General Description (from Amazon.com)
What do you do? Tim Ferriss has trouble answering the question. Depending on when you ask this controversial Princeton University guest lecturer, he might answer:
“I race motorcycles in Europe.”
“I ski in the Andes.”
“I scuba dive in Panama.”
“I dance tango in Buenos Aires.”
He has spent more than five years learning the secrets of the New Rich, a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the “deferred-life plan” and instead mastered the new currencies—time and mobility—to create luxury lifestyles in the here and now.
Whether you are an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, this book is the compass for a new and revolutionary world. Join Tim Ferriss as he teaches you:
• How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
• How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
• How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
• How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and freuent “mini-retirements”
• What the crucial difference is between absolute and relative income
• How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it’s beyond repair
• What automated cash-flow “muses” are and how to create one in 2 to 4 weeks
• How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet
• What the management secrets of Remote Control CEOs are
• How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50–80% off
• How to fill the void and create a meaningful life after removing work and the office
You can have it all—really.
Why the President Should Read This Book
The world of business has changed since 1910, but you wouldn’t know it by what some politicians say. Based on much of the rhetoric you would think most Americans still work in dirty, smoke-belching factories where cigar-chomping bosses abuse the workforce. The Four-Hour Work Week shows a dramatically different paradigm, one in which workers at all types of companies are liberated, not by government regulation designed to protect workers, but by workers themselves who take steps to free themselves from the arbitrary and/or outdated work practices of the past (such as working a 40-hour week) and obey only the rule that says “to get paid you must produce the results that lead to getting paid”. And for many, earning a living doesn’t require 40 hours a week. In some cases it doesn’t even require the 4 hours mentioned in the book title.
Within this book lie gems that could revolutionize the economy, if we learn to focus not on hours worked, but on results, and if we implement policies that free employers and employees, rather than coercing them to adopt practices that may not be in anyone’s interest.
Personal Notes
I’ve read A LOT of business books, and this is the best one. Why? Because most business books aren’t applicable. Sure, they’re applicable in some way, at some future date, perhaps, but how often do you read a business book and say “Wow, that was really interesting” but then nothing changes? This is one of the rare books I read and which I came away from saying “Ok, here are 10 things I am going to change today”, and then I actually did change those things, and they actually worked. And they didn’t just work, they worked out fantastically well.