Tim Ferris should be the ruler of the free world. Last year I read his book The Four Hour Workweek, and I'm about to start his brand-new book The Four Hour Body. Tim is a master at lifestyle design. Amazing because I'm pretty sure he's only a few years older than I am. That is to say, his first book is basically a guidebook on how to achieve the lifestyle you want while still bringing in plenty of money, money, money. He calls his experimentees (or the guinea pigs), the New Rich - those who do not want to be confined to an 8am-5pm workstyle for the next 50 years, those of us who want to have remote offices, work from remote locations, and mostly, get the most out of our workdays so that if we're done at 1pm, hey, go home. Who says you have to stay until 5. It's a look at why the arbitrary numbers of 8-5 have come to rule our life. Why most people wait their whole lives to take vacations, why we are confined to a desk, when you can actually do work from an island off the coast of Mexico. I actually tested out that last one, and it worked great.
He literally teaches you how to be efficient in emailing and communicating, how to get a virtual personal assistant (I'm considering this one), how to create a product to sell and bring in money with minimal day-to-day effort on your part. On days where I slip into my old habits and check my iPhone 465 times, I try to remember Tim, and his advice -- that there aren't too many true emergencies, and if you put down your phone, look around you and smell the roses, the emails will still be there for you to check later.
I have committed myself to one piece of advice, and I'm proud that I have stuck with it. I started "batching" my laundry. Instead of doing small loads of laundry throughout the week, I save everything for Sunday afternoon. It's awesome. Works like a charm. Saves so much time. I try to do the same for email - only checking it at 11 and 4, as he suggests, but this is more challenging since I sit at a computer most of the day. And, as a product of a generation that has sat at a computer for the majority of the last decade, this habit is hard to break, but on days that I do limit my constant email checking, I get much more done. Hmm he's right, again. Efficiency is the key to breaking the 8-5 drone.
I have yet to read his new book - where he personally put his body through a bunch of experiments for, I imagine, the ultimate goal of perfection. We'll see... Anyways, his blog is so much more fascinating than mine! Just google four hour work week blog.
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