*Skype—www.skype.com, Skype is a free software that allows you to talk for free via the Internet. You can also use Skype with regular phones to make calls internationally for a low rate of about .04 cents a minute. Skype also has video chatting capabilities and conference call capabilities for meetings. The setup requires downloading the Skype software free) and buying a headset with microphone ($10) and webcam ($ ranges) for each computer. I have tested this software with my sister and it works well for her in Argentina and for me here.
*iStockphoto—www.istockphoto.com, iStockphoto is an Internet royalty-free image and design stock photography website. This is one of the many sites I use to find photos for [company name]. We have already used a few photos from this site for our marketing materials.
*Seminar Photo Contest—This contest was created by me and developed with Keri as an experiment to collect more relevant and usable photos for our marketing and publication efforts. Since we have found it to be a bit invasive to try and take the photos ourselves, we wanted to try a new approach to capture photos for our needs. All participants of our Summer Seminars 2008 are able to submit photos they have taken at their seminar with a chance to be rewarded with a $5 Amazon Gift Certificate for each image we choose.
86. This video explains how and why I pack the items in the list that follows. Links for all items are also included.
87. This company filed for Chapter 11 in June 2009.
88. For the exact breakfast, just serach “slow-carb” on www.fourhourblog.com or both “slow-carb” and “Ferriss” on Google.
89. This has thankfully decreased to 2,000–3,000 per week as of this writing.
90. This post is, of course, available on the blog for those who would like to copy and paste the rules for their own use.
Living the 4-Hour Workweek
CASE STUDIES, TIPS, AND HACKS
Zen and the Art of Rock Star Living
Art Lovers Wanted
Photo Finish
Virtual Law
Taking Flight with Ornithreads
Off-the-Job Training
The 4-Hour Family and Global Education
Doctor’s Orders
Financial Musing
Who Says Kids Hold You Back?
Working Remotely
Killing Your BlackBerry
Star Wars, Anyone?
ZEN AND THE ART OF ROCK STAR LIVING
Hi Tim,
Here’s the story. I’m a musician based in Munich, Germany. I’m running my own label and it has been difficult to get it off the ground. While working on that, my creativity slowly decreased until I hit rock bottom (a couple of times).
While it is still difficult to survive in the music industry I find it not hard at all now to do what I want to do. And that’s all I do. I do what I want to do. It includes being a father, making music, composing, taking care of business, traveling, learning languages (mostly Italian), riding my bike, etc…. It’s all in the following paragraphs.
I read the book step by step for about two months from September/October 2008 (plus surfing your blog) and just made tabula rosa with my life. (Lots of brainvomiting on paper.)
I started outsourcing things that bothered me most (and therefore kept hanging out in my to-do list the longest). I outsourced:
research, most of which is music-industry related (research outsourced saves about 2–3 hours/day)
website maintenance (social websites like Facebook, Myspace, etc). I’m planning on doing most of my marketing through these sites in 2009 and I’m on about 25+ sites as an artist.
My VA (getfriday.com, as recommended in your book) does all the updates and checks the sites once a week to gather e-mail messages, comments, etc., filters them and sends me a report once a week including all the details for me to respond to. (Saves about one to two hours/day.)
photo retouching for my press pics is done by elance (saved five hours of work time and about $500).
management of my mailing list for gig dates, album updates, etc. (Saves about one hour for each mailing.)
I started testing muses (learning languages with music to sell online). I’m still testing!
I decided to open a publishing operation online for film companies to license music for film with just a mouse click, without having to negotiate deals for months. It will happen in 2009 (I start testing soon). People are generally surprised and amazed that a person who doesn’t seem to be very corporate (I look like a retired punk rocker, haha) outsources parts of his life and lives like a millionaire (I guess we do although we’re far from it!).
I realized that I could do it after I got the first positive feedback from my outsource VA. I got the results of my project posted on elance and a day later I got the results. I went, yeah baby, this is MINE! The biggest change is, that I now have my life under control. I take care of my little daughter (20 months) half the day (second half, my wife takes care of her), I take care of business, and I take time to do things I always wanted to do. Revenue-wise I’m pretty much the same I was before but I have a lot more spare time and a clear head (so I guess I’ve gotten a lot richer!).
I work whenever I want (no boss) about 24–30 hours/week (including office hours and music-studio hours) and what I do now is only what I really love to do. I’m still step-by-step optimizing efficiency to reduce office hours (currently about 10 hours/week). My dream is to dissolve my office altogether, go paperless, and basically only have my laptop as an office.
I eliminated all work that has gotten me down or was wearing me out (eliminated an extra workload of about 10 hours/week). I do not take on jobs (writing/producing music) unless I really love the project. I eliminated all complainers and haters (saves my stomach).
I just started my blog juergenreiter.com, “zen and the art of rockstarliving,” where I want to share the changes I made to my life (mostly for musicians to see the light at the end of the tunnel).
