RD x's Key Ideas from The 4-Hour Work Week
by Timothy Ferriss

• How do your decisions change, if retirement is not an option? (Inactivity should not be a goal)
• What if you could use a mini retirement to sample your deferred life plan reward before working 40 years for it?
• Is it really necessary to work like a slave to live like a millionaire?

Remember “The perfect job is the one that takes the least time”.

• D stands for Definition i.e. Design the Work Recipe.
• E is for Elimination, which provides Time.
• A is for Automation, it gives us the regular income.
• L is for Liberation, it helps in Mobility.

Let’s start discussing one by one in detail.

• Not to retire early or young, but to distribute recovery periods/adventures/mini retirements throughout life on regular basis
• Not to be the boss/employee/incharge, but the owner. To own the trains & have someone else ensure that they run on time
• Not to make money only, but to make it with specific reasons, defined dreams to chase, timelines and steps included
• Not to have more of everything, but to have more quality and less clutter. Avoid Materialistic wants.
• To think big but ensure that the payday comes everyday or every week. Cashflow first, Big payday second.

Money multiplies in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life-

1. What you do?
2. When you do it?
3. Where you do it?
4. With whom you do it?

Retirement is the worst-case scenario insurance, it's like becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive.

Retirement can’t be a goal. Reasons

• It means, you disliked whatever you do/did during the most physically capable years of life.
• Most people will never be able to maintain a medium/good standard of living due to inflation which increases by 2-4% per year. So this math doesn’t work.
• And if the math does work, it means you are ambitious, hardworking machine. If that’s the case, you’ll be bored and look for a new job after a week or a month of retirement.

If I offered you 10 billion to work 24 hours a day for 15 years and then retire, would you do it?

Of course not- you couldn’t.

Alternate periods of Activity and Rest are necessary to survive, let alone thrive.

Doing less meaningless work, so that you focus on more important things, is not Laziness.

Our culture should reward Personal Productivity rather than passing time in offices.

For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks.

Like- Waiting for a good time to quit your job, the stars will never align, and traffic lights will never all be green at the same time.

‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams with you to death.

If it’s important to you and you want to do it eventually, Just do it and correct course along the way.

Most people are fast to stop you before you start, but hesitant to get in the way if you are moving. So, get good at being a troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up.

Ask for forgiveness, not permission.

• Find your strengths and work on them rather than fixing your weaknesses. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.
• Things in excess become their opposite like pacifists becoming militants, blessings becoming curses, help becoming hindrance, more becoming less.
• Money alone is not the solution, it's just an illusion.
• Relative Income is more important than absolute income.
• Distress is bad, Eustress is good.

Now, as you are constantly reading, be interactive with your brain and take out pen, paper, and vomit your thoughts subjectively about the following questions-

• Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.
• What steps you could take to repair the damage in advance?
• What are the outcomes of more probable scenarios?
• If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?
• What you are putting off out of fear (that one call, conversation, action)?
• What is it costing you to postpone action?
• What are you waiting for?

The opposite of Happiness is not sadness but ‘Boredom’.

So, Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness. It is a cure-all.

When people suggest you follow your passion, they are referring to doing What excites you.

Don’t ask what I want, ask yourself what would excite me.

People work till death saying “I’ll just work until I have X money and then I’ll do what I want”.

If you don’t define “what I want” alternate activities, the X figure will increase indefinitely to avoid the fear-inducing uncertainty of this void.

This is when both employees and entrepreneurs become FAT MAN IN RED BMWs.

Make a tabular plan for your dream

• of 6 and 12 months
• list upto 5 things that you dream of for each Having, Being, and Doing
• write their next action plans otherwise, they’ll only be mind plans.
• after calculation, find your target monthly and daily income to complete these plans.

• One doesn’t accumulate but eliminates. It is not a daily increase but a daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs on simplicity- BRUCE LEE.
• Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.
• It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.
• Being selective/doing less is the path of productivity. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

• Be Effective rather than Efficient. Apply Pareto’s Law- 80/20 Principle to everything you do.
• Parkinson’s law- A task will swell in importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion e.g. If for a project, I give you a week or a single day. You’ll be able to focus more when you are having only 24 hours.

Limit tasks to the important to shorten work’s time- 80/20 Principle.

Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important- Parkinson’s Law.

To get Time

1. Have a todo list
2. Have a not to do list

Do your own thing independently, Be the Chess Player, not the chess piece.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone- Henry David Thoreau.

A delegated task must be time-consuming and well-defined.

Steps to start and automate the business-

Step 1. Pick an Affordably Reachable Niche Market

Step 2. Brainstorm (do not invest in) Products. Options-

• Resell a product
• License a product
• Create a product

Step 3. Micro-test your products

Step 4. Rollout and Automation.

Flowchart of 4-Hour Work Week (Look at the image in this post).

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.

By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may get to be a boss and work 12 hours a day.

Liberty means responsibility, that’s why most men dread it.

If you must play, decide on 3 things at the start-

• Rules of the game
• The stakes
• The quitting time

The simplest formula for success is- Double your failure rate.

Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.

Every one of us must plan Mini Retirements in between our working life whether it's for a single day, week, or month.