Book Review THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK PDF

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Book Review THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK...

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Manon Azzopardi

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

THE4HOUR WORKWEEK Timothy Ferriss

Mary Michaelides

April 18

Manon Azzopardi

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

Book Review 1. Define the central argument of the book. In the 4-Hour Work Week, Timothy Ferris argues that it is possible to be among the “New Rich” by only working a few hours every week. Ferris talks from personal experience and claims that this is a lifestyle that everyone should adopt. The argument of this book is backed by countless success stories from the “New Rich” and how they utilized the tools demonstrated in the book. By eliminating distractions, making use of automation, and learning to work efficiently, everyone can have a 4-Hour Work Week.

2. What themes does your book address? The theme of this book is clearly about jobs, work and motivation. The title “4-hours work week” questions immediately workers who are out of print to work every day, every night and every hour, they want to have free time to enjoy their life but their job is put before everything else. They have decided to put their job first but it seems like there are stuck in a routine and cannot go out of it. But, this book is about going out of this routine and learning some methods to let it go, relax and enjoy life with your job. Someone who is more relax and then happy to work will do a better work. The author speaks about the new rich who are rich without working a lot; they do not follow the predetermined path and work only when they feel like it. Then, it does not mean that people who are richer are happier because richer often means working a lot of hours. The hourly rate according to wealth is low: the most important is not the salary but the hourly rate according to it which determined the number of free times.

Mary Michaelides

April 18

Manon Azzopardi

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

3. Select five quotes from the book which are very striking and impactful. Explain the significance of these quotes and why you and your group members find these quotes striking. I.

“99% of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The competition is thus fiercest for realistic goals.”

By saying this, the author explains that just like you, the rest of the world is insecure. According to him, we tend to overestimate the competition and underestimate ourselves, so we aim for average and realistic goals. Tim Ferris believes that realistic goals are uninspiring and will only provide you enough motivation for the first or second obstacle that you will encounter. By aiming for unrealistic and unreasonable goals, the adrenaline and motivation related to these will provide you the endurance to overcome the multiple problems and trials that you will find on the road. The author adds that “fishing is best where the fewest go” which means that there is less competition for people that reach bigger goals than the other. This quote is impactful because it redefines the priorities of reaching a goal. After reading this sentence we clearly understood the benefits of reaching for unreasonable goals instead of being realistic and rational.

II.

“The best results I have had in my life; the most enjoyable times, have all come from asking the simple question: What is the worst that could happen?”

By saying this, the author explains that we often decide to not change anything and to keep to our daily routine because of fear. We disguise fear by persuading ourselves that if we take life-changing decisions like quitting our job or going in another country, we will lose everything we achieved until then. Tim Ferris explains that in fact these thoughts are a result of fear of change and getting out of our comfort zone. When you actually define what is the worst that can happen, when you define the fear, you understand that it is not that bad and that the fear is not so fearful. Tim Ferris always starts by defining the fear to transform it into excitement, and this is what we all should do instead of staying in our comfort zone.

Mary Michaelides

April 18

Manon Azzopardi III.

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

“Money alone is not the solution.”

According to Tim Ferris, giving too much power to money as a currency is just a proof of laziness. The author says that sentences like “if only I had more money” is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment. People tend to use money as a scapegoat and keep in their uncreative and consuming routine. By busying yourself in an unfulfilling activity that will provide your monthly cash needs, you create a constant distraction that prevents you from seeing just how pointless it is. This quote shows that the problem is deeper than a money problem. The author tries to explain that making money is hard only if you are not doing something that fulfills you. In fact, by doing something that entertains you and interests you, the money will come along if you are dedicated enough.

IV.

“Being efficient without regard of the effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.”

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task in the most economical manner possible. The author explains that there is not a point of being efficient if it is not effective; in other words, there is no point in investing energy and time in a task, even in the most economical manner possible, if this task is not getting you closer to your goals. Tim Ferris adds that what you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. We found this quote extremely relevant because we tend to dedicate plenty of time doing useless things while letting effective things on the side. This sentence reminds us that prioritizing task to optimize our time is mandatory.

V.

“Excitement is the more practical synonyms of happiness.”

We often think that the opposite of happiness is sadness. Tim Ferris studied this question and shows that happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin, and so the actual opposite of happiness is boredom. Therefore, the author explains that the most exact synonym of happiness is excitement, and it is especially what we should strive for, and the question that we should ask ourselves should not be “what do I want to do ?” but “What would excite me ?”

Mary Michaelides

April 18

Manon Azzopardi

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

This explanation can seem simple, but as soon as we see the quote we are amazed at its relevance. Some say that it is hard to define happiness but the more practical way to define it is to compare it with excitement.

4. Has this book convinced you and your group members? To what extent? Has this book forced you to reconsider some of your previous assumptions or perceptions? This book convinced us because it is definitely helpful for students who are in a business school such as Skema, where there is a lot of work to do. On one hand, some students prefer to go out with friends and generally do not succeed at school with a proper GPA and on the other hand, some students prefer to never go out or very rarely and succeed but they are not happy and free: this is why this book is very important. It gives some methods and has some case studies, which can be adapted to working at school as students, and help people to work properly and just enough but, to enjoy life. Moreover, we are young and full of dreams for our future and the notion of new rich make our dreams more realizable. Even if we all want to do our dream job and work, we also all want to earn a lot of money: the new rich interested us a lot for this point. Furthermore, the fact of having the author speaking about his own life and his own experience in this book make it even more interesting.

