A book popular in our industry is now a decade old.<p>Has anyone put the advice from the author Tim Ferriss into practice?<p>If so, how did you manage to do it and what have you learned from the experience?
No, but my grandfather owned a successful restaurant. Invested all the profits into real estate. Built an empire of 5mil+ as a Mexican immigrant. Towards the end, he had everything pretty automated by people he hired. Property managers for the rentals and a mix of family and a good restaurant manager for the restaurant. He would just come in on Sundays to count the money/accounting.<p>Side note. Our entire family has been destroyed by fighting over money. Money isn't everything. :)
The book is about being "the new rich". The new rich is not about having a billion dollars in your bank. Its about having enough money and most importantly the time and brain space to enjoy your time.<p>In the book Tim, emphasises that burning through 90 hour work weeks are pointless if you are not able to enjoy the $$$ it will bring in. Rather spend some money to reduce your workload and focus on things that excite you.<p>While most the examples he cites are not very useful for me. (I am from India and outsourcing the boring jobs to India isn't very effective ). It helped me focus on what I want in my life. And what is the $$$ amount which will help me achieve that. Its a hard conversation which most of us don't have with ourselves.<p>I sum up the book as; "There is no point in feeling like shit in your 20s and your 30s for a great life in your 40s which might not even come." Its not exactly YOLO as it emphasises to have a great time and not just let life happen.
I saw a flash of it once. I was in the middle of vagabonding in the philippines (Cebu) where breakfast on the corner was $1 and a private room $15/night. I got a contract for 8hrs at $120/hr = $960.<p>So I rented a desk for $10 overnight (EST hours) and billed the hours after 2 nights.<p>In Cebu, $960/month is more than enough to live comfortably. So I realized I made an entire months living (traveling) expenses in one day of work. That's almost like the "2 hour work week"
The point of this book like many other books "get rich quick and work less", is to make the author richer. If you're successful, people will most likely listen to you. So, you need to be successful in some way in real life and if you do, Tim showed you how to leverage a success into a great business model. This helped him generating more income by documenting his journey to a larger audience. So, the content of his book is not the point I think. It's the existence of that book in itself. So, to me it's still about luck and about taking risks in life. It doesn't answer the question: "how to become rich?". More like "how to create a business model based on your success".<p>Like any other book... There is no recipe for success. But there are a lot of techniques on how to maximize your income.
For a lot of people, 4WW was a "think and grow rich" kind of pressure cooker. Sure, you may be able to do with if you combine the highly marketable skills of being a certain kind of programmer with a low-rent country. Those folks are corner cases. The main beneficiary of the book was Ferriss, who's just selling the dream, like a lot of people in the "information business".
I lived it for a couple of years based on the framework from the book. Living on an island in Thailand diving everyday, hanging out in Bali or Barcelona.<p>Eventually I got a little bored with it and wanted to create bigger companies so I dove back in, but I still attribute a lot of my success to stumbling across that book one day.
I have lived the 4 hour work week for the last 2 years. I created a course online and earned half a million dollars from it in the first year alone, after spending 3 months creating it (I was 29 when I created it). Many of the ideas from that book (4hww) were ideas that came naturally to me prior to reading that book. I think anyone who considers themselves resourceful (particularly with utilizing Google search) would say the same thing. Most of the world's information is on the web, so if you want to create a lifestyle that optimizes for high earnings and low work hours, you should start by searching Google.<p>It's striking to me how people seem so baffled about anything anymore these days. Is there a God? The best framework humans have discovered for figuring things out is the scientific method, and according to that, the answer is: not as far as we can tell. Why is this even a question anymore and why do religions still exist, 20+ years after the internet has been around for the public? Again, the answer to that is on the web as well (the answer probably has to do with how longstanding institutions take a long time to die without meteoric disruption - and physics research/the discovery of the Higgs boson clearly wasn't enough to disrupt religion, nor was the recent rise in popularity of Nick Bostrom's simulation theory which happens to be my favorite theory about what this universe is, etc.).<p>Anyway, I digress...the point is that nearly anything can be figured out via Google. Want to become a rocket scientist? Google it. Read the best books out there. Don't sell yourself short. Want to be an engineer? Google it. And then do it. You can also learn almost anything with very low cost, thanks to the Internet.<p>I just gave you the secret to the 4 hour work week. Google + determination.<p>If you're struggling with accepting this answer - start with getting better at searching Google. You can get good at it like any other skill.
