Four Hour Work Week - A Challenging Look at New Rich

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I confess that I really only read about 1 or 2 books a year. I skim lots of them, but only rarely does one pull me in to the point where I know that the book is going to make a big difference in my life.

It’s clear that The Four Hour Work Week is this year’s book.

I’ve had it for about 3 weeks now and I’m only 80 pages into it. I’m savoring every page and I am doing the exercises, not just blasting through them to get to the next cool revelation, only to forget about it 5 minutes later.

I want to be like Tim Ferris. He’s my new hero (added to my very short list of money/business guru heroes: Robert Kiyosaki and Michael Gerber)

2 concepts that have affected me most deeply so far

Discomfort is necessary for real growth.

The premise in the book is that not being successful is something that I have chosen so I can have an excuse for not facing the uncomfortable things that I need to take care of.

This disruptive behavior plays out by me wasting hours and hours everyday. Tim teaches that instead of doing eight hours of busy-work everyday, I should focus on the 2 critical tasks that would make the biggest difference in my life and my business.

These tasks are usually the ones that I want to avoid, because there is discomfort or fear that arises in us at the thought of completing or dealing with them.

As an example in my own life the task I avoid daily is to let go of certain aspects of my business and outsource, to free up my time. I know that would be the best thing for my business, but I also know that it doesn’t really go with being a control freak and a perfectionist, so it will likely be a struggle for me.

At least now I know what I’m trying to avoid doing; we’ll see if I can get over it.

Money is Nothing

This is something I have known for a while, but Tim has taken this fact to a new level of realization for me.

To frame this realization into my own terms. I don’t really want money. I want to live the life of my dreams. The two are not at all the same.

Tim’s example is to have you think about what you would do if you woke up tomorrow and had $100 million in the bank. $100 million is a great number since most people’s response to having a $1 million would be to busy themselves with spending money, but with $100 million, you’re going to get sick of spending money as a full time hobby, before you run out of money.

You’re going to have to face the question of what do with a huge gaping void called freedom.

Tim has you work through an exercise of identifying 5 things each that you would like to do, be and have in the next 6 months.

Thanks Tim: I Didn’t Realize How F*cked up I Was!

I actually found it really difficult to fill in the 15 dreams.

[My guess is that some people will have a really easy time filling in the dreams, but will have more trouble than I would at implementing an action plan. I guess a balanced and successful person can do both, dream and implement!]

I used to say that I really liked working and that all I wanted to do was to have a successful business.

But it wasn’t true. As I sat in front of the worksheet, I began to remember dreams from when I was a kid. Two that come to mind now are:

• to travel to space.
• to become a professional golfer.

What’s interesting is that thanks to space tourism and the professional golfing senior tour (for folks at least 50 years old), both dreams are still accessible. That is they are accessible to someone who has enough money to purchase a ticket or to practice golfing full time for 2 or 3 years.

The principle here is that in order to increase your income and free yourself from the burden of work, you need to have a plan in place to use the time that will be available.

In personal development terms this makes complete sense to me.

The order of events is not correct if your self talk goes like: make lots of money, then live my dreams.

In my experience life (God what ever you call her) won’t support that logic.

Life wants your to: live your dreams and then the support will come.

Seeking comfort is useless and hanging your dreams on a comfortable path, is not going to work.

The Four Hour Work Week is a very challenging book. It doesn’t claim to be able to “give” you freedom or wealth without you taking responsibility for not being there and being willing to look at all the self-sabotaging activities that we fill up our time with:

“If only I had more money” is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination & decision making necessary to create a life of enjoyment - now, not later!

If you sincerely want freedom and a guidebook for entrance into the club of the New Rich, you will want to read it.

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