The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Review
Most books I read I do not finish. I finished reading the 4-Hour Workweek - Escape 9-5, Life Anywhere, and Join The New Rich, within 24 hours of buy it (Amazon.com, 5 stars, 111 reviews.) I strongly recommend you read this review if you:
a) You want to increase your productivity and profits.
and/or
b) Your current lifestyle blows.
Timothy had a business throwing off mid six figures but he was overworked. While attempting to sell his company he started outsourcing business processes rather than doing everything himself. Rather than profits dropping they jumped double digits. He took a short vacation to Europe which stretched out over a year.
I took away one big lesson from this book: outsourcing. Almost everyone spends too much time doing things that others can do better and cheaper. Consider this, English speaking MBAs from India can be hired for around $15 an hour. (Check out Brickwork India at b2kcorp.com for starters.) Bad quality? Big US service firms are already arbitraging cheap offshore labor, often charging customers $100,000 for $10,000 of work.
The second lesson is don’t work yourself to death. The old work 40 years and retire attitude is a bad deal. Those of us in our 20s will need 4-5 million dollars to retire comfortably anyways; most of your friends will work until they die. Spend more time with your family today by hiring a virtual personal assistant to take care of other redundancies, like dealing with customer service for 45 minutes (more info here.)
Destroying the four hour workweek slacker stereotype, Timothy points out that people get bored very fast being idle. Instead he suggests spending that “retirement” with intensive learning and physical activities abroad.
Most of the concepts in this book resonated loudly with me. Perhaps thats why I read until the last page. At the same time I am a huge advocate of working hard. I tell anyone flat out that if they want to make it in business they better be ready to bust their assess for years. If you want that 7-figure business there is no shortcut. You still have to travel down the hard path to get there.
This book definately delivers on its promise for a “Four Hour Workweek” but… many readers, if not most, are going to have a hard time with it. Some of Web Publishing Blog’s audience could begin that work week this Monday. Heck, I could. The agressive and adapting entrepreneur audience will completely understand Tim’s attitude. However, most people in the business world will continue to spend their life chasing dangling carrots, with or without this book.
Timothy comes from a direct marketing and internet background. I was suprised to hear references to one of my favorite sites, MarketingExperiments.com, along with my friends from PepperJam listed in the business resources references. There is discussion of both Adwords PPC and SEO in the section about business building. Most of us can skip this, but its just another indicator to me that he really knows what he is talking about.
Should you buy the book? It could fall into the category of “life changer.” I’m filing it under “positive reinforcement” for a path that I have been heading down for the past three years. At the very least, I urge you to check out Tim Ferriss’s blog. It is practically a case study of book promotion and PR for 2007.
A quick summery for those who love Cliff’s Notes. Working less is not sloth. Dirt cheap college-educated labor can operate your business better for you and grow it. We live better strengthening our minds, bodies, while spending time with friends and family — being a life-long workoholic is for suckers.
Great post Andrew. After the bust I went to Europe for several years, but I didn’t figure out a way to make cash at the time (even though I desperately tried). So I was forced to come back here, however I’m on the right track now. By the way, living in Europe, not just visiting changed my entire outlook on life. Also just for a little fun I have a Homer Simpson quote, “Workin’s for suckers!”
Comment by Marc — May 27, 2007 @ 9:00 pm
I ordered this book last week. Can’t wait to read it.
Comment by Nick — May 28, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Ordered, should be here Wed.
/me luv amazon prime.
Comment by ToddW — May 28, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
[…] Andrew Johnson from Web Publishing Blog provides a solid review of “The 4-Hour Workweek” HERE. […]
Pingback by pepperjamBlog » Blog Archive » The 4-Hour Workweek - THANK YOU! — May 30, 2007 @ 10:42 am
I downloaded the audio book from iTunes over the weekend, and listened thru it in 24 hours as well. I’m now on my second listen thru…taking notes. I had already experimented with outsourcing on some projects, but I love the idea of doing more of this.
In some ways I see myself as a pretty good candidate for the focus of this book…although travel doesn’t appeal to me, learning does…as do service opportunities and other creative endeavors.
I’ve been talking about the book non-stop for the last 3 days…and I’m currently in the process of hiring freelancers from India for two more projects as a starting point. The specific resources (with prices), as well as the case studies in the book, proved very helpful and encouraging to me.
Comment by Chuck — May 30, 2007 @ 9:25 pm
I ordered the book. to get more of the details.. but outsourcing and automating is always key
Comment by CPA Affiliates — May 31, 2007 @ 9:26 am
[…] Understand what productivity really means. Working hard all day verse 30 minutes is not a sole qualifier of “better.” As Timothy Ferris pointed out in The Four Hour Workweek almost all of us are wasting time doing things others can do better and cheaper. You must measure your work output by profit and performance, not by hours put in. […]
Pingback by » Increase productivity by at least 25% - Web Publishing Blog — July 17, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
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Comment by Avinash — July 20, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
I agree - the bit on personal outsourcing was useful to me. In fact, I tried a little 4-hour workweek experiment:
The 4-hour workweek applied: How I spent $100, saved hours, and boosted my reading workflow
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/08/4-hour-workweek-applied-how-i-spent-100.html
I continue looking for other ways to apply the 80/20 principle, which was clearly a big influence on Tim Ferris (I’m reading Koch’s book now). I’d like to hear about experiments you’ve tried.
Comment by Matthew Cornell — August 26, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
What do you do about the complete lack of work done by some of these outsourcing companies?
http://www.uselessfreeadvice.com/2007/11/14/why-bother-outsourcing-to-india/
I just got rid of my ‘virtual assistant’ after my first week. They did *absolutely* nothing.
I spent months trying to get a book designed and all I got was the runaround.
My attempts to outsource some programming led to an amazing ‘per hour’ rate ($10 - wow!) but a quote for at least 10 times the number of hours compared to anyone else.
Any ‘regular people’ having success with these outsourcing firms?
Comment by David — November 14, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
[…] never got around to applying The Four Hour Work Week, but I have followed a few lessons from the book. Most specifically, eliminating distractions and […]
Pingback by » How to be Unreachable & Productive - Web Publishing Blog — November 25, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
I thought Tim’s book was great and so thought I’de test GetFriday with a task that’s been on my todo list for a year - To sell a ton of my old Technical books on ebay. I would give them ISBN numbers so they could get pictures from elsewhere. I told them to put it all on ebay, no reserve. I’de give them acesss to my ebay and paypal accounts. Not exactly difficult…..They wrote back saying it was beyond their skill set! How can ebay be beyond anyone’s skillset!
Never mind, I just have to find a better virtual PA
Comment by Mark — January 19, 2008 @ 11:56 am