4 Hour work week

4 Hour Work Week – Chapters 1-5

Posted on Aug 31, 2011 in 4 Hour work week, Books | 17 comments

I am Re-Reading 4 Hour work week… Great book… Even if you aren’t looking to reduce your work week to four hours it has great information on Time Management, Goal setting and basic business practices for a successful online business.

Introduction

  • Be a D.E.A.L. Maker – Define your goals, Eliminate the unnecessary, Automate and Liberate
  • An Entrepreneur is a person who shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher yield.
  • Find a market before designing a product is smarter than the reverse
Chapter 1
  •  Prevent Work for work’s sake, and do the minimum necessary for maximum effect.
  • Create a life with purpose, contributing to this world, not just shuffling papers, banging on a keyboard and coming home to a drunken existence.
  • Cash flow first, big payday second.
Chapter 2
  • The timing is never right – “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
  • Ask for forgiveness, not Permission. It is better to take initiative than to hold off because of moderate reversible consequences.
  • The point is to “Do what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.”
  • Eustress – Stress th at is healthful and the stimulus for growth.
Chapter 3
  • Question – Why was Tim Ferris unable to sell BrainQuicken? On page 41 he states that “Critical mistakes in its infancy would never let me sell it.”
  • Quote – “Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “is this the condition that I feared.”" – Seneca
  • What are you putting off out of fear? What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.  A persons’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.
Chapter 4
  • Doing the Unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic – There is less competition for bigger goals.
  • Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. Ask yourself, What do I want? What are my goals? What would excite me?
  • QUTOE  - “Ever tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett
Chapter 5
  • Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.
  • What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.
  • Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
  • Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.
  • Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important tasks. Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
  • Ask yourself three times per day – “Am I being productive or just active?” or “Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?”
  • Limit yourself to two primary goals or tasks per day
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