I’ve just finished reading a non-fiction book called The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. In it he outlines a methodology which he calls Lifestyle Design. He advocates a radical re-structuring of your life in which you outsource your job, start a business which generates automated income and go travel the world. Obviously this may not be for everyone but there are a many components to it and as you read it certainly one or the other will jump out at you as relevant to your life and goals.

A concept which he outlined which I found very helpful was Wilfredo Pareto’s 80/20 rule. The 80/20 rule is the idea that very often 80% of the desired outcomes in a situation come from 20% of the input. In his case he’s applying to personal productivity and business so for example 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. I’ve found this in for example promoting records. There are a few journalists who will always talk about a record I send them and then there are a million others who will do so very infrequently or never. But still every time I go to do a promo mailing I dash off those few high return emails and then spend a bunch of time trying to chase down all the people who almost never cover the stuff I send. This makes the process take way longer than it could. What he advises from this is that you should focus on and maximize that 20% that performs and de-emphasize the rest.

Another concept which I liked from him is that difficult goals make more sense to aim for. There are a few reasons for this. While many of us will think of a difficult goal and then imagine the millions of people we believe are also competing for it. We then imagine that many of them are more prepared than us and think: why bother trying? What he points out is that almost everyone feels this way and that most people quit the competition before it begins. Therefore there is smaller competition for impossible or difficult goals, making them easier to achieve than we think. Additionally the energy we get from reaching for and getting closer to big goals is so much more than from a moderate goal that it keeps us motivated and focused. I find this to be true. I have a hard time getting excited about small or moderate goals whereas if I am aiming for something big I get more enthusiastic.

He spends some time talking about geo-arbitrage, the practice of living in places where it’s cheap and earning in higher income areas. Having done this as a DJ living in Berlin I know this works and it’s good advice. If you can detach your income from where you live there is a lot of potential. Making money from the internet is even better since then you can really disconnect these two. He did this in Berlin in Prenzlauer-Berg, a neighborhood I also lived in at one point, and in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The last piece I liked is his idea of streamlining your work time. One of the big things he talks about is eliminating interruption in your work sessions. I am very susceptible to this so this was great for me. In order to give yourself focused blocks of time in which to concentrate he suggests cutting your email use back to twice a day and further if you can manage it. Instead of constantly checking email he suggest checking it twice, once after lunch around 12PM and once around 4PM as people are wrapping up their workdays. That way you can avoid that compulsive email checking that many of us do and therefore minimize the constant interruptions every time something comes in asking for your attention. You check your email and just power through, responding to everything that has accumulated.

There are a great many further points in here which are worth talking about but since this is a blog post and not a book itself I will leave it at that. Ferriss also runs a great blog over at fourhourblog.com where he continues the discussion about many of these ideas.

The biggest idea I enjoyed from the book was the idea that reality is negotiable and we don’t all need to lead our lives the same way. What do you think?

If you’d like to get a copy of Four Hour Work Week and would like to support this blog you can get it by buying it through my Amazon store here.