Ferriss’ Deal

With their five- or six-day workweek, toiling from 9 to 5, people refer to their jobs as ‘rat race’ or ‘daily grind,’ weighed down by routine and plain boredom. Tired of being just another lemming? Check out how AJ Jacobs, Esquire Magazine editor-at-large, redesigned his lifestyle:

‘I don’t have a corporation; I don’t even have an up-to-date business card. I’m a writer and editor working from home, usually in my boxer shorts or, if I’m feeling formal, my penguin-themed pajama bottoms…. It’s a strange feeling having people work for you while you sleep. Strange, but great. I’m not wasting time while I drool on my pillow; things are getting done.’

Mr. Jacobs is just one among millions of people who have read and are inspired by Tim Ferriss’ The 4 hour Work Week You read it right: not four days but four hours! Too good to be true?

Not if you read what The 4-Hour Workweek has to say. Ferriss teaches you, among several things, the management secrets of ‘Remote Control CEOs’; how to eliminate 50 percent of your work in 48 hours; how to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent ‘mini-retirements’; how to outsource your life and do whatever you want for a year, only to return to a bank account 50 percent larger than before you left; what automated cash-flow ‘muses’ are and how to create one in 2 to 4 weeks; how to fill the void and create meaning after removing work and the office; how to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50 to 80 percent off.

Ferriss’ lectures at his alma mater, Princeton University, are a big hit among students. He has also been invited to speak at some of the world’s most innovative organizations, including Google, MIT, Harvard Business School, PayPal, CIA, Microsoft, Ask.com, Nielsen, Wharton School, and Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Here is Ferriss’ step-by-step guide in restyling your lifestyle:

D for Definition introduces the goals and guiding principles of this new paradigm, a rethinking of old notions about work. This explains the fundamentals of overall lifestyle design before we add the three ingredients.

E for Elimination completely rejects the outdated idea of time management. The first of the three factors in luxury lifestyle design – time – is rethought.

A for Automation puts cash flow on autopilot using geographic arbitrage, outsourcing, and rules of non-decision. This explains the second factor: income.

L for Liberation is the mobile manifesto for the globally inclined. It presents the concept of mini-retirements – your way out of your boss’ traps and a means for efficient remote control. This delivers the third and final ingredient for luxury lifestyle design: mobility.

And what can be a better proof that this four-hour workweek delivers than the author’s lifestyle? This enterprising ‘vagabond,’ as his high-profile admirers call him, has also become a national Chinese kickboxing champion, an MTV breakdancer in Taiwan, an actor on a hit TV series in China and Hong Kong, and the first American in history to hold a Guinness World Record in tango.

Indeed, Ferriss’ proposition is way beyond cool. We say, let those rats race while you live The 4-Hour Workweek.