The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Picked up this book on a whim, and boy was it a good choice. The book has a lot of features which makes it worth a read. From business concepts, to life concepts, the book does its best to teach you how to go about trying to truly become wealthy, which in my opinions means "necessities & bad debts are taken care of, & you have the capital to do whatever you want to do". Absolutely loved it and will buy the rest from Tim.

Timothy Ferris' "The 4-Hour Work Week" is a how-to book on how to create personal time in order to build a self-sufficient business and to pursue personal goals. The title is not a typo. There is no zero missing. 4-Hour Workweek. This book is a self-motivational, self-improvement, and time management book, mainly a time management book. What the book strives is to enjoy life now by being very time efficient and to use the freed-up time to start-up a self-sufficient business. The book contains about 380 page book. Much of book contains resources of where to go in order to get your 4-hour week underway. My takeaway and the book highlights were the following: - The idea is to be as mobile as possible and not be encumbered with personal tangibles and fears of potential loss of employment. - the key is to free-up time from time wasters which the book describes. - encourages the use of virtual assistants to free-up personal responsibilities that could be outsourced. - encourages mini-retirements instead of life-deferred retirements. - encourages working remotely, not just at your own home but in far-away places. This book is not really a how-to get rich book. The focus is on self-enjoyment now, not on becoming a millionaire. I have read the first edition and the second edition was a good reread. One of the terms that I remember is the life-deferment plan, which is deferring life by working 9-to-5 for 20 or so years and then enjoy life at retirement assuming that the person lives long enough and physically-able to enjoy it. Instead, the book recommends a mini-retirement which is enjoying a time-limited retirement now instead of later. If you're sick and tired of the 9-to-5 rat race, consider this book. The title, by itself, is hard to believe but consider reading it anyhow. This book is targeted to both employees and owners who are shackled down by work and who want to spend more time pursuing personal goals. Given that the economy is in the dumps, some of the ideas may be risky to implement especially for people need work now and short on disposable income.

First off this book is not a get rich scheme, although I can see how that impression is easily given, it's a book about how to rearrange your life in such as way as to give more time and energy to what is important and less time to what isn't. The author goes into details about an internet business strategy that can lead to wealth, and while it's true any business can lead to wealth, an internet based business can be set up in such a way as to lead to more free time to pursue other things besides making money. I don't think that the author intended to say that it's easy or guaranteed or that nobody fails, he just gives his advice on how to get it done in that chosen field. I've been to plenty of presentations of wealth generating schemes from product sales to insurance sales. I've read many books on business including those on direct marketing, real estate, stock trading, etc. Some are well intended; some are scams through and through. This book is no scam and it's not trying to sell any snake oil. Perhaps the author does downplay the time and risk and money it takes to start and run a successful internet based business, perhaps people just hear what they want to hear and it doesn't matter anyway. I personally know someone that runs an internet based business, he has put plenty of time and money and energy into the business, and it's successful, at least I know he doesn't have a day job and he gets to travel and do things he likes to do when he wants to do them. The ideas that the author puts into this book show how to get into the business or improve one you have running, but this is only a part of the book. Much of what I got out of the book was a reminder to myself about how important it is to spend time wisely. The 80/20 rule is gone over. Advice is given: quit watching so much television, ignore the nightly news, don't spend too much time reading fiction and keep non-fiction down to a list of good books and work them one at a time. Stay off the internet going to check email constantly or checking the news web sites. This all may seem like basic advice, but it's just part of the practical plan that the author goes over in adjusting your life to free up time. As for the parts about outsourcing, it never ceases to amaze me that some people are so ignorant about economics that they would take the authors advice as being a means to exploit others. The more things that are outsourced to the third world, the more it grows economically and the more we prosper here at home. For those that think job loss is a bad thing, throw out your refrigerator so the ice man can have his job back. And if you really think people are being exploited when they take low paying jobs, next time you order a burger, tip the short order guy ten bucks. Anyway, I highly recommend this book, it's not just about making money, it's not just about quitting your nine to five job, it's about making life more livable and more meaningful.