The Four Hour Work Week
By Tim Ferris
Part I
First impressions
Gabe and I are late to The Four Hour Work Week party but we’re happy we made it. This first part of the book has been insightful and fun to read. It has really made us think about how we manage ourselves, particularly at work. The book is divided into themes according to the acronym D.E.A.L. which stands for definition, elimination, automation, and liberation. This post will focus solely on definition and elimination. See part II for our thoughts on the second half of the book.
Overall...
The book is in your face and challenging and we like the writing. Tim himself describes it as “brash”. Brash is good sometimes.. Lots of opportunities throughout the book to think differently and challenge entrenched ideas related to personal potential, and self-limiting thoughts. The suggestions for how to approach work are very different then what is typical, but the way he lays it out makes sense. The book is peppered with questions and actions which we turned into journal prompts. These were excellent exercises that inspired us to examine our thinking and to keep reading!
Definition and Elimination
There were several valuable aspects of the first part of the book. One of these aspects is how he defines (or redefines) wealth, or what he describes as the new rich. Ferris posits that the new rich value freedom, adventure, and sense of purpose; as opposed to total amount of money or stuff acquired over a lifetime. This is a very refreshing and illuminating perspective on wealth. He continues to expand on this definition by pointing out that common conceptions around work, identification with society defines as “success”, and how that societal conditioning is inherently flawed. Both Gabe and I resonate with this perspective. Ferris also provides a very valuable tool early on called Fear Setting. This is better experienced than described. You will have to get the book and do the challenge to find out for yourself.
Another eye-opening feature of the book (which comes up throughout the book) is elimination. Be prepared for your accepted conceptions, of what is necessary or even required for you to be effective at work, to be challenged. We included a part of this section as one of our challenges as well. This concept and the suggestions on how to implement them are worth the price of the book alone. All that is needed is an open mind and the courage to implement them.
Favorite parts
His personal accomplishments are pretty impressive for such a young person. He may be the most interesting man alive. His successes in business and life gives credibility to his writing. He also has success stories of people who have followed his method with successful outcomes. Reading about his success and others is motivating and gives us hope that these extreme (at least in our view) methods work.
Taking Action
Ferris gives the reader plenty of challenges to get you outside your comfort zone and prepare yourself for the lifestyle outlined in the book. Some of the more enlightening and scary challenges are the fear setting exercise, eye gazing, and 80/20. We have tried all of these and included them as part of this project (see below). Curious? We invite you to try them for yourself.
Here are the challenges we did from the book over a 30 day period:
-Eye gaze for 2 days
-80/20
-Fear setting
-Low information diet
For detailed instructions on how to complete the above challenges watch the video at the end of our blog at postcardsfrombeyondyourcomfortzone.com.