|
|
Title: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Purchase
Item
Manufacturer: Crown
List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $11.00
|
|
| Customer Reviews: |
| The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Crown This book is awesome | | I can't believe how much this book inspired me. A worthwhile read for anyone. Pick up a copy--you won't regret it. No matter what state your life is in, this book will light a fire under your butt and make you start thinking differently about life and work. | | The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Crown Somewhat of a letdown | The 4-Hour Workweek was significantly less than I had expected, judging by other reviews. It does have some neat information regarding outsourcing certain aspects of your life, as well as some tips for the creativity-challenged about how to cut down hours "worked" while maintaining productivity. However, none of it is particularly earth-shaking.
A huge chunk of the book is spent describing the author's, as well as other people's, basic lifestyles. The quantity of descriptions almost resembles bragging rather than illustration.
The rest of the book describes how to set up a business selling junk over the internet using tired tricks and cheesy techniques. I would guess that 95%+ of people who have attempted to duplicate the author's success using the techniques described have met with very limited success to outright failure.
I opened the book with high hopes, due to reviews I had been given from friends. I came out of it feeling slightly sleazier, and significantly less impressed, than I did before cracking it open. | | The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Crown Like Pulling Off a Band-Aid: It's Easier and Less Painful Than Your Think | The 4-Hour Work Week does what only the best books can do. It strikes a cord deep within us, confirming thoughts that we have always vaguely felt were true, and pointing us down a path that offers fresh hope for the future. Some of the outstanding points the author covers are:
1. Retirement as a goal is flawed. Doing the same thing for 8 hours a day until you breakdown or permanently stop is the wrong way to live. Ferriss says that alternating periods of activity and rest are necessary to survive, let alone thrive. He advocates distributing "mini-retirements" throughout life instead of hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the retirement years.
2. The question one should ask oneself is not "What do I want in life?," or "What are my goals?" but the real question should be "What would excite me?". To focus in more, you should ask yourself, "What would I do if there were no way I could fail, or, if I were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world?"
3. Getting fired, despite coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling for recover, is often a godsend. Someone else made the decision for you and it's impossible for you to sit in the wrong job for the rest of your life. Most people aren't lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
The author describes several insightful ways to free up time for mini-retirements.
1. Start your own business, then turn the reins over to someone else who runs the operation for you. You become a ghost owner. As Ferriss quotes the Guardian of the Emerald City Gates in the Wizard of Oz, "Orders are nobody can see the Great Oz! Not nobody, not no how!"
2. Outsource your work to foreign and domestic virtual companies that specialize in outsourcing.
3. Negotiate with your present boss to work at home instead of working at the office. This allows you to focus your efforts on the important aspects of your job and doing them more quickly and efficiently.
While I think these are all reasonable options, this is where I part company with the author, in terms of how I approach passive income streams.
What works for me is to buy fixer-upper houses, repair them and rent them out. The work is front loaded with the initial purchase and repair of the property. After that initial push, like the 4 Hour Workweek, it requires minimal input and can allow time for mini-retirements.
For me, the advantage of real estate is that it provides both long-term and short term profits. Long-term from the average 5% increase in equity, and short-term from monthly rental payments and tax deductions. If you turn your rental properties over to a management company, you are free travel.
This is not to take anything away from The 4-Hour Workweek. On the contrary, the book is worth reading because it is eminently thought-provoking and written in a style that is wildly entertaining. (His hilarious Mad Lib fill-in-the-blank job resignation letter is a work of mad genius.) Yet, as I mentioned, the book goes way beyond this by examining deeper themes of life and work that are seldom addressed in such a enthralling manner.
Another excellent book that also takes a meaningful look at issues of work and money is Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.
| | The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Crown find a job you like | | The whole book can be summed up in a sentence found on p. 277 near the end of the book: "full-time work isn't bad if it's what you'd rather be doing..." If that's the case, tim should have spent the first 276 pages telling us to find something we really like to do after school. But i guess that wouldn't take 276 pages. His book basically says, reduce a rat race job to four hours so that you can be free to do a job you like full-time. why not just find that full-time job you like in the first place? | | The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Crown Good inspirational stuff, but what about folks with young kids? | | I enjoyed this book and got a lot out of it, but it was not realistic to think that people with young kids can really create this lifestyle with this little instruction. The author says that kids shouldn't stop you, but he doesn't have kids, so he really doesn't know. But maybe that's just me making excuses as to why I haven't fully transitioned to this lifestyle yet. So I guess I'm waiting for the "with family" version of this book. | | The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Crown Product Description | 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. |
| |
