The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris is a self-help classic and for good reason, especially after safely predicting many of the remote work trends post-2023. It has a revolutionary message and is chockful of practical step-by-by advice and processes to achieve the ideal WFH entrepreneurial lifestyle. However, the book suffers from one major issue in my opinion.
Tim Ferris’ book primarily seeks to show us how to escape the meaningless drudgery and slavery of 9 to 5 confined within office cubicles and living for the weekend. The central theme of the book is on how to become a member of the New Rich.
The new rich are defined as people who value money and ideas of life and work differently from the conventionally rich. Consequently, the new rich place more emphasis on experiences and living the life of your dreams rather than working the conventional 9 to 5. However, It is written from the perspective of an American by an American and is too narrow in its perspective, in terms of who it is talking to or selling its message to.
In this article, we talk about just how practical The 4-Hour Workweek is by comparing it with another classic, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. We also discuss how the practical advice of the book can be implemented in your everyday life.
The Mascot of Entrepreneurial and Remote Work Self-Help
The byline of the book reads Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. This is a tall order for a book published in 2007. The book lies somewhere between predicting the WFH revolution and being directly responsible for starting it.
According to Cal Newport, the book was written as a reaction against the intensive caffeine-fuelled work culture that had been spawned in Silicon Valley. It was a culture that birthed the “10x engineer” and the culture of economic disruption, which involved moving at break-neck speed and revolutionizing the way business is done. It was the era that saw the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and the launching of the iPhone.
The book rails against the inefficiencies associated with office life or the culture of “being busy” while doing nothing. This includes the endless emails and meetings that take away time from actually productive work. His solution was radical. It included a combination of 1) brutal efficiency through the Pareto principle, 2) mobility, and 3) automation.
With all that has happened with the pandemic and the lockdowns, the book can perhaps be described as prophetic. Large corporations have been forced to resort to WFH without seeing any major losses in productivity. More people than ever have resorted to remote work and have no plans to return to the office.
A recent poll even showed that close to 90% of US workers preferred working at the office for three days or less. This is remarkable since Ferris has a whole chapter on what specific strategies to adopt to convince your employer to work remotely.
The Good and Bad of Self-Help Books
The 4-Hour workweek has escaped much of the criticism of other self-help books because of its practicality and useful advice. However, the self-help book industry has been criticized for a number of reasons.
Self-help books lately have been getting a lot of flack. Some of it is legitimate; much of it is exaggerated. For example, they are often accused of promoting pseudoscientific information, as is the case with the law of attraction.
Another major criticism refers to what I call the elation — disappointment cycle. This describes the process of first getting excited by the motivational content of books that promise to revolutionize your life or that offer the key to finding solutions to the flaws within you. Then, failing to see this promise realized leads to shame and disappointment. This spurns a continuous cycle of moving from one self-help book to another to obtain that elation high.
However, another common criticism is that they just don’t work. Or that they are just a reaction to people avoiding systematic solutions to a broken and hyper-capitalistic economy and so forth. This is the weakest criticism. If a self-help book is well-written and provides actionable advice and steps to action, surely it is up to the individual to take these steps.
However, as mentioned earlier, Tim Ferriss’s book is generally a useful book with loads of practical and pragmatic advice. The book is dedicated to discovering an alternative to the rat race of
4-Hour Workweek Versus Rich Dad, Poor Dad
It would be useful to compare the 4-Hour Workweek with another much-maligned classic: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Kiyosaki’s book is superior to the 4-Hour Workweek in one regard — Its narrative conceit.
The book uses the idea of growing up between two dads — a biological dad with an impoverished outlook on work, finances, and life in general and an adopted spiritual dad with an abundant outlook on these things. This was nothing short of brilliant. It could even be described as wise and poetic.
Some have gone as far as accusing Kiyosaki of lying about ever having a “rich dad”. And to be frank, I am liable to believe it. The conceit is just too good to be true. But this is the least of the worries of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Far from a worry, it is the book’s biggest strength.
The book works well enough with its contrast between the two dads to make readers question the typical life of an everyday American salaryman or the typical 9-to-5 lifestyle. However, it offers few solutions. And the ones that it offers are often morally bankrupt.
For instance, one of his brilliant ideas for gaining property wealth is tax-lien certificates. It’s a scheme where you pay off the taxes owed to the government by homeowners. The homeowners have to pay you back with interest. If they don’t pay on time, then you get to own a whole new home!
The Ferris DEAL Method
Acquiring the homes of the financially distressed through tax-lien certificates is of course a practical approach to gaining wealth. However, many of us would avoid it because it seems so unethical. Tim Ferris offers solutions to working more efficiently or remotely without having to cut the other person’s throat.
So, what strategies or methods do Feris promote? Well, let’s first begin by looking at the core message and structure of the book. The book’s main message is on what it takes to be a member of the New Rich.
Ferriss argues that the defining feature separating the New Rich from what he refers to as the ‘deferrers’ (i.e., those saving up all of their money for retirement), is their goals and their philosophies. He lists a few of the distinctions between these two modes of thinking as follows: To achieve New Rich status, Ferriss promotes a group of strategies that can be summed up with the acronym DEAL. Here is what DEAL means according to Ferris:
D stands for Definition. This refers to embracing new rules and conventions and deprogramming away from common sense notions and mores.
E is Elimination. This is the step where the concept of time management is well eliminated.
A is for Automation. This focuses on automated systems to generate cash flow.
L stands for Liberation. This promotes the idea of the freedom of not being tied to one place and promotes heavily the idea of exploiting currency differences between countries.
