The 4-Hour Workweek is a great book with lots of good advice. I had some notes about the first edition gathering dust in my hard drive and I decided to post them here. They probably don’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t read the book, but I think they are good for a quick review. There are also a set of notes here.

Definition

New Rich (NR) to be the owner, not the boss nor the emplayee. “To own the trains
and have someone else ensure they run on time.” (p. 23)

NR examples:

1. employee who gets 90% of work done in 10% of time and use the remaining time to do whatever he likes (e.g. road trips)
2. student who has an online video rental service and makes $5000 a month working 2 hours a week.

Being a NR is to challenge the status quo but is not to be stupid

1. Retirement is a worst-case scenario insurance: and it’s difficult to retire and mantain the same standard of living
2. Interest and energy are cyclical: the best is to have mini-retirements distributed throughout life. The author aims for 1 month overseas for each 2 months of work.
3. Less is not laziness: The point is to do less meaningless work and produce more meaningful result. 80/20 rule.
4. The timing is never right
5. Ask for forgiveness, not permission
6. Emphasize strengths, don’t fix weaknesses: ”Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair” (p. 34)
7. Things in excess become their opposite: Lifestyle design is not intended to increase idle time, but “the positive use of free time”. (p. 35)
8. Money alone is not the solution
9. Relative income is more important than absolute income: The ratio between money earned and time worked is what define how a person makes. NR make $5000 per hour. (They may earn 10,000 a month and only work 2 hours a month).
10. Distress is bad, eustress is good

Conquer fear by defining it. What’s the worst it can happen from a 1-10 scale?

1. Define your nightmare
2. What steps to repair te damage (even if temporarily)
3. What are the positive outcomes?
4. If you were fired today what would you do to get things under financial control?
5. What are you putting off out of fear? ”What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do” (p. 46)
6. What is costing you to postpone action?
7. What are you waiting for?

Doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic.

Planning the dreams

1. Create 2 timelines (6 and 12 months) and list 5 things you dream of having, being, and doing considering you couldn’t fail.
2. If you don’t know what to think in 1., consider what you’d do if you had $100 million in the bank and what make you excited to wake up in the morning.
3. Convert each “being” into a “doing”. For example:
   Great cook -> make Christmas dinner without help
   Fluent in Chinese -> have a five-minute conversation with a Chinese co-worker
4. Highlight (star) the 4 most exciting and important dreams from all columns.
5. Determine the cost of these dreams and calculate your TMI (target monthly income) for both timelines. Use the tools on the website.
6. Determine 3 steps for each of the 4 dreams in the 6-month timeline and take the first step now.

If someone has done it, ask for advice.

Elimination

Apply Pareto’s law and beware of Parkinson’s law.

1. If I had an heart attack and had to work 2 hours per day, what would I do?
2. If I had a 2nd heart attack and had to work 2 hours per *week*, what would I do?
3. What time-consuming activities can I remove?
4. Learn to ask “If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satified with my day?”
5. Do not multitask.
6. Go on a low-information diet.
7. Check email twice a day (and latter once)

Automation

• Get a personal assistant
• Eliminate before you delegate
• Learn to delegate
• Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined
• Request an especific kind of assistant (e.g. “with excelent English”)
• Request an update after a few hours
• Break in small milestones
• Example: “Please reply and confirm what you will plan to do to complet this task”
• Get an assistent even if you don’t need one (to train how to command)
• Think “what tasks can I delegate do a VA?”

Income autopilot

He uses Prosoundeffects as an example.

The product can’t take more than $500 to test, has to lend to automation within 4 weeks and can’t require more than 1 day per week of management.

1. pick an affordable and reachable nich market
2. brainstorm products: explain the product in one sencence (e.g. ipod: “1000 songs in your pocket”)
3. price should be between $50–200: higher prices mean fewer units, less costumers, and lower-maintenance costomers.
4. resell a product
5. License a product
6. Create a product: Information is difficult to replicate (legally), e.g. training DVD for security systems.
7. how to become a top expert

• join 2 or 3 trade organizations
• read the 3 top-selling books
• give one free 1-to-3 hour seminar at a well known university (and/or companies)
• write 1 or 2 articles in a trade magazine
• join profnet

Testing the muse

micro test products with Google adsense

• find competition to determine why my product is better
• test advertisement with ebay auction (cancel auction on the last minute)
• set-up google campaign

1. Market selection
2. Product brainstorm
3. Micro-testing
4. Roll out and automation

Management by absence

1. 1. 0-50 total units of product shipped: do it all yourself
2. more than 10 units shipped per week
   add faq to website and answer questions
   find fulfillment services or “mailing services” or mfsanet.org
3. more than 20 units per week
   outsource
   set up merchant account
4. have fewer options

Liberation

How to negotiate to work remotely.