What It Takes To Achieve 4-Hour Workweek (Summary Of The Book)

Working a 4-hour work week, making millions, and living like a full-time entrepreneur. I'm sure you've heard of it. This is really becoming a trend and for good reasons. The idea that you can input very little work and still produce massive results is very appealing to most people. Many people, especially since the coronavirus pandemic started, are now aspiring to work from home. In fact, we're in a transition phase from the job economy to the skill or gig economy. The difference is fairly simple. The job economy is basically an economy where a degree is fundamental in order to succeed. The plan for life is to go to school, get a degree, find a job, maybe get some promotions, and then retire eventually. In the gig economy, most workers are able to work remotely, and most companies hire freelancers based on their experience and not their degree. In the gig economy, most of the work most companies need can be completely outsourced to other companies or even just to freelancers. But if I told you that the gig economy would happen sooner or later 10 or 15 years ago, you would think I'm crazy. Now, not so much. The pandemic, even though it had massive negative consequences, also made progress faster. Businesses are realizing that they can save a ton of money hiring remote workers, and that this even means more productivity. Everyone benefits from this. Businesses do not need to pay rent for an office. Workers don't have to clock in and out. They are free to work whenever they want as long as they deliver in time. Most workers are more productive if they work from home. Workers are happier if they work from home, and they don't have to waste time and money on commuting. This is even better for the environment since a big portion of the population won't commute as much. Working remotely is more and more common, and it doesn't surprise me that most people also aspire to travel the world with their laptops in the same place if you can work remotely. As long as you have your laptop and your internet connection, you're good to go. So it's fair to call this a transition. We're going from one type of economy and one mentality to a completely different one thanks to a worldwide pandemic. It seems that books like The 4-Hour Workweek are more and more realistic with this transition. The book was written by Timothy Ferris and published in 2007. The book kind of predicted the advent of the gig economy over the job economy. The transition had already started when Ferris was writing the book, but it wasn't even near what it looks like today, so we can call it revolutionary. The premise of the book is that anyone can escape the 9-to-5 rat race and develop a business that is self-sustaining and requires very little management. The business model should also allow you to work from anywhere and manage everything through your laptop and your internet connection. But when it comes to The 4-Hour Workweek, it isn't all about the money. Ferris makes clear the difference between the rich and the fake rich. Some of the rich are less free than the middle class, in fact, because they work so much that they don't have any time left to do other things. Someone who works 80 hours a week and makes $100,000 is still not as free as someone that makes $40,000 a year but only works 25 hours a week. See how Ferris goes about this? It's all about making the maximum amount of money with the minimum effort. And to be honest, if you're looking for financial freedom, odds are you don't even need as much money as you think you need. In fact, I would like you to do the following exercise. I found this in a book called F.U. Money by Dan Lok. Dan is a Canadian-Chinese entrepreneur with millions of followers, and the book is mainly on mindset. The exercise is the following. I want you to imagine your dream life. What would it look like? Would you live in a home somewhere beautiful or would you be traveling all the time? It's all up to you. After you decide what your ideal life would look like, you have to make a list of all the yearly expenses that you would face if you were to live that life right now. You need to remember to not add anything that doesn't bring any real value or joy into your life. For example, if you're going to travel all the time, you won't really need a car or a very expensive mansion. Keep it realistic but don't hold back any aspiration of yours. This includes private chefs, coaches, expensive clothes, and so on. Sum everything up and see what the total expenses for one year would be if you were to live that lifestyle. The odds are you don't even need a million dollars per year to support that life. Or maybe you do, and if that's the case, you should probably check that your list contains realistic yet ambitious outcomes. Some people's lists will pass the 10 million dollars mark, but for most people, even just $500,000 a year is enough. Back to the four-hour work week, Ferris exposes the difference between what he calls deferrers and the new rich. Deferrers are those that are saving money for retirement. The key differences lay in their mindset, and changing the mindset often results in a different outcome in life. Here are some examples of how the new rich think differently from deferrers. While a deferrer might say, I want to work for myself, a member of the new rich would say, I want others to work for me. If you want to spend most of your time working, then working for yourself is fine. But if you want to achieve freedom and success without having to dedicate all your time to your business, you have to change your mindset. While deferrers will say, I want to buy all the things I want, a member of the new rich will say, I want to do all the things I want. You see, this is the real problem. A lot of people truly believe that if they buy