The Four Hour Jolt! Part 7

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 7
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP6: Liberate
PROFIT : What are you going to do with your time when you are no longer chained to your desk for most of your waking hours? How are you going to fill the void? TIM’s DEAL points you to the possibility of a mobile lifestyle. Instead of taking a holiday fling to unwind, you can choose to live where ever, and how ever, you want.

Get Out of the Office
If you’re a lifetime careerist/employee, before you can automate, you have to get out of the office.
Start with one day a week working remotely.
Propose a clear plan and say exactly what you want to do to work remotely.
When you get your chance to work remotely perform!
Demonstrate that it works to every ones advantage.
Turn one remote day into two, then three...

Remote Control
Adopt a totally mobile lifestyle.
Ideally, when the business has been automated, you will need to check in once a week via email to make decisions.
Pick up the phone for a few hours each week and train your people that you’re only reachable during that time – they’ll start to take initiative and solve problems themselves.
When you design and streamline your workload you can:

• Educate your kids while globe-trotting;
  
• Volunteer social capital to something bigger than yourself;
  
• Outsource tasks, and
  
• Go virtual so that you can live anywhere, anyhow.

This is your one shot at life.

The Work Void
“What the #$%@?! am I going to do today?”
Surprisingly this is the biggest concern of the New Rich - at least at first.
Like going on holiday it can take a little while to settle into the routine of not having to work today.
Yet, if you stop and think about all those wonderful things you could do... you might just get excited about the idea.

• Live in a foreign land,
  
• Establish a kinder in Vietnam as a group of 4HWw devotees are doing,
  
• Scuba dive the tropics,
  
• Help the locals,
  
• Write poetry...
  

What’s your escape?
Start thinking about what you’ll do when you join the New Rich and you might just get motivated to take some action.
It is achievable!

Mini-Retirements
Stop taking vacations!
That’s right, stop taking those one or two days, and those odd weeks where you cram all that travel and all that site-seeing into a stress filled holiday.
Start taking mini-retirements for 3-6 months every year!
Consider, how much it would cost to live in Thailand or South America for three months.
It’s a lot cheaper than staying at home with your nose to the grindstone.
Most of what we earn goes in taxes and in keeping our current lifestyle afloat... the car, the house, the...
Instead you could be ‘working’...

• In the sun on your high-tech yacht,
  
• Learning a foreign language,
  
• Volunteering on a fresh water project in China or...
• Sipping local lager in Laos.
  

Go on, you know you want to...

Liberate Questions

1. How would you work remotely in your current job?
2. How could I demonstrate my increased productivity?
3. How much money do you need to take a mini-retirement for 3 months?
4. What else do you need to consider to make it happen?
5. How would you spend your time if you didn’t have to turn up to a job?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 6

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 6
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP5: Automate
PROFIT : The 40 Hour Week is all about turning up. The 4 Hour Work Week focuses on creating a cash flow vehicle that runs on auto pilot by tapping into contemporary digital tools and global realities. If you want to work less and still get the job done, earn a good income, and live life on your terms, there are news ways to leverage your efforts. This applies to entrepreneurs AND employees.

Outsource
In the good old days only companies outsourced their staff.
Today, via the global, connective internet we can all outsource ourselves.
YourManInIndia, Guru, Elance and other websites enable you to employ someone, mostly MBAs, from India or China or the US who’ll take on the tasks that you don’t want to do.

• What could you achieve with a Remote Executive Assistant?
• How could you outsource your current job?

Quantify the value of your time and outsource anything that can be done for less per hour by someone else – anywhere in the world – virtually; do more by doing less.

The Art of Delegation

• Before delegating tasks, eliminate all the unnecessary ones to make your life easier.
• Delegation requests need to be well-defined.
• Get an assistant - even if you think you don’t need one.
• Start with small tasks and the ones stuck on your to-do list.
• Avoid managing others until you can manage yourself! A Basil-esqe management styles is not a good look.

Income Autopilot
One of the simplest way to generate automatic income stream is to build a product that can sell itself on the internet. Here’s an overview...

1. Market Selection - Find a niche that you can reach and research what problems they are experiencing.
2. Product Brainstorm - Consider a range of product offerings including reselling some one else’s product, licensing a product or creating your own.
3. Micro Testing - Using Google Adwords test responses to your ads to attract people to your website.
4. Roll out and Automate - Create online systems to automate your business. Including: advertising, shopping carts, fulfilment/delivery, banking and customer service.

If you want more... buy Tim's book!

Automate Questions

1. Can a Virtual Assistant complete this task for me? What can I eliminate before I delegate?
2. What are your top 5 time-consuming non-work tasks than you could assign to your assistant?
3. Which affordable-to-reach niche market will I sell to?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 5

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 5
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP4: Eliminate
PROFIT : Time management says we should be more efficient with the way we work. TIM’s DEAL demands you be more effective with your time by being more selective on what tasks you spend your time on. We’ve all been to too many meetings. It’s time to stop doing the things that get in the way of living our dream. Here’s some suggestions to get you started, I mean, stopping.