And I recorded an album of my music and for the first time in my life did all the lyrics myself! It’s going to be out in spring on my label ORkAaN Music+Art Productions.
I’ll be on mini-retirement in New York this year for six weeks. I’ll be in Sicily to learn Italian for about two weeks in May. I’ll be back in Sicily to travel the island by bike for another 2–3 weeks in September. And am planning on going to either Mexico, Central America, or Australia in the winter.
I learned to shave with a straight razor within about 30 minutes, which I wanted to do for years. Shaving is a real exciting ritual now and a lot of fun! I will do a master course for coffee experts in April (I’m a coffee junky!) and become a “maestro del café.” I helped my wife quit her teaching job and fulfill her dream to run a cafe in Munich, Germany. It’s called Frau Viola and opened its doors in October 2008. It is running great! (www.frauviola.wordpress.com)
Can you measure all of that? I think it speaks for itself!
The general mindset of 4HWW has given me the calmness of being able to take time to play with my daughter and enjoying my “free time” without getting the fear of missing out on something or wasting my life. I’d say overall (with all the above-mentioned changes) my productivity increased at least 70% and doubt decreased by 80%.
For those just getting started:
start small think big.
identify what excites you vs. what bores you
eliminate and focus on what excites you
stick to what excites you no matter what people say. It’s your life, live it the way you know is right for you.
read 4-Hour Workweek, obviously! —J. REITER
ART LOVERS WANTED
I saw my father work himself to the bone for 20 years as a garbage-man when we immigrated from Mexico. As I looked at my life in April 2007 in a lonely hotel room after another endless week of travel for my employer far from my family and those I love, I realized that at 33 I was on the same path to work myself into the ground and give up on my lifelong dream of pursuing my love of music and theater.
In life the
re are no accidents and that night as I was checking an e-mail from an old friend he suggested the 4HWW. I devoured the book in a few hours and began immediately to apply the key principles. When I told people about the book and about what I intended to do everyone said I was crazy. I focused most of my efforts on Dream-lining, Elimination, and Liberation. As an employee I wanted to first achieve liberation with a remote work arrangement. Despite several failed attempts I persevered (great lesson in negotiating) and was granted the opportunity to work remotely. This changed everything. I went from 9+ hours of work a day with weekly work-related travel to four hours a week, one week of travel per month, and I managed to get a $10,000 raise and deliver 2x the productivity in my job from the previous unproductive year.
As a result I now live with my once long-distance girlfriend in Seattle (my hometown). I spend my newly found time pursuing my passion for music (I sing in a choir and write my own folk-rock music), theater (I am performing in my first fully improvised 60-minute play this weekend), and fitness. I am training for my second marathon now.
Most of my friends cannot believe that I can actually spend most of my time pursuing my love for the arts and still make a full-time income on only four hours a week. The best part of this is that I have found mentally the meaning of freedom. Reality is truly negotiable and now my reality is that I can spend endless hours enjoying the company of my father, who waited twenty years till he retired to enjoy the freedom that I have found less than 24 months after reading The 4-Hour Workweek.
As an immigrant I want to spread the message that to succeed in America in the 21st century we must NOT work hard, instead we must follow the principles of the 4HWW and work smarter so that we can truly achieve the New American Dream: Freedom to enjoy the most precious resource we have in life … our time on this earth.
—I. BARRON
PHOTO FINISH
Hey Tim,
I wanted to tell you that your book, The 4-Hour Workweek, has been a true inspiration and life-changing resource for me this year!
I bought your book in November. Before then, I didn’t know what “workflow automation” was. I had a part-time employee, but her work was actually creating more work for me. I would work until sometimes 3 A.M., and get up at 7. I’d tell you I wanted to travel, but the truth is that it seemed impossible to me. I didn’t have time or money.
I was listening to your audio book one day. I had been listening to each of the chapters, sometimes over and over again. I was jogging. I stopped in my tracks. I believe I was listening about a case study about someone who sold music files over the Internet.
I’m a photographer. Weddings mostly. I wondered how I could sell digital images over the Internet. Then I came up with a fantastic idea for a family photography company. I stopped right there, and reserved a website on my iPhone.
Two months later, I had a website, access to thousands of photographers across the country, and our first sale. Even better, I am now in the family photography business, and I never have to shoot myself. Even better +1, we are the first family photography business that doesn’t sell prints. Only digital files. It worked! I have now adopted this for my wedding photography as well. Other photographers are so offended, but I am making WAY more $, my costs are almost eliminated, and my time is free!
I know the above is vague, but it’s not the point. The point is that now I work better, faster, I have two more employees, I turned off my e-mail notifications on my computer and my iPhone, despite all of what it’s capable of, it doesn’t even ring. E-mail has been disabled. I just check it every so often to see what calls I missed.
Today, my fiance loves me because I come home in time for dinner and I leave my laptop at work. It’s a life I never thought I’d be able to live. In the meantime, systems are working in my place and this year looks to be a lot better, financially, than last.