However, the author gives a lot of examples but some of them cannot be applicable. These type of examples cannot be utilized in every society but only in bureaucratic and developed society. Then, in this way, the author is not so convincing. Moreover, some examples about travel let people dream about it but seems to not be possible in real life. In a theoretical way, this book seems to describe real life but in the application and convenient way, it seems to be complicated to realize in everyday life.

Mary Michaelides

April 18

Manon Azzopardi

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

5. How convincing are the author’s arguments? Has the author presented the readers with sophisticated arguments? Which arguments are particularly striking? Why? Which arguments lack in effectiveness? The framework of this book is broken down into four sections that together create an acronym. DEAL: Definition, Elimination, Automation, Liberation. Within these sections, there are main arguments that Timothy Ferris presents and attempts to validate in his quest to demonstrate the 4-Hour Work Week.

The Definition phase of the process is all about stating what your life will need to be to become successful. Changing perspective on what it means to be successful will allow you to set goals and habits that are beneficial to a great life. An example would be that instead of wanting to work hard to build a company to eventually sell it, what you really want is a steady cash flow with minimal effort. The argument is that we don’t want money, we want the lifestyle and power that comes with money, and we can achieve it by becoming fearless and unrealistic. Much of the arguments in this section are backed with quotes from famous people or personal stories. I didn’t find these to be too great for validating the argument, but much of the message is still believable. On a common-sense level, the author reasons his position.

Timothy Ferris argues the 80/20 rule and how using it will differentiate you from the crowd by the process of elimination. 80/20 is a rule of measurement that is supposedly found across all facets of life. 80% of complaints come from 20% of customers. 80% of profits come from 20% of customers. The idea carries over to many areas and subjects. Timothy Ferris exemplifies the idea when telling about his business. Out of his 125 customers, 95% of his revenue was coming from only 5 of them. He decided to only focus on those five and let the enter 120 buy if they wanted, but Timothy was not going to give any energy in keeping them. The result? Cutting his hours from80 to 15 a week and increasing his income. The New Rich will focus on what brings them the greatest return and eliminate the rest. Eliminating time wasters and living on a low information diet is what will open up the schedules of the New Rich.

Mary Michaelides

April 18

Manon Azzopardi

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

Automation is the most important chapter in this book. It is about the technical side of developing the 4-Hour Work Week and how to build the framework that will allow the reader to be rich and carefree. This is extremely outdated because of the speed of which e-commerce has grown since the book was published. On the topic of selling online, there is only a brief section about Amazon. With that, there is still some practical information that could help lead to a four hour work week. Some of the most interesting information came from the lesson on virtual assistants and how for a low price, they can eliminate the tedious tasks from your life. After some research, these helpers still exist and seem to have a more professional face. For any upper-level job, a virtual assistant seems like a great idea. Other ideas like auto-reply emails and FAQs can really be timesavers for people working long schedules. Overall, this section has some upside but can be considered irrelevant until updated.

The final step of the process is the reward for all of this work and change. Liberation, is all about slowly converting your hard-working hours into your leisurely out of office time. Ferriss’ steps to free yourself from a job involves increasing how much the company relies on you, and then slowly proving your ability to work outside of the office. Once you’re free, it is time to conquer the world. Again with personal stories, the book tells how traveling for long periods is not just for the wealthy. There are plenty of ways laid out by Timothy that a newly New Rich can travel freely.

6. Critically assess the ideas in your book and how they compare or contrast with those in the articles studied this semester.

This book in a self-help book, Timothy Ferris tries to help people to understand that work has not to be put in front of everything. He always shows to lecturers how they can manage themselves arriving to work only four hours per week. For example with the “W” questions : “ What you do, where you do it, when you do it and with whom you do it”, Ferris says that the more W you control, the freer you are. This example is similar to the article “Managing Oneself” where Peter Drucker emphasizes the good knowledge of people’s qualities and abilities. As Ferris, Drucker demands to readers to ask themselves some questions to reach however a different goal. The main purpose of The 4-Hour Workweek goes over an acronym to do so, DEAL, already defined above. This acronym is like four steps to accomplish before being able to

Mary Michaelides

April 18

Manon Azzopardi

Louna Cohendet

Vincent Dibiaggio

Kyle Moen

William Doig

work 4 hours a week. We can see the similarity with the article of Laura Roberts, How to Play Your Strengths where she offers 5 step to finally know how to play strengths.

7. Which questions come to mind after reading the book?

The author proves to claim the 80/20 rule stating that 80% of the work is only done in 20% of the time working, the author suggesting we isolate that 20% of our time. However, is it not human nature to expand work to the time available, and the 80/20 still takes effect even when only working that 20%?

Is it ethical for Ferriss to outsource most of his to work and daily tasks to disadvantaged labourers outside the US? Although they are receiving an income, is it your responsibility for earning very little?

The author seems very arrogant at times, so we question if the nature of the book is just a self-help book or a get-rich quick scheme devised by Ferris? Although some of the books definitely seem helpful and provide a different perspective, is it truly applicable to a person outside Ferriss’ circumstances? How much risk is truly involved?

8. Would you recommend this book? Why? We would recommend this book to every people who are interesting in business and workplace. This book is a book that, according to us, can make change people’s point of view, and their whole life. It helps to become open-minded and be aware that we have to work but also enjoy our life or travel without thinking only about jobs. Every people have a job but many people are putting their work before a lot of things such as family, pleasure or friends. This book makes us conscious that there is no obligation about bringing work to the fore. We feel that this book would be not only interesting but sincerely HELPFUL for people. It can really help people who are overworked.

Mary Michaelides

April 18...