The key ideas

The 4-Hour Workweek

Timothy Ferriss, 2007

The usual plan is to work for forty years and get your freedom in old age. Timothy Ferriss, once a hostage to his own business, offers another way: stop waiting for retirement and build a life of free time and freedom of movement now. His DEAL method is four steps from "work so that one day you can live" to "live while you work". The book is honest about which advice from 2007 has aged and which still works.

Who it is for

For anyone tired of the plan "put up with it now, rest when I retire" who wants more free time today. And for everyone who dreams of working less, but with more meaning.

Being busy is a form of laziness.

What the book is about

The usual life plan goes like this: work hard for forty years, put pleasure off until later, and get your freedom at around sixty-five, when you have less energy to enjoy it. Timothy Ferriss calls this plan the deferred life and suggests you stop waiting so long.

He once worked twelve hours a day and felt less like the owner of his business than its hostage. Then he rebuilt it so that it took a few hours a week, and went off to Argentina to learn the tango.

Ferriss is an American entrepreneur and author. His method is called DEAL: four English words whose first letters spell the word deal. Define what you really want. Cut the excess. Hand the routine to others. And free yourself from being tied to one place and one schedule.

Ahead: why free time is worth more than a salary, how rehearsing your own fears sobers you up better than setting goals, and which of the book's tips have aged and which still work. You have already taken the first step: you decided to figure things out instead of just drifting.

Idea 1. Wealth is not money, it is control over your time

Who is richer: a senior executive on a huge salary who sits in the office until midnight, or a person on a modest income who decides where to live and what to do on a Tuesday morning? Ferriss says the second one is truly rich.

He has a name for such people: the New Rich. Their currency is not the balance in the bank but time and freedom of movement. The goal is not to stop working, but to do work that does not keep you on a leash.

The mistake most of us make is putting life off until retirement. We say: once I retire, I will travel. Ferriss objects: there is no point saving up freedom for forty years only to get it when you have less health and less desire.

How to use it: write down not the sum you want to earn, but the life you want to live. What do the things you dream of cost per month: trips, learning, free mornings? You often need far less money than you think.

A man I know put off a trip to Japan for twenty years: first work, then the mortgage. When he retired, he realised the long flight was now hard on him. Yet he could have afforded the dream ten years earlier.

Wealth is easier to measure not by your salary, but by how many hours in your week are yours to control.

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About the author

Timothy Ferriss is an American entrepreneur, investor and author of books on productivity. He turned his experience of rebuilding his business and his life into a bestseller that started the fashion for "lifestyle design".

All books by this author: Timothy Ferriss

Terms from the book

  • Parkinson’s Law
  • Pareto
  • Pareto Principle
  • DEAL: The author's four-step scheme: Definition, Elimination, Automation, Liberation. Define what you want, cut the excess, hand off the routine, break free from one place. The first letters spell the word deal.
  • deferred life: The author's image for the familiar plan of saving up freedom for forty years and only starting to live in retirement. Ferriss considers it a bad deal.
  • New Rich: The author's term for people whose currency is not money in the bank but free time and the ability to live anywhere. Not a scientific concept, but his own model.
  • fear-setting: The author's exercise: instead of setting goals, you write out in detail the worst case, the ways to prevent it and the ways to repair the damage.
  • Parkinson: Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a British writer and historian, author of the tongue-in-cheek law that work fills all the time allotted to it.
  • relative income: The author's way of counting: measure money not by the yearly total, but by how much freedom and how many hours of life it costs to earn.
  • low-information diet: The author's advice: for a while, give up news and extra reading almost completely, keeping only what you need for a specific task right now.
  • batching: A technique: group similar tasks into one session instead of scattering them across the day, so you do not waste energy on constant switching.
  • muse: The author's name for a small, low-maintenance source of income: a product or service that, once set up, earns money with almost no involvement from you.
  • virtual assistant: A remote, outsourced worker you can hand email, research and small tasks to. The author describes how he hired such assistants online.
  • outsourcing: Handing part of the work to outside contractors instead of doing it yourself or keeping staff.
  • freelancer: Someone who works for themselves and takes jobs from different clients without being on the staff of one company.
  • mini-retirements: The author's term: regular breaks of one to three months throughout your life, instead of one long retirement at the end. A model for living, not a financial plan.

All terms

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