This is one of the most inspirational books I have read. In fact, The 4-Hour Workweek is part of why I quit my well-payed, comfortable daytime job to seek an alternative lifestyle. You have been warned!
The basic premise of The 4-Hour Workweek is early retirement. Tim argues that the norm of working like crazy until your “golden days” and then quit abruptly, is an absurd approach to life. Why postpone living life when you can take control and create a more balanced lifestyle?
To achieve this, Tim breaks down his methodology in Definition, Elimination, Automation and Liberation.
Definition means to figure out what a person wants, get over fears, see past society’s “expectations,” and figure out what it will really cost to get where a person wants to go.
Elimination is about time management, or rather about not managing time. This is achieved by applying the “Pareto principle” or “80-20 Rule” (80% of your benefits come from 20% of your efforts) to focus only on those tasks that contribute the majority of benefit, and using Parkinson’s law (work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion) to limit the amount of actual time spent working. There’s a difference, Ferriss says, between efficiency and effectiveness. The book’s emphasis is on effectiveness.
Automation is about building a sustainable, automatic source of income. This includes techniques such as drop-shipping, automation, Google AdWords and AdSense, and outsourcing.
Liberation is dedicated to the successful automation of one’s lifestyle and the liberation from a geographical location and job. Incidentally, Ferriss notes that if somebody has a regular job, the order of steps will be DELA, not DEAL.