The 4-Hour Work Week
First of all, I’ll summarise this book by saying that it’s a very entertaining read – actually quite funny in places – but nevertheless you shouldn’t believe for a minute that you can really relax into a 4-hour work week anytime soon.
What Timothy Ferriss’s bestseller does is to gather in one place many of the principles outlined in detail in other books. For example he discusses Pareto’s Law (also known as the 80/20 Rule) in the section on Ending Time Management. This is a valid point. Often, people in the workplace find themselves snowed under, and eat further into their precious time by prioritising tasks, and then carrying them out in their prescribed order. How about ditching 80% of these tasks altogether? This is what Ferriss is really saying. He invites you to think about the ‘value’ to yourself or your company of carrying out the task at all.
There are numerous other examples of repackaged wisdom contained within this book. Incidentally, you could read about Pareto’s Law or the Pareto Principle in any number of volumes on the subject. The case outlined above is also described in a different way in Stephen Covey’s bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, using the author’s Time Management Matrix. Covey splits tasks according to a 2×2 grid of Importance versus Urgency, and concludes that the ‘Important but Not Urgent’ tasks are the ones to concentrate on (eg prevention, planning, relationship-building, opportunity spotting etc).
However, I do still seriously recommend The 4-Hour Work Week, precisely because it brings together so many important principles. These include ditching pointless tasks to free up your time, creating business ventures that are scalable, and – importantly – can be automated by outsourcing or otherwise. Ferriss also covers such questions as ‘should I do what everybody else does?’ and ‘why don’t I just do the exact opposite of what everybody else does?’
Many of the chapters end with a Q and A, that is Questions and Actions. Some of the actions are quite thought-provoking. For example, ‘multitasking’ is to be avoided at all costs, as it is a symptom of task creep. In other words, if you are multitasking, you are really doing more to feel more productive, but inevitably accomplish far less. Better to work on just two crucial tasks per day, and complete them, each separately from start to finish, without any interruptions. To reinforce this he invites you to ask yourself everyday, ‘If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?‘
I think that’s a good place to conclude this review.
The 4-Hour Work Week – Timothy Ferriss (LifeSiren Score: 6/10)
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