In my own life, I've been incorporating many of the principles in this book for several years. But I was dumbstruck with how clearly Timothy Ferris has articulated and lived the principles of lifestyle design. While some may not appreciate his brash style, I absolutely love his bold and unapologetic thinking and I appreciate the book's ability to knock you out of the hum-drum-go-to-work-get-paid trance.
I now recommend this book highly to all of my friends. I recommend it to young folks to save them the misery of getting stuck in the rat-race, and I recommend it to older folks as well who are desperately looking to get out.
One of my absolute favorite parts of this book is the way Timothy Ferris turns the rules of life upside down. In the opening chapter of The Four Hour Work Week Timothy Ferris identifies “the New Rich” (NR):
The New Rich: Those who have learned to leverage time and mobility to creatively design amazing lives that break or bend the "accepted rules” of reality.He starkly contrasts the New Rich (NR) with the Deferrers (D) - those who slave away at jobs they hate in order to retire one day and then do what they want, only to find that life has passed them by.
Instead of trying to summarize, I'll let Tim's words speak for themselves to describe the distinctions between the New Rich (NR) and the Deferrers (D): (from p.20-22 of the 2009 Updated Edition)
D: To work for yourself.
NR: To have others [and business systems] work for you.
D: To work when you want to.
NR: To prevent work for work sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect.
D: To retire early or young.
NR: To distribute recovery periods and adventures throughout life on a regular basis and recognize that inactivity is not the goal. Doing that which excites you is.
D: To buy all the things you want to have.
NR:To do all the things you want to do, and be all the things you want to be. It does include some tools and gadgets, so be it, but they are either means to an end or bonuses, not the focus.
D: To be the boss instead of the employee; to be in charge.
NR: To be neither the boss nor the employee, but the owner. To own the trains and have someone else ensure they run on time. [i.e. Build a business system that works for you and covers your simple needs.]
D: To make a ton of money.
NR: To make a ton of money with specific reasons and to find dreams to chase, timelines and steps included. What are you working for?
D: To have more.
NR: To have more quality and less clutter. To have huge financial reserves and recognize that most material wants are justifications for spending time on the things that don't really matter, including buying things and preparing to buy things. Just spent two weeks negotiating your new Infiniti with the dealership and got $10,000 off? That's great. Does your life have a purpose? Are you contributing anything useful to this world, or just shuffling papers, banging on a keyboard, and coming home to a drunken existence on the weekends?
D: To reach the big payoff whether IPO, acquisition, retirement, or other pot of gold.
NR: To think big but insure payday comes everyday: cash flow first, big payday second.
D: To have freedom from doing that which you dislike.
NR: To have freedom from doing that which you dislike, but also the freedom and resolve to pursue your dreams without reverting to work for work's sake. After years of repetitive work, you often need to dig hard to find your passions, redefine your dreams, and revive hobbies that you let atrophy to near extinction. The goal is not simply to eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
The Four Hour Work Week Process
Through the rest of The Four Hour Work Week, Timothy Ferris walks through his formula for transitioning to the life of the New Rich.
Step 1: Define - involves getting absolute and unambiguous clarity on your dreams.
Step 2 - Eliminate - involves getting rid of crap, stuff, and excesses in your life. This includes physical stuff, as well as tasks, email, and media consumption. I absolutely love his section about time management, where he talks about the 80/20 principle and building systems to organize your life. The Elimination section alone is worth the price of the book.
Step 3: Automate - involves creating an Automated Business System quickly that will generate passive income to cover your simple needs. He discusses how to identify a target niche, select a product, test the market for the product using Google ad words, and then build a website with a sales page to sell the product. He provides a lot of resources to help you set up your own web business, as well as reader comments with people who have set up businesses this way. (See below for more on this.)
Step 4: Liberate - involves taking the plunge and liberating yourself from the rat-race. If you've simplified your life and created a business system to generate enough income to cover your simple needs, you can then take off. You might travel, spend time with family, engage in learning activities; whatever it is, you liberate yourself up to do things that excite you, not just sit around.
Criticisms of The Four Hour Work Week
My one problem with the Four Hour Work Week is the section on creating a passive web-business. Ferris recommends creating a quick 3-4 page sales-pitch site and purchasing Google ads to send traffic to your site to sell a product. While this makes sense in theory, Google ads become more expensive if you have a smaller site, and the ubiquity of junk for sale on the internet makes visitors wary of internet sites that are only a simple sales pitch, and thus less likely to purchase.
That said, building a web-business to deliver passive income is defintely possible. If you'd like to set up a web business, I strongly recommend using Site Build It. (That's how I built this site.)
Please see my Site Build It Review & Recommendation Page or the Site Build It Case Studies for examples of people who've quickly created profitable web-businesses.
Site Build It will take you through the process of selecting a niche, generating traffic, and monetizing your site. Basically, all the parts you need to create a sustainable small web-business. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme, but it will help you build a lasting, sustainable web-business.
Also, if you want to take Ferris's advice and build a business, I would recommend learning a little bit more about business, particularly selecting products and niches and building business systems that work for you. Two books in particular I recommend are:
How to Create Millions with Your Ideas, by Dan Kennedy. The material is about 10 years old, but the principles are sound and inspiring. He gets you thinking about many different ways to create a business.
E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Fail. Gerber illustrates the power of adopting a systems mindset when creating a business. A must-read for any new entrepreneur.
On a totally different note, there's another criticism I frequently hear about The Four Hour Work Week. I often hear others criticize Ferris for being arrogant, lazy, rude, "typical Gen Y," and not living in the "real world." I don't agree with that, namely because I think there are many "real worlds"; they all depend on your perspective.
In fact, I think he's a damn genius and his brash and bold opinions are exactly what make this book interesting. So, if you read it and it irritates you, consider the possibility that you may be stuck in the rat-race :)
Conclusion
In sum, I think the greatest value of The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris is that his brash and radical formula will shake you out of your existing paradigm. It has tons of resources to help you, and the examples really help you get your own creative juices flowing.
Enjoy!
Adam
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