of course not! It will be physically impossible to pull that stunt. Yet working 8+ hours a day for your entire life until you break down or have enough cash is what other people consider as a career. Alternating period of activity and rest is necessary to survive. That is why the New Rich aim to distribute "mini-retirements" throughout their lives instead of hoarding the recover and enjoyment for the fool's pot of gold. By working only when you are most effective, life is more productive and enjoyable. 3. Less is not laziness Doing less meaningless work so you can focus on things of greater personal importance is NOT laziness. Culture tends to reward sacrifice over personal productivity. Few people choose to measure the results of their actions and this measure the contribution in time. More time equals more self-worth and more reinforcement from those above and around them. The New Rich. despite fewer hours in the office, produce more significant results than the dozen non-New Rich combined. Let's define "laziness" anew-to endure non-ideal existence, to let circumstances or others define life for you. Focus on being productive instead of being lazy. 4. The timing is never right For all important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights will never be green all the time. Conditions are never perfect. "Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. If it is important to you and you want to do it "eventually", just do it now and correct the course as you go. 5. Ask for forgiveness, and not permission If it does not devastating to those around you, just try it and then justify. People will always deny things on an emotional basis that they get to accept after the fact. If the potential damage is minimum and reversible, don't give people the chance to say no. Get good at being a troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up. 6. Emphasize the strengths, don't fix the weaknesses Most people are good at a handful of things and utterly miserable at the other. It is far more fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armour. You have a choice between multiplying your results or incremental improvement in fixing weaknesses that will eventually become mediocre. Focus on better use of your weapons rather than constant repair.