The 4-Hour Workweek

Stress and Misery comes from a feeling of helplessness. By focusing on the “W’s you control”, you can create a life that is more fulfilling and less stressful.

1. (W)hat you do
2. (W)hen you do it
3. (W)here you do it
4. (W)ith whom you do it

Tim Ferriss proposes that by outsourcing tasks that you don't enjoy or that are not essential to your goals, you can focus on the things that are most important to you. How to do it:

• Get a remote personal assistant to learn how to give orders.
• Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.
• Refine rules and processes before adding people.
• Only delegate time-consuming and well-defined tasks.

What you do is far more important than how you do it. Efficiency is important, but it’s redundant unless it’s being applied to the right things.

To be productive:

• Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income (Pareto’s Law: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs)
• Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

1. Retirement is the worst-case-scenario insurance.
2. Alternating between periods of rest and activity is essential.
3. Focus on being productive instead of busy.
4. The timing is never right. Waiting for ‘someday’ means that you will take your dreams to the grave.
5. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
6. Emphasize strengths. Don’t fix weaknesses.
7. When things are done to excess, they often take on the characteristics of their opposites.
8. Money alone is not the solution. We use not having enough money as a scapegoat for not working out what we want out of life.
9. Relative income is more important than absolute income.

Moving out of the country or changing jobs are hard. Tim Ferriss recommends asking these questions to manage your fear:

• What is your absolute worst-case scenario?
• What could you do to repair the damage if this came to pass?
• What are the temporary and permanent outcomes and benefits of more probable scenarios?
• If you were fired today, how could you take care of your finances?
• What are you putting off due to fear?
• What is the cost (emotionally, financially, and physically) of postponing action?
• What are you waiting for?

Most information is time-consuming and unnecessary. You should be critical with what you look at, read, or watch daily.

The low-information diet:

• Go on a one-week media fast immediately: no newspapers, magazines, news websites, television, and unnecessary web surfing.
• Only consume information for something immediate and important.
• Practice the art of nonfinishing. If you’re reading a poorly written book/article, don’t continue to read it.

An interruption is anything that prevents the start-to-finish completion of a critical task.

The 3 main offenders:

1. Time wasters. Things that can be ignored with little or no consequence
2. Time consumers. Repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high-level work
3. Empowerment failures. When someone needs approval to make something small happen.

How to fix:

1. Create systems that limit your availability. For example, replacing a meeting with a brief email.
2. Batch activities. Answer all emails in bulk.
3. Set autonomous rules to prevent creating a decision bottleneck.

To live a free life Tim Ferriss proposes working remotely. He advocated it before it was cool. His advice: 

• Practice environment-free productivity. Attempt to work for two hours in a cafe before proposing a remote trial.
• Quantify current productivity. Document your work efforts.
• Demonstrate remote work productivity. Rack up some proof that you can kick ass without constant supervision.
• Practice the art of getting past “no”. “What would I need to do to .... (desired goal)?”
• Put your employer on remote training wheels. Propose Monday or Friday at home.

1. Quitting is not permanent: It’s always possible to pick up your chosen career path with a different company at a later date.
2. You will be able to pay the bills: You can get a new stream of income before you quit your job or eliminate most of your expenses temporarily and live off your savings for a short while.
3. Health insurance and retirement funds won't cease if you quit: Do some research and transfer your 401(k) or similar to another company.
4. Quitting won't ruin your resume: If you quit to do something interesting, this will often make you more attractive to employers in the long run.