The 4-Hour Workweek

Back in July 2008, Mark Szulc and I had dinner at Great India in Wellington - the place that has kind of become a ritual every time we're both in Wellington together.

On our way back to our respective hotels, we were chatting about career's and the workloads of various paths. Mark asked me if I enjoyed the 'politics' (which is a terrible term for something that I think is quite an important part of an organisation... mmm, blog topic in incubation!), the travel, the workload, etc we both face in our current and possible future roles. I said "yes". For me, my work/career is really like a hobby that I get paid to do. If I had $100m parked in a bank account somewhere, I'd still be doing a version of this every day.

Mark suggested I read The 4-Hour Workweek and let him know if I still felt the same way.

Well, after completing the book, I do. But I would suggest it has opened my eyes to some alternative ways of getting more out of the effort I put into my work.

The core of Tim's framework to an alternative work life is D.E.A.L: Definition, Elimination, Automation and Liberation.

I totally agree with Tim’s view of living your life vs working to save so you can enjoy life in your retirement. Additionally, setting ‘unreasonable’ goals is something my partner and I talk about a lot as we try to find new goals and dreams to chase.

I'm going to follow this introduction up with a few topics that this book has got me thinking about:
  1. Pareto's law aka the 80/20 rule
  2. Parkinson's law
  3. Low information diet
  4. To-do lists
  5. Outsourcing life
  6. When you ask for something can have more impact than how you ask
Tim also touches on topics I've covered in the past including: emphasizing strengths, not fixing weaknesses - this allows you to achieve multiplication of results by leveraging your strengths instead of incremental gain from fixing your weaknesses. For more on this line of thinking, check out First, Break All The Rules.

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posted by Lee Gale @ 3:28 AM,

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