Lessons learned from The 4 hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

In this weeks blog post I want to share my thoughts on "The 4 hour work week" by Tim Ferris, which is an absolute must read in the world of personal development. I read this book in the beginning of this year and it completly changed my perspective on things like career, relationships and what actually matters in life. The title sounds a bit clickbaty at first, but I can guarantee you that the advice Tim is giving in his book will add a lot of value to your life.

"People don't want to be millionaires-they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy. $1,000,000 in the bank isn't the fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom is supposedly allows." This is so true when you think about it. What would you do when you had 10 million dollars on your bank account ? You would probably work less or quit your job completely, travel more, spend more time doing the things you love and eat in fancy restaurants. But do you really need 10 million dollars to live this lifestyle ? Probably not. Many people overestimate the money that is required to live their dream lifestyle. Lets pick the travel part. There are many beautiful places arround the world, where the costs of living are far cheaper than in western countries and if you work in a job, where you can work from home, nobody hinders you from working in Indonesia or someplace else, where you can combine work with laying on the beach and drinking cocktails. Of course this is not possible for everybody, but I highly encourage you to think about what your dream millionaire lifestyle looks like and what is required to make this lifestyle happen.

Retirements are closely connected to this topic. We work our asses of in our 9 to 5 jobs, which we often don't even like and continue working till our 60s or 70s, when we can retire and live the life we dreamt all our work life about. This does not sound very attractive when you think about it. This is where the idea of mini retirements comes in. Instead of saving all your fun time for the end of your life, where you are probably not even able to do all the fun stuff you dreamt about, because you worked yourself to death all your life, you spread mini Retirements over your life span. Whenever you feel overworked, you just take a few months off, where you do the fun activities you always wanted to do. By doing that you can actually enjoy your retirement.

"Less is not Laziness"

Far to often in life we fill our valuable time with tasks, which are unimportant and don't bring us closer to our goals. Instead we should focus on the tasks, which actually matter. This frees up time for the things you love doing. So be productive instead of busy.

"The timing is never right"

The perfect moment to start something, you always wanted to do, is now. There will always be some parameter which is not perfect to start, so be it. Just do it and correct your course along the way.

"Emphazise strengths, Don't fix weaknesses"

We are all good at some things and terrible at the rest. But instead of trying to fix you weaknesses and become mediocre in everything, you should put in the time and work to make your strengths even more powerfull. This is much more fun and will lead to far greater success.

Another topic, which Tim tackles in his book is finding happiness in your life. But what does being happy even mean? This is a question many people are struggling with. The easier question, which Tim also suggests in his book is What would excite me? This is also a good question to find your passion and being successfull in things that excites us often leads to long term hapiness and life satisfaction.

To wrap this article up I want to talk about passive income, which is another topic that Tim puts a big focus on in his book. But what is passive income ? Passive income is money you make, that it not directly tied to the time you put in. In a classic 9 to 5 job you get paid a certain amount of money for every hour you work. But like we all know time is the most valuable resource we have in hour life and when we want to maximize our fun time, while still living the same lifestyle, we have to find a way to earn money without working. This sounds to good to be true, but it is possible through creating passive income streams. To earn passive income you need to create something first. This can be a book, a product, an online course, a video or whatever you like. When you publish this ressource and include some kind of payment, you can earn money all your life from this in theory. Earning passive income gives you the freedom of potentially quitting your job, in order to work less and have more time for the things you love. So find something you are really good at, a Skill you can teach or a product idea you have and try to monetize that.

Those were only the core ideas of Tims Book and there is a lot more valuable stuff I could not include in this article. I highly encourage you to give the book a read.

Cheers Emil