Transforming Work and Life: Key Takeaways from The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Work Week

I recently read the New York Times Best Seller, The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris. The book cover has a caption that says, “How do you escape the 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich!”

Here are my take-aways from the book in 8 points.

  1. What would you do if you had a heart attack and could work only 2 hours a day?
    Face it – Your health wont always be the same as it is today, one needs to think hard about how you will manage work, life, and family when health is not it’s best.
  2. The book goes on to talk about the definition of the New Rich. The community of people who ‘define’ who they are and what they enjoy doing, then they ‘eliminate’ what they don’t like doing, ‘automate’ what can be done by others and ‘liberate’ themselves from the 9-5.
  3. This is possible through the W’s you control.
    What you do.
    With whom you do it.
    Where you do it.
    When you do it.
  4. Someday is a disease.
    One day I will.. After I retire I will… When I turn 40 I will… Someday will never come unless you start today.
  5. ‘You don’t need to follow your dreams. You need to follow your excitements’.
    Find the things that excite you.
    For instance meeting new people, or new clients excites me. Working on brands at Synapse Marketing Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. excites me. Brainstorming with my team excites me.
  6. Busyness is a form of laziness.
    We have got so busy, being busy, that we have gotten lazy about it.
    We are so lazy that we try nothing new about thinking; analysing and changing the things we do so we can stop being hyperactive and start being productive.
  7. If there was only one thing you could accomplish in the day what would it be? One thing that will make today feel like a high impact day.
  8. The biggest implementation I got from the book is to make a NOT-to-do list.

Think about it. A not-to-do list will help me filter out the stuff that looks urgent but is unimportant.

So that’s it…

Hoping I can be more of a book reader than a book collector now on. But for that I need to implement the book The Four-Hour workweek.

Now that’s a chicken and egg situation.