Single Focus
Stop multi-tasking - it only leaves you stressed and unfocused. You’re better off dealing with one thing at a time with your complete and full attention. Apply the Pareto Principle and focus on the 20% of effort that produces 80% of your results.

Information Underload
There’s a limit to how much information we can organise and digest. Information Overload is merely a futile attempt to keep up to date with too much stuff. Narrow your focus and go on an information diet. Eliminate unnecessary TV, news watching, magazine reading, web surfing, book reading, and email activity. Eliminate Inputs, Maximise Output.

Be Effective There is an efficiency epidemic among intelligent people to focus on how to do things better as opposed to what to do. Time management simply doesn’t work. The biggest gains in your productivity will come from choosing more wisely what activities you are going to take on. Eliminate the ones that make minimal impact.

Refuse Opportunities
Say ‘No’ to anything that doesn’t forward your dream. Remember your time is the currency of your life and you never get back what you waste. Stop trying to be popular with people you don’t care about and start living your dream.

Interuption Avoidance
Research shows that every time we get interupted it takes about 10 minutes to get back to where we were. Do what ever it takes to avoid being interupted. Know when to be a hermit and work from home and set up ways to signal that you don’t want to be interupted. Go to war on the Weapons of Mass Distraction like email, phone calls, meetings...

Schedule Time Wasters
Sounds like a contradiction and that’s exactly what you need. Schedule when you read your emails and when you answer/make phone calls. Grouping like activities saves the time we all need to get our heads around the task in front of us. It also avoids doing tasks more often than we really need to.

Quit Quick
Know when to quit. If a meeting is not turning out - leave. If a movie sucks - leave. If a task is failing - quit. Read Seth Godin’s The Dip for a fuller explanation.

Time Questions

1. Am I being productive or am I just being busy?
2. Am I working on something that builds my dream?
3. Am I working on the things that will produce the best results?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 4

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 4
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP3: Define
PROFIT : Defining requires first and foremost, in order of importance documenting what you say you want to DO, BE and then HAVE. What do you really want to do? What is the exact amount per month you’ll need to live a well-off mobile lifestyle? Determine what portion of your efforts are producing the results you want. Limit your time so that you limit yourself to the truly important.

Worst Case
Retirement is your fall back position. If all else fails, you keep working until you can afford not to. We’re not suggesting you don’t manage your finances, simply reconsider your lifestyle.

Not Everything
Money is important and it’s not everything. This is your lifestyle here. Money is only one ingredient in the mix. It’s probably the one that is making you stick to your current deferred lifestyle plan.

Today is the Day
When is it a good time to die? Never. The same applies to designing your dream lifestyle. It’ll never be a good time so either ditch your dream or start building it today. Today! Right now! Get started, the clock is ticking... tick... tick... tick...

Personal Note : A family member died suddenly in the prime of life whilst we wrote this RAP. He didn’t make it to retirement. Rest in peace Greg.

Relative Income
It’s not how much money you make, it’s how many hours it takes to maintain your current lifestyle. Is working 80 hours for a New York apartment better than 10 hours for a life on a tropical beach? It’s Dollars AND Time.

Lazy is OK!
The New Laziness is simply working smart rather than working for work’s sake. Don’t be busy, be productive and enjoy the rest of your life.

Too Much
Time is the key driver of a mobile lifestyle. Make the most of it. It’s not renewable. Deadlines are critical.

Good Stress
Experiment, question, argue, debate, pose. These are good stress inducers and necessary if you’re going to get what you want.

Dream Challenger
When you tell friends and family your lifestyle plan, the natural reaction may be that they want you to pull back. Living your dream may force those around you to contemplate what they’re doing about theirs - and they may not like it. You may need to let bad things happen so that you can do your big things. Don’t ask for permission; ask for forgiveness later.

Take a Break
Pace yourself. No one can sprint all day everyday without having a breakdown every now and then. That’s the whole point of mini-retirements. Spice up your life with a break - now, not when you’re too old to enjoy it.

Build Strengths
Stop trying to be an expert in everything. Start focussing on your strengths and get somebody or some system to handle the rest.

Lifestyle Questions

1. What is it you want to create from a lifestyle standpoint?
2. How much would that lifestyle cost?
3. What are the financial realities of defining your ideal lifestyle?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 3

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 3
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP2: TIM’s DEAL
PROFIT : It’s time to abandon the deferred lifeplan. Instead of career planning, opt for life planning. The new DEAL requires you to become a DEALMAKER. TIM’s DEAL is a four-part repeatable process. He suggests that when you get off track, go back to step one (Define) and go through the process again, and again, and again... Until you’re living your dream.


