The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris (Book Summary)
Book: The 4-hour work week
Genre- Business.
The 4-Hour Work Week is divided into 4 major parts of DEAL, which stands for-
D: Definition= What do you exactly want from life?
E: Eliminate= Cut out whatever isn’t helping you grow. Focus on productivity.
A: Automate= Do outsourcing. Or, Be a good middleman and earn some extra passive income.
L: Liberation= Be free. Create freedom of locomotion.
In this book, the author Tim Ferris has described different points that differentiate the New Rich from the Traditional Old Rich people. In other words, Tim Ferris has described a lot of ways following which you can be rich, along with being free, more productive and more content.
Here are major takeaways from the book-
- Be aware of your desires. Ask yourself why do you want to work? For the money? For the fame? For social benefits?
- You work your whole life and then retire at the age of 60. But if you really loved your work, why’d you retire? And if you never liked what you do for a living, why were you even working your whole life? The idea is to have mini-retirements throughout your life, where you can go for vacations for 3/4/5 months or even a year to relax, without being worried about your work.
- Apply Pareto’s 80/20 Principle to multiply your effectiveness. 20% of your efforts yield 80% of your results and vice versa. Focus more on these 20% efforts. In the same way, 20% of your clients bring in 80% of your income. Focus on these high-paying clients to cut out the more stress causing and less result yielding clients.
- 20% of your problems cause 80% of stress in your life. Cut out that crap.
- Apply Parkinson’s principle. It states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Force yourself to work in a hard deadline, and you’d see your productivity increasing manifolds.
- Doing something unimportant well won’t make it important.
- Relative income is more significant. You have two job options. (A) You’ll get $1,00,000 as your salary, but you’d have to work 95 hours a week. (B)You’ll get $65,000 as your salary, and you’d have to work 60 hours a week. # That’s the idea of relative income. The latter one is richer in this case.
- Schedule your meetings short. Get straight to the point. If you respect your own time, others will respect it too.
- Schedule your day. Plan daily. Set a time twice a day to check your emails.
- Learn the art of leaving things unfinished. If you started a crappy book, and in the midway, you realized that it’s, in fact, crappy, leave it at once.
- Hire an assistant. Maybe, a virtual assistant. You may get a lot of work done in a shorter period of time.
- Don’t multitask. Focus on one thing at a time.
- Separate the places where you work, and where you eat, sleep, and live.
- Cultivate the habit of selective ignorance. You can only have a few topics in your mind about which you can worry. Choose those few topics wisely.
- The family comes first. In the words of Vito Corleone penned down by Mario Puzo, “A Man who doesn’t spend time with his family, can never be a real man.”
My Review-
In the “Financial Intelligence” and “Business Philosophy” genre, I recommend two top books most of the times,
1. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T Kiyosaki, and
2. 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris.
It’s a wonderful book to develop a mindset for business, filled with so many practical tips and suggestions by Tim Ferris. It’s a must-read for everyone.
Here’s the Amazon link-
P.S. This is my book summary of “4-hour workweek”. These points could be direct quotes from the book, and/or my thoughts and interpretation of those lines. Importantly, this write-up is dedicated to the key points from this book.
You may also like to read-
- Eat That Frog! (Book Summary)
- Attitude Is Everything: Change Your Attitude & Change Your Life! (Book Summary)
- Superhuman by Habit: (Book Summary)
For my top book recommendations, visit-
Thank you!
Dipanshu Rawal.
Originally published at www.dipanshurawal.com on March 5, 2018.
