Book Review : Four Hour Work Week

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GENRE Self-help

AUTHOR Timothy Ferriss

PAGES 432

YEAR OF PUBLISH 2009

Book Review of Four Hour Work Week

 A vast majority of people work from 9 to 5 for 40 years before retiring at 60. drastically lowering our work time and removing geographic bar(or more). This book discusses how to break away from this mindset by riers. As a result, we will be able to live anywhere in the globe, and by automating our revenue, we will be able to take mini-breaks whenever we want and achieve our goals.

The difference between the New Rich, as described by the author, and the Deferrers, those who preserve everything for the end only to discover that life has passed them by?

·     Deferrers: Work for yourself.

·       New Rich: Have others work for you.

·       Deferrers: Work when you want.

·       New Rich: Avoid work for work’s sake and do the minimum required for maximum effect.

·       Deferrers: Take early retirement.

·       New Rich: Take mini-retirement periods throughout life. Do what we are passionate about.

·       Deferrers: Buy everything you want.

·       New Rich: Do everything we want, and be all the things we want to be.

·       Deferrers: Be the boss rather than the employee.

·       New Rich: Don’t be the boss or the employee, be the owner.

·       Deferrers: Have more.

Before I finally picked it up and decided to read it for myself, I had heard a lot of people praise it. I'm glad I read it, but I don't believe it had the same impact on me as it did on others of my friends. Don't get me wrong: Ferriss makes some terrific points, and he includes some fantastic suggestions and methods, but I'm not sure how universal they are.

To begin with, I was surprised to learn that he worked only four hours per week when I first picked up the book. I thought he was just talking about methods to work less, but "The 4-Hour" seemed interesting (since he now has a whole line of books with titles that start that way). Nope. He barely worked four hours a week for a few years, it turns out.

As I previously stated, Ferriss provides some excellent methods for reducing clutter and busywork, even items you might not consider to be busywork. I've already begun applying several of these suggestions at work, and they've proven to be really useful thus far. I keep intending to get rid of a lot of my physical clutter, but my laziness always gets in the way. 

I also liked his notion of taking mini-retirements throughout one's life rather than a single extended retirement at the end. I've never understood the point of retirement, therefore Ferriss' idea appeals to me far more. Retirement, as he put it, should be nothing more than a safety net in case something happens that renders you physically (or mentally) incapable of working. Exactly what I was thinking.

My main issue with his theory is that it only works if you have a product that you can sell rather than one that you are genuinely developing. Even if I quit my day job and write all day every day, I'd still be putting in a lot of hours. Admittedly, that would make my career a lot more portable, but I could never work four hours a week (at least not until I sell that bestselling novel, and it's such a unrealistic idea!) To do it his way, I'd need something that is already made or that someone else is manufacturing (clothing, dietary supplements, etc.) and all I have to do is collect the money from sales.

Of course, that's a lot more difficult than it appears. His methods for removing the unnecessary from his life are quite excellent, and should not be overlooked, but I'm still unsure if someone in their twenties, who is just starting out in life, can actually carry out his plan. People that have generated value in their firm are negotiating to work remotely, according to several of his success tales. Someone who has only been at their present position for a year or two does not have the kind of influence required to accomplish this.

He also describes how to get out of your work, so you may go on that incredible once-in-a-lifetime journey. He says thinking about the worst-case situation and how the worst-case scenario isn't always so horrible. One of the points he makes is that if he loses his job, he can easily find another one. Well, good for him, but the book was written before the job market collapsed, and this delightful "jobless recovery" followed. It was not nice for me to be unemployed for eight months. I, too, anticipated I'd be able to find another job in a few months, but that was not the case. So, if I go ahead and spend all of my money on a mini-retirement now, only to return and discover that I won't be able to find work for another year, I'll be screwed.