"Twenty years ago, a young psychologist named Marsha Sinetar helped jumpstart a revolutionary approach to work. With the publication of her best-selling book "Do What You Love, The Money will Follow," Sinetar liberated millions from the idea that working was necessary only to make a living so they could do what they loved.
Since that time, the ideas for discovering one's right livelihood, balancing work and life and becoming rich enough to afford retirement have spawned thousands of self-help books. Among these are numerous sterile accounts of how to become a millionaire before you are 30.
Now a 29-year-old suggests what may become the next step in the work revolution. In his book, The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Timothy Ferriss relays to us in his high-speed text that change is long overdue. Instead of the slave/save/retire mentality of most overworked employees today, there are new opportunities for workers that have never existed before.
But The 4-Hour Work Week is not another book on the work-life balance describing the problems we all face. It is about creating solutions by changing not just your work style, but your lifestyle. The new currencies, he says, are time and mobility. These should be used in the here and now to create a luxury lifestyle. The author assures us it is not difficult. It simply takes the courage to make a few uncommon decisions and follow them with equally uncommon actions.
There is already a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the "deferred-life" plan and are now distributing retirement throughout life instead of saving it for the end, Ferriss says. He titles this group the New Rich (NR) and states their main goal is to escape the rat race entirely, not win it. The NR believe that traditional one-office locations and 9-to-5 workdays are obsolete. Money alone rarely ever solves problems or gives enjoyment.
The desire for more money, the author argues, is often laziness. "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 — now and not later," he says. "Busy yourself with the routine of the money wheel, pretend it's the fix-all, and you artfully create a constant distraction that prevents you from seeing just how pointless it is."
Ferriss is no poverty guru however. A few years ago, he was a poster boy for the extremely overworked and underpaid cubicle dweller. Using the insights he developed for this book, he went from $40,000 a year and 80 hours a week to $40,000 per month and four hours per week. In part because of his extensive world travel, he now speaks six languages. He is a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, an actor on a hit television series in Hong Kong and holds a world record in tango.
The author offers four steps and strategies to reinvent yourself, whether as an entrepreneur or in your current job. The first letters of each step form the acronym of "DEAL." The manifesto of the "dealmaker" is simple: Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken.
Here's the four steps for reinventing yourself:
• Definition - Define what you want to be doing.
• Elimination - Ask yourself three times a day, "Am I being productive, or am I being busy?" Eliminate interruptions. Stop checking e-mail more than once a day.
• Automation - Delegate or automate the remaining tasks, even sending personal tasks overseas. If you're a writer, outsource your research the night before to a virtual assistant in India. Have it ready the next morning. Cost: $4 per hour.
• Liberation - Enjoy your mobility and use the time you create. Surround yourself with positive people who have nothing to do with your work.
This is a book about challenging assumptions. For example, the New Rich credo is not to strive to buy all the things you want, but to do all the things you want to do. The NR goal is not to have more, but to have more quality and less clutter and of course, the time to do what matters.
Can you have it all by working four hours a week? Tim Ferriss' belief-blasting, fast-paced book makes you want to believe it. It's an exciting, mind-expanding declaration about how our lives don't have to be all about work. If Ferriss' book is the ticket to the workplace of the future, you definitely want to get on board.
"