4 hour workweek

I don’t agree with everything Tim Ferriss says but agree with most of what he says. Here are some gems from his book.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Gold is getting old. The New Rich are those who abandon the deferred-life plan. The currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.

$ in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.The question is then, How can one achieve the millionaire lifestyle of complete freedom without first having $?

Separate income from time.

Everyone seems to be discussing how to build large and successful companies, sell out, and live the good life.Fair enough. The question no one really seemed to be asking or answering was, Why do it all in the first place? What is the pot of gold that justifies spending the best years of your life hoping for happiness in the last?

I’m going to assume you are suffering from time famine, creeping dread, or—worst case—a tolerable and comfortable existence doing something unfulfilling. The last is most common and most insidious.

The perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

These individuals have riches just as we say that we “have a fever,” when really the fever has us. —SENECA

Inactivity is not the goal. Doing that which excites you is.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. – RICHARD FEYNMAN

Money is multiplied in practical value depending on 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. I call this the “freedom multiplier.”

Options—the ability to choose—is real power.

Some people remain convinced that just a bit more money will make things right. Their goals are arbitrarymoving targets: $, in the bank, $,, in the portfolio, $, a year instead of $…

Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.

Retirement planning is like life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case scenario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive.

Focus on being productive instead of busy.

Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.

Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving.

There is much to be said for the power of money as currency (I’m a fan myself), but adding more of it just isn’t the answer as often as we’d like to think. In part, it’s laziness. “If only I had more money” is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment—now and not later.

Relative Income Is More Important Than Absolute Income.

Many a false step was made by standing still. —FORTUNE COOKIE

Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.

Conquering Fear = Defining Fear

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” —SENECA

Most who avoid quitting their jobs entertain the thought that their course will improve with time or increases in income. This seems valid and is a tempting hallucination when a job is boring or uninspiring instead of pure hell. Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.Don’t only evaluate the potential downside of action. It is equally important to measure the atrocious cost of inaction.

You’re afraid, just like the rest of the world.

It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time- and energy-consuming. The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.

What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness. Crying out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this. The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is—here’s the clincher—boredom. Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all. When people suggest you follow your “passion” or your “bliss,” I propose that they are, in fact, referring to the same singular concept: excitement. This brings us full circle. The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”

Be realistic; become a lawyer or an accountant or a doctor, have babies, and raise them to repeat the cycle.The goal wasn’t specific enough. I hadn’t defined alternate activities that would replace the initial workload. Therefore, I just continued working, even though there was no financial need. I needed to feel productive and had no other vehicles. This is how most people work until death: “I’ll just work until I have X dollars and then do what I want.” If youdon’t define the “what I want” alternate activities, the X figure will increase indefinitely to avoid the fear- inducing uncertainty of this void. This is when both employees and entrepreneurs become fat men in red BMWs. I simply looked at those who were – years ahead of me on the same track, whether a director of sales or an entrepreneur in the same industry, and it scared the hell out of me. The worst that could happen wasn’t crashing and burning, it was accepting terminal boredom as a tolerable status quo. Remember—boredom is the enemy, not some abstract “failure.”

I believe that success can be measured in the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have.

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.Create two timelines— months and  months—and list up to five things you dream of having (including, but not limited to, material wants: house, car, clothing, etc.), being (be a great cook, be fluent in Chinese, etc.), and doing (visiting Thailand, tracing your roots overseas, racing ostriches, etc.) in that order.

The most important actions are never comfortable. Fortunately, it is possible to condition yourself to discomfort and overcome it.

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away. —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY,

Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.

How is it possible that all the people in the world need exactly 40 hours to accomplish their work? It isn’t. – is arbitrary.

Simplicity requires ruthlessness.

Poisonous people do not deserve your time.

But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.

Limit the number of items on your to-do list and use impossibly short deadlines to force immediate action while ignoring minutiae.

Offer a solution. Stop the back-and-forth and make a decision.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

I never watch the news.

But what if someone has an emergency? It doesn’t happen. My contacts now know that I don’t respond to emergencies, so the emergencies somehow don’t exist or don’t come to me. Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.

It is imperative that you learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable. Most are all three. I read the front-page headlines through the newspaper machines as I walk to lunch each day and nothing more.

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.

Focus on what digerati Kathy Sierra calls “just-in-time” information instead of “just-in-case” information.

Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.

Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.

Turn off the audible alert.

Check e-mail twice per day, once at noon or just prior to lunch, and again at 4

It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficient. No one else will do it for you.

Meetings should only be held to make decisions about a predefined situation, not to define the problem. If you absolutely cannot stop a meeting or call from happening, define the end time. If things are well-defined, decisions should not take more than 30 minutes. Force people to focus instead of socializing, commiserating, and digressing. Get the hell out of there and have someone else update you later.

Batching is also the solution to our distracting but necessary time consumers, those repetitive tasks that interruptthe most important.

People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves.

Do not let people interrupt you.

The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.

“No” should be your default answer to all requests. Don’t make up elaborate lies or you’ll get called on them. Asimple “I really can’t—sorry; I’ve got too much on my plate right now”

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

I decided I needed to outsource my worry.

