Studying “The 4 Hour Work Week” is like having Tim Ferriss seize you by the hair, shake you, and say WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?! YOU NEED TO USE THESE TIPS TO BE MORE EFFICIENT!!

Additionally, the guidelines work. GTD followers, entrepreneurs, and principally anybody who reads will study tons from The 4-Hour Workweek.

I completely cherished this guide. The truth is, inside 2 hours of studying it, I had fully modified the way in which I deal with e-mail — and I already thought I used to be environment friendly.

Three days later, I had modified the way in which I deal with followups and conferences. The guide is about creating an infrastructure so you may work solely 4 hours every week (a colourful metaphor) and use your time to serve you, as a substitute of the opposite means round.

The 4 Hour Work Week: My largest takeaways

Tim’s insights about e-mail, outsourcing, and enterprise use take it to a brand new excessive.

For instance, he counsel checking your e-mail twice a day. Now, I’ve heard this suggestion earlier than, however often it was a failure of the final mile for me: I didn’t know the place to begin.

Tim goes the additional step and supplies the textual content of the auto-response e-mail he makes use of, which principally says ‘I test my e-mail sometimes, so right here’s an FAQ you may learn that can most likely reply your questions. In any other case, right here’s my cellphone quantity, or be affected person and I’ll get again to you.’

And, within the smartest line within the guide, his autoresponder contains this line: “Thanks for understanding this transfer to extra effectivity and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish extra to serve you extra.”

Who might argue with that?

Do you keep in mind once I described how I arrange my monetary accounts? That article was one in every of my hottest as a result of it described, step-by-step, how my personal-finance infrastructure labored.

Tim describes that for his complete working fashion, together with one thing fascinating I had by no means actually thought-about: digital admins.

He makes use of a number of digital admins from around the globe. As he writes, “Indian and Chinese language VAs…will run $4-$15 per hour, the decrease finish being restricted to easy duties and the upper finish together with the equal of Harvard or Stanford M.B.A.s and Ph.D.s.”

Then he goes on to explain precisely how one can work with digital admins, together with how one can give instruction, how one can decide the most effective ones, and — this goes the additional mile — the most effective URLs for locating digital admins.

Why would you want a digital admin? Take into consideration all of the senseless belongings you do each month: Reserving reservations, calling up Wells Fargo to query some account exercise, researching some minor level, writing a grievance letter, proofreading, scheduling, reminders, and extra.

Frankly, once I first thought of it, it sounded ridiculous. However then I thought of issues like scheduling issues and coping with tons of tiny requests each month (“Repair that typo on that website!”), I noticed how nice it might be to have the ability to simply ship a fast e-mail to a digital admin to deal with it — particularly in the event that they had been good. This recommendation (and the hyperlinks offered to the most effective admin websites) are well worth the value of the guide alone.

Different key insights from The 4 Hour Work Week

There’s much more in “The 4 Hour Work Week.” Listed here are some the opposite key insights I took away:

• “Don’t ever arrive on the workplace or in entrance of your laptop with no clear checklist of priorities. You’ll simply learn unassociated e-mail and scramble your mind for the day.” (This alone has saved me about 35 hours since I completed the guide 2 weeks in the past.)
• “Being busy is a type of laziness–lazy pondering and indiscriminate motion”
• The right way to finish a gathering on time
• The right way to persuade your boss to allow you to work from home on Fridays
• And a terrific lesson he illustrates:

“For all 4 years of faculty, I had a coverage. If I acquired something lower than an A on the primary paper or non-multiple-choice in a given class, I might convey 2-3 hours of inquiries to the grader’s workplace hours and never depart till the opposite had answered all of them or stopped out of exhaustion.

This served two essential functions:

1. I realized precisely how the grader evaluated work, together with his or her prejudices and pet peeves

2. The grader would assume lengthy and laborious about ever giving me lower than an A.

She or he would by no means think about giving me a nasty grade with out distinctive causes for doing so, as she or he knew I’d come a’knocking for one more three-hour go to. Be taught to be troublesome when it counts.

At school as in life, having a popularity for being assertive will show you how to obtain preferential remedy with out having to beg or combat for it each time.

My closing ideas on The 4 Hour Work Week

Tim’s resume is exclusive – he’s a Guinness record-holder in Tango, a nationwide champion in kickboxing, and runs a enterprise that makes dietary supplements.

I’ve met him and I appreciated him. Additionally, despite the fact that this guide is in some methods reverse of my philosophies on private finance — he’s not an enormous fan of saving for retirement — I’ve to respect him for pondering by his place and instructing me concrete issues that I put to work inside a matter of hours.

He embraces entrepreneurship and makes use of the guide to share street-smart suggestions for simplifying your life, automating your work, being simpler along with your e-mail/communications, reducing down on interruptions, and utilizing your time to really obtain one thing significant.

I can’t advocate this guide sufficient. The truth is, if the very best reward you can provide a guide is that you just modified the way in which you do issues due to it, then this guide will get a terrific evaluation.