Let’s examine the details of each of these concepts in turn.
i. Definition
Definition refers to challenging and then redefining the values and norms of the 9-to-5 rat race world. Ferris compares the New Rich to what he refers to as the deferrers. Deferrers defer reward and fulfillment. They work long hours till retirement to get a rich payday and retire in luxury on a beach somewhere.
The new rich do not wait. Instead, they strategize according to a number of principles and attitudes toward money and put heavy emphasis on the choice to work where you want and how you want. Ferris claims that the value of money is multiplied according to what he called the four W’s.
What you do?
When you do it
Where you do it?
Whom you do it with?
As a result, the book prioritizes the idea of taking advantage of the value of money across boundaries or currencies. For example, a certain amount of US dollars earned in the U.S. will be worth much more for someone based in Thailand, where the cost of living is much lower than in an expensive US city.
There are 10 rules that Ferris associates with this new approach. We include here what we think are the most important:
Retirement should not be the end-all and be-all. Instead, it should be the last option for security, as it is based on the idea that you are forced to do work in the prime of your years instead of living life to the fullest and enjoyably.
Doing less should not be equated with laziness. Optimizing productivity means that spending less time in the office could mean more impressive results than conventional workers.
Income should be seen as relative. As mentioned earlier, an X amount of money in a developed and highly industrialized country such as the U.S. would be worth far more in Thailand than in an expensive US city.
Emphasize strengths. You should not focus on fixing weaknesses. Selecting choosing strengths over weaknesses can lead to results being multiplied, whereas fixing flaws could lead to incremental improvements.
ii. Elimination
Elimination focuses on using the Pareto principle and not wasting time. This includes a low-information diet, which means avoiding overconsumption of traditional news media. For this point, Ferris relies heavily on the Pareto principle. Tim Ferris believes that This principle states that only 20% of the things we do will be responsible for 80% of our results.
Time should be spent on figuring out which 20% of your input, activity, or efforts are responsible for the majority of your results. Ferris also uses the Pareto principle in combination with Parkinson’s Law. This is based on the idea that how important a task is perceived is based on the amount of time allocated to it. The more urgent a task, the more important it would be perceived as.
Therefore, work times should be shortened and limited to only the most important projects. In combination, the two principles working would look like this: First, identifying the 20% of projects that generate the majority of your income, and then time tabling them to ensure they are finished quickly and on time.
iii. Automation
Automation is another principle serving as a pillar of the Ferris philosophy. Ferris’ automation principle includes:
Outsourcing and the delegation of responsibilities. This refers to hiring assistants to help with smaller tasks or daily operation tasks that you can delegate to. It also means planning things on schedule and using apps to do so. This would help sync your schedule with those of assistants who live abroad in different time zones.
Delegation also involves outsourcing other tasks such as designing or building products. You don’t need to build a factory to create a product. You can simply come up with the idea and hire someone to supply components and assembly.
iv. Liberation
The last big idea in the 4-Hour Workweek is liberation. Ferris differentiates between jobs that are worth saving and where you can convince your boss to work remotely from those jobs that are not worth fighting for. For people with office jobs worth saving and who desire to enjoy the fruits of remote living, he has a number of recommendations. This is the advice that he says should be followed to eventually graduate to the life of the New Rich step-by-step.
Convince your employer to invest more in you. For example, this could mean a training course. This is a psychological trick of sorts, as a company would hesitate to lose someone that they have invested so much into.
Use periods of time out of the office to show to your boos your value through increased output.
Document or prepare a presentation of the measurable benefits or value that you provide the company when you are out of the office.
Suggest a remote-working trial to your boss. Perhaps, once a week for a start.
Leverage increases in your remote working time by ensuring that your most impressive output is produced during these periods.
Essential to the idea of liberation is mini-retirements based on the remote or mobile lifestyle. Ferris believes that instead of waiting for 30 years for retirement to take that vacation you always dreamed about, it would be best to take mini-retirements.
What would this look like? This would mean replacing binge travel (which is the option taken by the majority of people working 9-to-5 jobs), with a number of longer mini-retirements. This could look like relocating to another place for six months. This type of vacationing is not so much you escaping life, but more like giving yourself the opportunity to re-examine it.
Final Thoughts
The 4-Hour Workweek provides very useful and practical advice. This type of advice looks even more practical post-Covid. The remote work that seemed like an idea so far off by so many companies has become the norm and has irreparably changed how people today think of work. One report, for example, showed that 88% of US workers preferred working at the office for three days or less. So, Ferris can be seen as a harbinger of this new outlook or philosophy on work.
The book led the way in terms of promoting the mindset of an independent entrepreneur. It is missing in one regard, that is SEO content writing. Although the book dedicates a section to growing traffic on your site, the focus is on ads. There is no mention of SEO strategies, such as SEO writing and editing.
There is one more limitation in the book. The book is written almost entirely from a US perspective. The author, at the time of writing the book, appeared to lack imagination in terms of showing how people interested in working remotely or working for themselves could benefit from this book. I am sure there are loads of entrepreneurs in Latin America, Nigeria, India, Eastern Europe, and so on who practice his ideas on a daily basis.
However, they are not featured in the book unless as virtual assistants, especially Indians. This is understandable. The book was written as a direct reaction against the American culture of overworking to develop results that exploded in the 1990s and early 2000s. So, for those who are not Americans, they would have to use their own imagination to figure out what to take from the book and how to make it work for them in their ventures.
Cite this eminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, October 08). The 4-Hour Work Week: A Review. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/the-4-hour-work-week-a-review |
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