The 4 Hour Work Week
 

Anyone else read this? (I saw the book mentioned in another thread)

I just finished it over the holiday break. It's an interesting read. I am curious to know what others on this forum think.

Here is a description from Amazon.com:

Product [book] Description
What do you do? Tim Ferriss has trouble answering the question. Depending on when you ask this
controversial Princeton University guest lecturer, he might answer:

“I race motorcycles in Europe.”
“I ski in the Andes.”
“I scuba dive in Panama.”
“I dance tango in Buenos Aires.”

He has spent more than five years learning the secrets of the New Rich, a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the “deferred-life plan” and instead mastered the new currencies—time and mobility—to create luxury lifestyles in the here and now.

Whether you are an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, this book is the compass for a new and revolutionary world. Join Tim Ferriss as he teaches you:

• How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
• How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
• How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
• How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and freuent "mini-retirements"
• What the crucial difference is between absolute and relative income
• How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it’s beyond repair
• What automated cash-flow “muses” are and how to create one in 2 to 4 weeks
• How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet
• What the management secrets of Remote Control CEOs are
• How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50–80% off
• How to fill the void and create a meaningful life after removing work and the office

You can have it all—really.

Hmm, I'm sure some of that may be possible sometimes in some circumstances.

But it sounds too good to be true. It sounds like it's geared towards the same folks that read get rich quick books and take quick weight loss pills.

"You can have everything without doing anything!!"

Maybe my preconceptions and conditioning are holding me back.

Sorry, not possible.

This "plan" may work for people who are in some subset of jobs or those that don't really like what they do. But if you give a crap and want to do something important with your life, this isn't viable. If you just want to make money, maybe it is...

amway?

This was discussed here last year; good theory - lots of holes.

As a concept, it sells a lot of books.

Someone mentioned this book to me at a Xmas party a few weeks ago. I need to check it out. But when I think long and hard about this stuff, I really have accomplished a lot of what I set out to do long ago.

No, I don't have a lot of money in my bank account and I need every paycheck. But I work from home, haven't seen my boss in almost two years, ride my motorcycle to my meetings, even those several hundred miles away, can wrench on my Porsche during the day if I feel like it and I even had to forfeit a few vacation days in 2009 because I couldn't use them up by the end of the year and had more than I could carry over. Yes, I work a lot more than four hours a week. But some folks wouldn't consider it work. I like what I do and I like it even more when things are busy. But I like taking naps in the afternoon and then heading to the gym, having no commute at all deal with ever. When I lived in VA, I had a soul-crushing commute into DC to look forward to even on my best days. Getting home in rush hour was a nightmare. Taking a nap in the afternoon was unthinkable. I couldn't leave the office without walking past my boss's office door. Yes, I was there for eight hours a day, but I accomplished a lot less than I do now in far less than eight hours per day.

Still, I need to check this book out.

Yea, I'll agree some of the bullet points are not possible for many people, and the list does sound pretty cheesey the way I cut-and-pasted it.

But, consider a few of the points the author makes:

"New Rich" can/will be defined as those who free themselves from the 9-5 routine. Someone making $40K per year who is free to chase their dreams may be more "rich" than someone who makes $400K and is a slave to the office.

Or how about the idea that the traditional "deferred life" plan (save enough money doing something you don't like so that you can stop doing it forever and do something you do like in retirement) is a fools game?

I liked the emphasis in the book on the Pareto principle and Parkinson's Law (two of my favorites). I see a lot of time wasted by business people who do things (have meetings) because they have to be in the office 9-5.

A lot of posts in this forum occur during "normal work hours", no? Would we be doing something more productive if we weren't chained to a desk all day?

I searched (a little) but couldn't find the thread. I'll look again.

People who have it all figured out don't try to sell books books telling everyone how they did it unless selling books is how they did it.

The same goes for people who know how to make a furtune in the real estate business or stock market.
If they really knew how to get rich they wouldn't need to sell books or charge for seminars.

Believe it or not, they aren't sharing their secrets because they like you and want you to be rich too.

That seems good, but I assume the long term plan is to work until you drop dead?

And, if that's the case, do you intend to drop dead early, and if not, what job do you see yourself in when you are 83 years old?

I'll probably move to China when it's totally certain all is lost in the US. IF my wife and I can take our retirement money with us or at least access it from afar, we should be able to live very well. In fact, this will probably happen long before we reach retirement age.

Do something important with your life?

We as humans could hardly be any more insignificant than we are in the grand order of things. Doing "something important with your life," is a delusion of grandeur IMO.

The advice i give is, "if it makes you happy, go for it." This notion that a person should, "make something of himself," is goofy. We're here for but a blink in the eye of time. So enjoy it, don't kill yourself living up to anyone else's ideals or trying to fit into someone else's norms.

Clearly that's where the money is. Being the snake oil peddler who sells his books to idjits looking to get rich fast. ;)

That's how i try to live life. I could give a fk less about money, what i care about is free time. I have more of it than anyone i know.

If you are living paycheck to paycheck without a lot of money in your bank account, where is the retirement money going to come from?

I'm very curious about this mindset, in many ways I admire it (because it is so foreign to me and seems so dashing and carefree).

How do you intend to live when you are 70 or 80? Same question I asked Rick. Do you just intend to keep working until you drop dead? If so, do you really see yourself repo'ing cars when you are 80, or what other job?

I am not living paycheck to paycheck. Even when I was (many years ago), I still maxed out my 401k contributions. I'm just fine there as long as our ruling regime doesn't nationalize retirement assets and we don't get hyperinflation (I know that's a tall order). I can get by without a paycheck for a little while, but not for as long as I should be able to get by. Of course, moving to China would entail selling my house and all my toys, so there'd be some cash from that. I could teach English there to keep myself busy in my later years. It's not hard to get by there on a meager western income.

I like the part about outsourcing flowers to his Mother. Some of his ideas are pretty good some are a bit out there - all-in-all he is really trying to shift work and automate. I think the amount of time, effort and talent required to do what he suggests would take much longer than actually just doing it in the first place.

Its like a crimminal - they spend a bunch of energy breaking the law when all they really have to do is re-direct the energy to the task at hand.

He does have some good ideas. Anytime you can have someone else do your work for you and get away with it has to be a good idea right?

I guess my ace in the hole is my folks' house. They're retired and rich. If I outlive them and inherit their estate, even splitting it with my sister and paying off the gov't., I could retire tomorrow on that investment income. Of course, I'm not planning my life around that. But it is a possibility.

I had a buddy in high school who was a pro at this stuff. A neighbor's house was for sale for a very long time and they had a huge yard. The realtor paid my buddy $100 every two weeks to mow it. He, of course, subbed it out to a younger kid for $50 and kept $50 for himself. I don't know what he's doing now, but I'm sure he's rich.