Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life:
<ul>
<li>What you do</li>
<li>When you do it</li>
<li>Where you do it</li>
<li>With whom you do it.</li>
</ul>

The W’s you control

Money & Investments

Time Management

<ol>
<li>Retirement is the worst-case-scenario insurance. </li>
<li>Interest and energy are cyclical. Alternating between periods of rest and activity is essential. </li>
<li> Focus on being productive instead of busy.</li>
<li>The timing is never right. Waiting for ‘someday’ means that you will take your dreams to the grave.</li>
<li>Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Try it and then justify it</li>
<li>Emphasize strengths. Don’t fix weaknesses. </li>
<li>When things are done to excess, they often take on the characteristics of their opposites. </li>
<li>Money alone is not the solution. We often use not having enough money as a scapegoat for not self-reflecting and working out what we want out of life.</li>
<li>Relative income is more important than absolute income. Relative income looks at both money and time.</li>
<li>Distress is bad, eustress is good (the type of stress that helps you grow).</li>
</ol>

Fundamental rules for success

99% of the people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things so they aim for the mediocre. Competition is strong for realistic goals.
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it's the thing what you should pursue. Boredom is the enemy, not failure.

Mediocrity and happiness

It means applying timelines to what most would consider dreams:
<ul>
<li>The goals shift from ambiguous wants to defined steps.</li>
<li>The goals have to be unrealistic to be effective.</li>
<li>It focuses on activities that will fill the vacuum created when work is removed. Living like a millionaire requires doing interesting things and not just owning enviable things.</li>
</ul>

Dreamlining

What you do is far more important than how you do it. Efficiency is important, but it’s redundant unless it’s being applied to the right things.
To be productive:
<ul>
<li>Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income (Pareto’s Law: 80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs)</li>
<li>Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).</li>
</ul>

Forget about time management

Most information is time-consuming and unnecessary. You should be critical with what you look at, read, or watch daily.
The low-information diet:
<ul>
<li>Go on a one-week media fast immediately: no newspapers, magazines, news websites, television, and unnecessary web surfing.</li>
<li>Only consume information for something immediate and important.</li>
<li>Practice the art of nonfinishing. If you’re reading a poorly written book/article, don’t continue to read it.</li>
</ul>

The low-information diet

<ol>
<li>Time wasters. Things that can be ignored with little or no consequence</li>
<li>Time consumers. Repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high-level work</li>
<li>Empowerment failures. When someone needs approval to make something small happen.</li>
</ol>
An interruption is anything that prevents the start-to-finish completion of a critical task.

Interruptions: The three main offenders

<ul>
<li>Create systems that limit your availability and deflect inappropriate interruptions. For example, replacing a meeting with a brief email.</li>
<li>Batch activities to limit costs and to create more time.</li>
<li>Set autonomous rules with regular reviews of results. This prevents creating a decision bottleneck.</li>
</ul>

How to fix interruptions

Create an automated vehicle for generating cash without consuming time:
<ol>
<li>Pick an affordable niche market. Find a market and identify your customers, then develop a product for them. </li>
<li>Brainstorm products. The product should cost between $50 and $200, andshouldn’t take more than three to four weeks to produce.</li>
<li>Choose whether you want to either resell a product, license a product, or create a product.</li>
<li>Micro-test your products. Do this by assessing the competition and creating a more engaging offer than them.</li>
<li>Once you have a product that sells, it’s time to automate it. The architecture of your business needs to ensure that you’re out of the information flow, instead of at the top of it. </li>
<li>Assess the value of each customer. Identify those customers who spend the least and yet ask for the most (i.e., adhering to the 80/20 rule) and cut them out.</li>
</ol>

Finding the Muse

<ul>
<li>Practice environment-free productivity. Attempt to work for two hours in a cafe before proposing a remote trial.</li>
<li>Quantify current productivity. Document your work efforts.</li>
<li>Demonstrate remote work productivity. Rack up some proof that you can kick ass without constant supervision.</li>
<li>Practice the art of getting past “no”. “What would I need to do to .... (desired goal)?”</li>
<li>Put your employer on remote training wheels. Propose Monday or Friday at home.</li>
<li>Ask for more. Extend each successful trial period until you reach full-time or your desired level of mobility.</li>
</ul>

Replace presence-based work with performance-based freedom

<ol>
<li>Quitting is not permanent: It’s always possible to pick up your chosen career path with a different company at a later date.</li>
<li>You will be able to pay the bills: You can get a new stream of income before you quit your job or eliminate most of your expenses temporarily and live off your savings for a short while.</li>
<li>Health insurance and retirement funds won't cease if you quit: Do some research and transfer your 401(k) or similar to another company.</li>
<li>Quitting won't ruin your resume: If you quit to do something interesting, this will often make you more attractive to employers in the long run.</li>
</ol>

Debunking the fear of quitting

<ol>
<li>Continual Learning. Transport skills that you practice domestically to other countries, like sports. Instant social life and camaraderie. Or pick skills that you can practice there, like learning a language</li>
<li>Service. Doing something that improves life besides your own.</li>
</ol>

The two fundamental components to enjoy life

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. From the Hardcover edition.

The 4-Hour Workweek

by Timothy Ferriss

12

KEY
IDEAS

The 4-Hour Workweek

by Timothy Ferriss

12

KEY IDEAS

KEY
IDEAS