Wouldn’t it be nice to work just four hours a week and then have the rest of the time to do whatever you want? Well Timothy Ferriss thinks it’s possible and he’s got a best selling book that explains how to do just that.

Tim was nice enough to send me an advance reviewer’s copy of his book before it went to press. I was suppose to get the review out before the book hit the stores but I never got around to reading it until recently. Good thing I did because it’s a great book! And it seems I’m not the only one who thinks so. The 4-Hour Workweek is at the number one spot on the WSJ bestseller list and has made the New York Times and Amazon.com best seller list.

Joining The New Rich

The 4-Hour Workweek is a paradigm shifting book. It takes the old concept of saving for the rest of your life so you can retire plan and turns it upside down. Tim talks about joining the “New Rich” - the group of people who have both money and time freedom. He makes the argument that having a lot of money isn’t much fun if you don’t have time to enjoy it. And of course, he’s right.

Tim’s book is based around two rules. The first I have talked about before. It’s call the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of all work is done by top 20%. The second rules I have touched on in the past but have never fully explained. It states that time expands to fill the work done. In other words, if you give someone five hours to do a job, they will take the full five hours. If you give them one hour, they will do it in one hour. Tim feels the combination of these two rules can increase your productivity to the point where you only need to work four hours a week.

Let’s Make a DEAL

The 4-Hour Workweek is divided into four steps; Definition, Elimination, Automation and Liberation. If you are an employee you will need to do Liberation before you can do Automation.

The chapter on automation will be especially interesting for John Chow dot Com readers. The entire basis of the 4-Hour Workweek is to have something else produce the income for you so you don’t have to. This is where the Muse come in. A Muse is a business or system the run itself without much interference from the owner (kinda like this blog). Tim talks about finding and testing the Muse and management by absence.

Outsourcing Your Life

The key to having a 4-hour workweek is to outsource anything that can be done by someone else. Big companies do this all the time. The big six accounting firms outsource all their their simple accounting task, Dell Computers outsource their call centers and Anderson Consulting has been known to outsource entire IPO proposals to Brickworks in India, pay $250,000 for it and charge the client $2.5 million. If the big boys can outsource, why can’t you?

If you wish to see just how much you can outsource your life, read this story by by AJ Jacobs, editor-at-large at Esquire magazine. It’s a real eye opener.

The 4-Hour Workweek is available now on Amazon.com or your local bookstores. I highly recommend you pick up a copy.