certain things, they will be happier. Have you ever heard someone say something like this? When I will get that car, I will be happy. Or when I will get that house, I will be happy. Well, while having nice things is definitely positive, you need to understand that toys will bring you pleasure for a limited time. Material things are great, but they won't provide long-term happiness. Instead, you should look for experiences. Stop buying material things, and start buying adventures with the money that you make. Aspire to do wonderful things, not to own expensive objects. Another very important distinction is that the new rich always have goals with their money. They don't want more money just for the sake of it. They actually have well-defined plans with the cash that they want to make. This is important for a variety of reasons. It helps you eliminate distractions and buy instinctively. In the commercial world, everything will appear like an opportunity. Buy this now, otherwise the sale will be over and you will pay more. Save X amount of dollars on this object, and so on. These aren't real opportunities, these are distractions and marketing strategies that will make you buy things that you don't actually want and don't actually make you happy. You will also remove the social pressure of owning certain things. Just the fact that you want to be a member of the new rich is highly controversial. People have a negative association with rich people, and a worse association with people that want massive results with minimum effort. But also, as soon as you have your money, you will be pressured by your peers to acquire certain liabilities. You should buy a car, you should buy a house, and so on. The negative association is wrong. Conventional wisdom does not agree that working less and still making more than most people is morally acceptable. In fact, they despise whoever has the ambition of working less. But here's the reality. If you are going to put your own money into a business, and you do it ethically and legally, then why would this be morally wrong? At the end of the day, you are generating immense results for hundreds of people with your products. Entrepreneurs find a need in the marketplace, and then they create a product that satisfies that need. They also give jobs. If you are going for the 4-hour work week, you are going to need to delegate 99% of the operations. You will help freelancers make money, achieve credibility in the marketplace, and more. Ferris talks about this in the book, and he says that the best way to get in the habit of delegating is to hire a virtual assistant initially. This will help you get used to the idea of outsourcing tasks, communicating remotely, and giving orders to people. Ferris doesn't believe in time management In his book, Ferris talks about how time management for the new rich is very different from what most people believe time management really is. He sees it as a way to fill all the seconds of your life with work. Ferris also believes in the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of output will result from 20% of input. This means that instead of filling all your time with work that will produce very little positive outcomes, you must identify what produces positive outcomes, and then exclusively work on that. This literally means that doing less is doing more. Not only will you reduce wasted time, but the time you dedicate to tasks that produce positive results will be even more productive since you are less tired. The easy time management strategy that Ferris advises is the following. Identify what produces positive outcomes for you. Schedule those tasks with deadlines. That's it. In order to maximize your productivity when you're actually working, Ferris says that you should stop consuming a large amount of unhealthy information, or information that isn't useful or practical to you in any way. Here's a quick example. Most people start their day by watching the news or reading the newspaper. They literally load their brain with information about murders, thefts, accidents, crashes, and so much negative info. How is that going to help them during the day? It won't. It will just make you more negative, anxious, and overloaded. It's been proven scientifically that one of the reasons why our society suffers more from anxiety is due to the amount of information that we consume on a daily basis. Reduce your input of info strictly to what you really need in order to survive. Make money, stay in business, and live a healthy life. The rest is not good for you and constitutes distractions. How to start a four-hour workweek business. It's easier than you would think. Here are the steps to identifying a business model that will give you the freedom Ferris talks about in the book. 1. Find a market that you understand. Ideally, you must be part of that market. This will make things a lot easier and cheaper. 2. Identify a need in that market and create a product that solves the problem. 3. Brainstorm product ideas and choose a couple of niches where you can advertise your product. 4. Advertise your product for $5,000 or less. 5. Remember that your product has to be low-ticket so that you can sell to a large number of people. 6. Now, before you launch your product seriously, you need to micro-test with many advertisements in order to see if there's a real demand for your product. Now that you know all the basics of the four-hour workweek, you need to watch this. The danger of not being financially educated. And then this. Who is most likely to become rich and succeed in life? And that's all for today's video. I hope you enjoyed it and found value in it. If you did, go ahead and give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you are new to the channel. With that said, have a great day you guys and I'll see you all in the next one.