The 4 Hour Work Week Summary
Chapter 1 – D: Definition
There is a handful of people who figured out that you don’t have to work 9-5. These people are the New Rich (NR). They redefine the rules.
Wanna join the NR?
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Think of retirement as a worst-case scenario – and not the goal of your entire career.
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Interest and energy are cyclical – use mini-retirements.
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It’s not lazy to do less work – if you’re focusing on doing the most productive things.
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The timing is never right to quit your job and start working for yourself – so plunge into it now rather than waiting until the planets are aligned. Replace “someday” with “today”.
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It’s always much more fun to ask for forgiveness rather than asking for permission.
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Find ways to emphasize your strengths – rather than trying to fix your weaknesses.
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Remember it’s possible to have too much of a good thing – so plan on using your free time wisely rather than sitting around and doing nothing.
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Remember money alone is rarely the solution – so never use it as a scapegoat.
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Learn how to differentiate between “absolute” and “relative” income – and focus on making more money for each hour you choose to work.
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Take advantage of “positive stress” or eustress – the kind of stress which acts as a stimulus for worthwhile growth. While negative stress can be destructive and cause health problems, positive stress to realize your dreams can be helpful and beneficial. One way to do this is to focus on emulating role models who epitomize what you’re trying to achieve yourself.
Use the Dreamlining tool to define how much income you need: Dreamlining tool
Key takeways
Confidence is essential. You don’t have to be some macho fighter, but you gotta be unafraid. What’s the worse that can happen? Things cost WAY less than you think. Write down your goals! Email someone out of your league – everyday.
CHAPTER 2 – E: Elimination
You need to increase your per-hour results at least ten-fold so you can achieve more in two-hour days than you ever did in your prior 12-hour workdays.
To achieve this, you need to:
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Cultivate selective ignorance.
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Have a low-information diet.
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Learn how to completely ignore the unimportant.
Cultivate selective ignorance
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Deliberately ignore anything which is irrelevant, unimportant or unactionable on your part.
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Feel good about the fact you don’t fill your mind with trivial and worthless information.
Have a low-information diet
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Stay away from: tech blogs, forums, newspapers, TMZ. Only use the TV for entertainment.
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Try a low information diet for a few weeks. You’ll be amazed at how much time you previously wasted.
Learn how to completely ignore the unimportant
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Ignore any and all time wasters
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Always batch your time consumers which you have to do
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Empower your colleagues
Use Pareto’s and Parkinson’s Law: Identify the few tasks that matter and completed with create short, clear deadlines.
Relevant links and people
Dale Begg-Smith, the 21 year old Lamborghini kid in chapter one. Built a mutli-million dolalr business and won an Olympic medal in skiing. The business he created dealt with ads…he is sometimes referred to as The Spam King.
BrainQuicken – Tim’s muse business
Dreamlining tool – Super useful. Every author we’ve read has said to always write down goals. I do this regularly, and it works.
Parkinson’s Theory – the more time a task is given, the hard it’ll become
Pareto Principle – 20% of your input is responsible for 80% of your output
StayFocusd – My favorite tool. Keeps me on track by only allowing me to spend a set amount per day on time consuming sites (FB, Reddit, LinkedIn)