I'm not living the 4HWW but that book kickstarted my journey from employee -> full time freelancer -> part time freelancer + working on my own products -> 100% my own products.<p>I'm currently transitioning into the part time freelancing phase.
I have not, but I know a friend who did this for a while directly out of high school. I've never read the book, but most of these types of books say "create passive income using ____________" he made a pdf and charged 15 bucks for it. Sold it on his own website and made ~$1500-2000 a month. the money he used to live and built some other not so successful websites. We were straight out of highschool though so this was enough money to live on and he didnt TOUCH the webpage for like 2 years steady income. Sometimes people just get lucky I guess.
I’m living 4 hour work week and it’s one of the best books that ever helped me. Just use the advices in the book, pretty simple. I spend most of these days working on side projects, feels great! This also allowed me to earn a lot of money, so definitely not downshifting.<p>Actually kinda amazed that there aren’t many similar people in the thread...I can email you from a public address, it would prove I have a real reputation and not just Tim’s paid commenter.
I work one hour or two every morning to pay the bills. I spend an additional 3-4 hours working on things I want to see happen in the world. The hardest part is self-discipline, so I cut out all social media (no reddit outside of work-related stuff and limit HN). No movies and no porn surfing.<p>No internet at home helps me stay on track. When I need internet I walk to the coffee shop with a to-do list.
This story is a good example:<p><a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-the-4-hour-work-week-for-a-decade" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-the-4-hour-w...</a><p>Also I have a couple of friends who have done it for a while.
My biz partner and I lived it for about 2.5 years. We finally sold the network we had built up for 7 figures and ended up buying a company with 25 people, so the opposite of 4 hours :)
I wish I had read it sooner, but I have made small adjustments to my day job to improve things.<p>For those that cannot work remotely, you can still improve your productivity. I have a DND button on my phone that goes right to voicemail after one ring. I funnel everyone into creating a Jira task instead of trying to email, call, or ask in person for some work.<p>I document commonly asked questions like his FAQ in Confluence so I can point all new hires in other departments to this introduction training material.
Not exactly a '4-hour work week' but after reading the book, I have put in a lot of effort into automating a lot of daily recurring browsing activity for which I used to waste time daily. Since I prefer email as the main mode of communication, I have developed automation to extract and send all the important information (for which I used to browse) to me via email daily or hourly. Activities like tech news updates with word cloud, real estate searches, stock prices of interested stocks and many more. This saves me a ton of time by not randomly starting to browse. I attend to only important emails from these email updates.
I really don't think there are many people at all who are in a position to make use of the advice in the book, and of those who are I really don't think there are any who would actually benefit from it.<p>Gotta milk that survivorship bias though!
Yvo Schaap, the creator of Directlyrics.com, recently wrote a detailed article on Indie Hackers about how he's been living the 4-hour work week for the past decade: <a href="https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-the-4-hour-work-week-for-a-decade" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-the-4-hour-w...</a><p>He created product where the brunt of the work took place in the first few months/years, but the SEO traffic paid dividends for years to come.
I have two friends who did, independently. I surely doubt that they are still running things as they did way back then. But, at the time, and for almost a decade afterward, it enabled them to travel freely around the globe and have a relatively luxurious lifestyle.<p>Interestingly, both eventually got married and settled down back in the states. They each seem to be doing well - but have more conventional lifestyles now (i.e. Living in the burbs with kids).
Yes. The book sent me in a treacherous path and it wasn't easy but today I can say I'm working remote, 3 hours/day (minimum though) and earning a good living.
Problem is, I am ambitious and end up working the whole deal, and investing every bit of earnings while preparing for the future. But happily.
Still, I can say this book sent me on the path.
A friend of mine is - she trained to become a Pilates instructor a number of years ago. Now she does 2 group classes a week (corporate clients) of 1 hour each, earns about $300 per class. That's enough for her to live on.
No, because most of these books are bullshit allowing their authors getting rich by selling them to people who look for some kind of "magic success formula" :)