Then I decided it was time to try my first mini-retirement. The goal: ski the Swiss Alps and spend five days in Switzerland and spend less than $1,000 total. I got a roundtrip ticket for about 500 bucks. My ski pass for one day at Engelberg was $80. Lodging was free, thanks to your suggestion www.couchsurfing.com, and I ate roasted chestnuts, brats, fish and chips and drank great beer all week long. I did it!
I am forever grateful, and am excited for more mini-retirements. Here’s to living during the best years of my life.
P.S. I leave May 11 for a month-long work vacation to Italy (I have been hired to photograph two weddings in Siena). I plan on vacationing a LOT more than I will be working.
—MARK CAFIERO, Photographer
VIRTUAL LAW
I used to work at a large Silicon Valley law firm, but one day I woke up and decided that I wanted to travel for a year and learn a foreign language. Six weeks later I was living in Cali, Colombia—I’d never visited Cali before and hardly spoke a word of Spanish, but that’s what made it exciting to me. Well, almost two years later, I still spend 95%+ of my time living and working from Cali, Colombia (I recently bought a gorgeous apartment here that I could never afford if I lived in California). I also have a full-time maid/cook (well, five hours per day, five days per week), which costs me less than US $40 per week!
I started my own virtual law practice and then joined forces with my old boss. My U.S. number rings through to me wherever I am in the world (originally I’m from New Zealand so I travel back there a lot, too), and all my U.S. mail is delivered to Market Street, San Francisco, and scanned so I can view it online. If I need to mail letters, I have another service which prints the letter and sends it within the U.S. so there are no international shipping delays.
Definitely use www.earthclassmail.com for mail receipt/scanning. They have different packages but it’s around $20-$30/month. You can also choose one or more P.O. boxes or physical addresses. My Market Street address is actually an earthclassmail address.
For printing small letters and mailing within the U.S. I use www.postalmethods.com. It’s a little clunky at first but it’s fine when you get used to it. It’s very cheap since you only pay when you send (a four-page letter works out to just over $1 including the postage).
Come visit me sometime. Colombia is nothing like what you hear about—I feel a lot safer walking around late at night here than a lot of places in San Francisco. But don’t tell anyone, those of us living here want to keep it a secret!
—GERRY M.
TAKING FLIGHT WITH ORNITHREADS
Tim—
My mentor gave me your book this past July and it had a tremendous impact on my life, its arrival could not have had better timing. About the time I read it, I was a few weeks away from competing in my first Olympic distance triathlon. I had trained for five months, felt and looked strong, but even more important the discipline and working toward a physical goal resulted in a creativity I hadn’t felt in years. I posted a competitive time in the event and felt so optimistic about my abilities that I signed up for a half ironman competition.
Riding that high and following the principles of your book, I thought of dozens of ideas for products/businesses and am on the verge of launching the first of those ideas. It is a line of apparel called OrniThreads which will provide modern, scientific designs of birds to Gen-X and Gen-Y birders.
The reasons for focusing on this demographic are twofold:
For my “day job,” I work at [company name]. I have learned a lot about their audience/membership, e.g., like the fact that there are 70 million Americans who actively bird (a staggering statistic from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife svc). Birders are a passionate lot and their interest only seems to grow over time—it never dies! They also tend to skew from the middle to upper class and are educated.
I took an ornithology class this summer at Columbia University (where I am enrolled in a conservation biology program) and fell in love with the illustrations in my textbooks and wanted to surround myself with these images.
I am launching www.ornithreads.com in the next week or so and the first of my three designs are being pri
nted as we speak.
I have big aspirations for the company, but am just trying to get the first collection to customers and learn as much as I can. Your book has been incredibly helpful in outlining the necessary steps I need to take to succeed and hope that my idea has some legs (or wings) which translates into an automated income.
If you are in NYC anytime soon—promoting your book or otherwise—I would love to meet you. Sincerely, —BRENDA TIMM
OFF-THE-JOB TRAINING
I used concepts from the 4HWW to work remotely from August of ’08 until January of ’09. I went to Portugal, Europe, Spain, Sweden, and Norway surfing and snowboarding my brains out. Best part about it? I came home with three times as much money in the bank than I would have had if I continued the normal 9 to 5. I work for [world-famous design company] as a software developer, and was able to put the concepts to use and really change my life. I paired my iPhone + Fring (Fring is voice over IP on the iPhone, it allows you to use one device for everything, and have a local number abroad).
I spent four months prior to departure being sure to never be at my cube, but always be just around the corner. I made a point to ALWAYS be available on Instant Messenger, so when people would walk over to my cube and look for me in person they would see I was somewhere else, then hop online and ask, “Where are you?” My response was always similar, just down the hall in the cafeteria … just down the block at the coffee shop, or at co-worker X’s desk. After two months of this a magical thing happened: People always looked to get me via Instant Messenger and stopped dropping by my desk altogether. That allowed me to be 6,000 miles away without anyone noticing.
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Expanded and Updated Page 33