Fun things happen when you earn dollars, live on pesos, and compensate in rupees, but that’s just the beginning.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. – MALCOLM X

I reply to e-mails when it’s convenient, but I time it to arrive when it’s also convenient for me. In Outlook you can delay e-mail delivery to any time of day. For example, when I return e-mails at  P.M., I don’t want my staff instantly zinging me responses or clarifying questions. (This also prevents e-mail chats.) So I hit send, but it’s delayed to arrive later in the evening or at  A.M. when my employees arrive the next day. This is how e-mail was meant to be! It’s mail, not a chat service.

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles cansuccessfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

It’s time to find your muse.

So first things first: cash flow and time. With these two currencies, all other things are possible. Without them,nothing is possible.

Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is much easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market—define your customers—then find or develop a product for them.

It is more profitable to be a big fish in a small pond than a small undefined fish in a big pond.

People can dislike you—and you often sell more by offending some—but they should never misunderstand you.

Pricing low is shortsighted, because someone else is always willing to sacrifice more profit margin and drive you both bankrupt. Price high and then justify.

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.

Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.

Information products are low-cost, fast to manufacture, and time-consuming for competitors to duplicate. “Expert” in the context of selling product means that you know more about the topic than the purchaser.

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog.The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

Be professional but never kowtow to unreasonable people.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

The guard is changing. Being bound to one place will be the new defining feature of middle class.

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively.

Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth.

Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.

Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.

“But, you don’t understand my situation. It’s complicated!” But is it really? Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple—many are just emotionally difficult to act upon. The problem and the solution are usually obvious and simple. It’s not that you don’t know what to do. Of course you do. You are just terrified that you might end up worse off than you are now.

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

Don’t be melodramatic when there is no need—few things are fatal, particularly for smart people.

There are two types of mistakes: mistakes of ambition and mistakes of sloth.

Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.

The simple willingness to improvise is more vital, in the long run, than research.

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish. “How long did it take you to catch them?” theAmerican asked. “Only a little while,” the Mexican replied. “Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked. “I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket. “But … What do you do with the rest of your time?” The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.” The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.” He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.” The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?” To which the American replied, “15–20 years. 25 tops.”.” “But what then, señor?” The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.” “Millions, señor? Then what?” “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos …”

“I’ll just work in the firm for  years. Then I’ll be partner and I can cut back on hours. Once I have a million ortwo in the bank, I’ll put it in something safe like bonds, take $ 80,000 a year in interest, and retire to sail in the Caribbean.”

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

The mini-retirement is not an escape from your life but a reexamination of it—the creation of a blank slate.

In the experience of those I’ve interviewed, it takes two to three months just to unplug from obsolete routines and become aware of just how much we distract ourselves with constant motion.

Four days in a decent hotel or a week for two at a nice hostel costs the same as a month in a nice posh apartment. If you relocate, the expenses abroad also begin to replace—often at much lower cost—bills you can then cancel stateside. Traveling around the world and having the time of your life can save you serious money. Most excuses not to travel are exactly that—excuses. I know too well that it’s easier to live with ourselves if we cite an external reason for inaction.

Don’t assume that places abroad are more dangerous than your hometown. Most aren’t.

It became clear that the biggest risk in life wasn’t making mistakes but regret: missing out on things.

ADDING LIFE AFTER SUBTRACTING WORK

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

Just be glad you’re figuring this out now and not at the end of life!

Too much free time is no more than fertilizer for self-doubt and assorted mental tail-chasing. Subtracting the bad does not create the good. It leaves a vacuum.

Decreasing income-driven work isn’t the end goal. Living more—and becoming more—is.

There will come a time, however—be it three weeks or three years later—when you won’t be able to drink another piña colada or photograph another damn red-assed baboon. Self-criticism and existential panic attacks start around this time.

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. There are two components that are fundamental: continual learning and service.

Though you can upgrade your brain domestically, traveling and relocating provides unique conditions that make progress much faster.

The benefits of becoming fluent in a foreign tongue are as underestimated as the difficulty is overestimated.Gain a language and you gain a second lens through which to question and understand the world.

Don’t miss the chance to double your life experience.

Service to me is simple: doing something that improves life besides your own. This is not the same as philanthropy.

Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.

Take time to find something that calls to you, not just the first acceptable form of surrogate work.

Recapturing the excitement of childhood isn’t impossible. In fact, it’s required.

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change. All external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

Have you ever watched kids

On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain

Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down.

Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day

On the fly?

When you ask: How are you?

Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done,

do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores

Running through your head?

You’d better slow down.

Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,

We’ll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste,

Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,

Let a good friendship die

Cause you never had time

To call and say, “Hi”?

You’d better slow down.

Don’t dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere

You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,

It is like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life is not a race.

Do take it slower.

Hear the music

Before the song is over. – David L Weatherford

Be focused on work or focused on something else, never in-between.

One of the most universal causes of self-doubt and depression: trying to impress people you don’t like.

Money doesn’t change you; it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.

There are no statues erected to critics.

It’s usually better to keep old resolutions than to make new ones.

Opportunities abound in bad times as well as good times.

Is your weekend really free if you find a crisis in the inbox Saturday morning that you can’t address until Monday morning? Even if the inbox scan lasts  seconds, the preoccupation and forward projection for the subsequent  hours effectively deletes that experience from your life.

You had time but you didn’t have attention, so the time had no practical value.

Get off the cocaine pellet dispenser

Your co-workers shouldn’t be your only friends.

Negotiate Late—MAKE OTHERS NEGOTIATE AGAINST THEMSELVES

Like they say in AA: If you don’t want to slip, don’t go where it’s slippery.