The 4-Hour Workweek Summary and Review | Tim Ferriss

StoryShot #6: Leverage Selective Ignorance and Cut Out Unnecessary Information

Focusing on unimportant facts will eat away your precious time.

Unless the information is necessary for our work, we should always ignore it. There’s no need to go over every email or news item. Most information usually triggers an action that eats into your time. For instance, you may share the hottest scandal with your friends on social media. Then you’ll keep checking updates to get their reactions during your productive hours.

Ignore irrelevant information and details outside your sphere of influence to free up your time. Instead, focus on the Low Information Diet. Here’s how you can do it:

• Stick to one hour of leisurely TV and avoid it at other times. Do not browse websites, magazines, or books unless you need them for work.
• Only consume information when you need it. Avoid the urge to memorize facts and figures if you have limited opportunities to apply them.

Avoid the uninteresting and unproductive. Anything that drags us from our zone of competence will drive us away from our goals. We are programmed to want to complete whatever we start, even when it’s wasting our time.

StoryShot #7: Assert Yourself

Learn to assert yourself in all your relationships. Your colleagues will respect you, and customers will find it easy to trust you. You begin to project confidence and attract respect when you speak your mind. For example, Ferriss gave his college professors a tough time when he felt his grades were unfair. He got “A” the next time, as the professors dreaded another grilling.

When you assert yourself once, you don’t have to live to fight another day. Future fights take care of themselves so that you can free your time for more important things. There are three categories of things we should clear upfront:

• Time wasters include all unimportant calls, emails, and meetings. Don’t be too generous with your time. Let people know that you won’t always be available unless there’s an urgent need.
• Time consumers get in the way of more critical work. They could be tasks that you can delegate or drop from your schedule. If you’re in a 9-5 job, you could share this with your boss beforehand and propose a better working arrangement.
• Empowerment failures refer to trivial matters that need approval from your superiors. Sometimes it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to request permission. Skip seeking approval for small requests if you can get away with it. Develop clear guidelines for decisions that subordinates can make without coming to you.

Cultivate the art of saying “No” to requests without requiring further explanation. And do this for anything leading you away from your goals.

StoryShot #8: Replace Yourself

Replacing yourself is one of the critical skills needed in your journey to success. Automate all time-consuming tasks and delegate some to a virtual assistant (VA). Before delegating a task, consider if you can get by without it.

If you’re worried about cost, you could hire an assistant from a low-cost location. VA companies like Brickwork and eLance.com provide the perfect geographic connections. They also expand your options and save you from menial tasks. You can find a quick replacement when one person becomes unavailable.

It is easy to delegate time-consuming, well-defined, and hard-to-eliminate tasks. However, dealing with VAs exposes you to privacy and security risks. A VA company provides better safeguards if you need to secure your information. Exercise caution and apply common sense to keep your data from leaking to fraudsters.

Here are some helpful tips on how to engage a virtual assistant:

• Request excellent English skills. Explain that phone calls will be required, even if they won’t.
• Provide clear and specific instructions for the tasks. Ask the VA to rephrase them if needed to ensure complete understanding.
• Request status updates after the first couple of hours on a task. It keeps the assistant focused on your work.
• Set 24 to 72-hour deadlines for task completion. Break large tasks into milestones that can be completed within shorter timeframes.
• Send one task at a time, and should you send more than one task, ensure that you clarify the priorities.

StoryShot #9: Build Your Muse or The ‘Sweet Spot’ Business

Devise a strategy to build your passive income. It’s the only way you can afford to be a member of the New Rich. Finding your Muse, as Ferriss calls it, requires the following critical steps:

Step 1: Find a niche market for your product. It’s like starting with the end in mind. Also, it is easier to sell to an existing market. Estimate the demand for your product.

Step 2: Find the ‘sweet spot’ for your product. The sweet spot is a product that:

• Sells for between 50-200 dollars
• Takes less than four weeks to manufacture

Compare the benefits of creating an original product against options like licensing and reselling.

Step 3: Find an efficient distribution channel for your product. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a tangible item or an informational service.

Step 4: Test your product. Look at what the competition is doing and create a more compelling offer. Here’s what you should learn:

• How to market and differentiate your product on Google.
• How to test pricing with a 48-hour eBay auction.
• How to deliver a successful online ad campaign.

Once you have a profitable business, it’s time to set up systems that keep it running even in your absence. The automation works in three phases:

1. Do everything yourself when you’re still at 0-50 units sold. You will understand customer needs and discover the best way to reach them.
2. In phase two, you’re selling more than ten units per week. Find a smaller fulfillment company to support your customers and process your orders.
3. Contract an end-to-end fulfillment company when you’re at more than 20 units sold per week. They should handle the call centers, card processing, deliveries, returns, refunds, etc.

Reduce the number of offerings to at least two if you can manage. Fewer options reduce your overheads and make it easy for customers to choose. Here are some more tips on how to minimize service overheads:

• Provide only one shipping option. Avoiding overnight and expedited shipping will minimize call handling costs on shipping queries.
• Do not take orders by phone and direct everyone to your online ordering platform.
• Do not offer international shipping options.
• Practice customer filtering. Start attracting high-profile, low-maintenance customers while preventing troublesome ones from ordering.

StoryShot #10: Regain Your Freedom

Here are some priceless tips on how to break away from the 9-5 routine of your office job:

• Propose how you can telecommute and request a two-week trial period. Ensure you double your output during this period. Remote work is now a bigger reality, unlike a decade ago.
• Request time-off and ensure you’re at your most productive state on those days.

Can you go anywhere with minimal supervision and be more productive? The above tips present your best chance to prove it.

When things don’t go your way at work, quitting is an option. Before taking the plunge, you need to weigh up your next steps and deal with the phobias of quitting. Some helpful exercises in the book help you to deal with your fears.

Liberation and How to Use Your New-Found Freedom

Freeing yourself from the daily hassles of a 9-5 job will create a void in your life. Try to fill this gap with continual learning, like picking up a new language or finding a new hobby. You could also dedicate yourself to charity in your free time.

Liberation is when you don’t have to wait until retirement to travel the world. Reward yourself with long-stay vacations when you’re empowered to work from anywhere. You can live like a millionaire while on a budget if you exploit some money-saving tips.

Final Summary and Review of The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek offers the perfect cue for escaping the daily grind and bettering our lives. It has some of the best practical steps for gaining freedom and mobility as a business owner and employee. The business cases feel a little more tailored to informational services. It could have been better if we had broader industry examples, but they still make a strong argument. 

So, if you want to increase your productivity and join the New Rich, take control over who, what, where and whom your work activities involve. Face your fears and find comfort in things which once made you uncomfortable. Have clear goals and build a focused mindset that will help you achieve them, and don’t be afraid to be unconventional in your approach. Be assertive and delegate where necessary. And finally, build a semi-automatic, profitable lifestyle digital business that can help you fulfill your dreams.

Here’s a review of the key takeaways to help you remember them more easily:

1. Have Greater Control Over Your 4-Ws.
2. Who are the New Rich?
3. Face Your Fears and Be Comfortable in the Uncomfortable.
4. Challenge Conventional Thinking and Redefine Your Goals.
5. Build a Focused Mindset by Eliminating Trivia.
6. Leverage Selective Ignorance and Cut Out Unnecessary Information.
7. Assert Yourself.
8. Replace Yourself.
9. Build Your Muse or The ‘Sweet Spot’ Business.
10. Regain Your Freedom.