1 Define
What are the rules you are living by? If you want a new lifestyle, it’s time to change your rules. Remember, you made them up or simply adopted them from others. The first step in TIM’s DEAL is to define what you really want. What does your dream lifestyle feel like?

2 Eliminate
Time is life and it’s passing by never to be regained. Your new golden rule is to eliminate anything from your life that doesn’t contribute to you achieving your dreams. Time Management is dead. This second step deals with the first lifestyle ingredient: Time.

3 Automate
Put your cash flow on autopilot and stop turning up to earn it. Start a business that you can reap the benefits from without being in the critical path – Tim calls these muses. This third step deals with the second lifestyle ingredient: Income.

4 Liberate
If you weren’t chained to your current location where would you live? It’s time to adopt the freedom that is available. Rather than flash-by holidays, start taking mini-retirements and escape. This fourth step deals with the third lifestyle ingredient: Mobility.

Dear Boss,
At first thought you might want to hide this book.
It’s a JOLT!
A mega-challenge to every employer from small to big.
The world has changed; ‘Work’ has changed.
To attract and keep the best people to enable you to achieve your goals, you’re going to have to help them achieve theirs.
This may mean rethinking work:

• A 20 hour week,
  
• Working remotely some days,
  
• Working a four day week, or
• Some variation of these.

Personalized workplace arrangements are the opportunity to define the specific and measurable results your employees need to produce to earn their income.
Relate to your valued employees differently.
Enable them to achieve their lifestyle goals whilst they help you achieve your business goals.
This is the best way to win the best people in the Talent War.

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 2

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 2
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week
New and Expanded Edition Now Available!

RAP1: The 3 Keys to Lifestyle Design
PROFIT : So what do you need to design your lifestyle? Let’s start with a couple of questions to JOLT you out of your current slumber. Then we present the three primary Lifestyle Currencies you need to consider: Time, Income and Mobility. A personalized lifestyle design demands integrity with yourself and others. It requires transparency; always be up-front about how you are living your life.

To shift ‘work’ gears, consider these two fundamental questions that Tim kept front of mind whilst writing The Four-Hour Work Week:

1 What if you cancelled your retirement?
How do your decisions and priorities change if retirement will never be an option?
In other words, if you’re going to have to work in some capacity until the day you die, how do your priorities change, how do your decisions change?
He asserts that you’re way too smart, way to easily bored to ever retire.
Retirement would see you so bored that you’d ‘want to put bicycle spokes through your eyes – remotely of course’.
How would you fill the void after removing work as your identity, after removing job-description as self-description?
That, is something you really want to avoid!

2 Is your lifestyle scalable?
Let’s say that you get what you want in the game that you’re playing.
Let’s say you get 10% more customers, 10% more e-mails. 10% more phone calls every month indefinitely.
Is your business scalable, is your career scalable and, most importantly, is your lifestyle scalable?
And if it isn’t, when are you going to become a bottleneck; and when are you going to face an eminent meltdown?’
We won’t spend much time on the problem(s) here; everyone knows what their problem is, whether that’s time famine, or worse yet, some sense of boredom doing something that is tolerably uninteresting.
A quote by Robert Frost encapsulates the biggest problem:

‘if you work faithfully 8 hours a day, one day you can become the boss and work 12 hours a day!’

Are you in a game worth playing; are you in a game worth winning; is it scalable?


Lifestyle Currencies
Tim has identified commonalities, or principles, among people who are able to really design an ideal lifestyle for them, and that entails controlling three currencies.
In order of importance the TIM model is:

1. TIME (non-renewable),
2. INCOME and
3. MOBILITY.

The strategy he has identified comprises four, ranked, intra-dependent steps that he names:

1. DEFINE,
   
2. ELIMINATE,
   
3. AUTOMATE, and then...
   
4. LIBERATE.

It’s TIM’s DEAL.

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 1

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 1
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week
New and Expanded Edition now available.

The Book
The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, Vermillion, London, 2007.

The Author
Timothy Ferriss
Timothy's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Speed RAP
Our live-to-work culture is obsolete.
The Industrial Revolution’s 40 hour a week Deferred Lifestyle has reached retirement age.
For the first time in 200 years you can re-frame your work ethic into a personal DIY ethic.
The three currencies of this global, digital revolution are TIME, INCOME and MOBILITY.

The new DEAL is to:

• Define what you want
• Eliminate everything extraneous
• Automate your income streams and,
• Liberate yourself to live the way you say you want.

People best placed to truly pull off a mobile lifestyle will already have a lot of skills and knowledge in place.
However, EVERYONE can benefit from following Tim Ferriss’ repeatable process.
How much is up to you!

Your Challenge
Spin the diamond; face the mirror!
What do you see?
Now, step into our inspirational, yet risky, RAP and define who the ‘real’ you wants to see mirrored in your eyes each morning.
JOLT the way you think about work and metamorphose the way you live.