Today’s blog post was written by Chris Amori, Founding partner of Virtual Administrator
The next book in our Business Owner’s Bookshelf series is a book called “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss.
The 4-Hour Workweek (4HWW) is probably my single most quoted book. Truth be told, I didn’t read the book…I listened to it on my long commutes between Maryland and Virginia, and for a while there, I actually looked forward to commuting!
There are snippets I learned from Tim that I use every day. One of my favorites is the “information diet”. In today’s modern world with email, texts, and voicemail, we are inundated with distractions. Gloria Mark, Ph D, an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine said it best: “We don’t have work days- we have work minutes that last all day.” 4HWW helps you see how every interruption is a distraction to getting you daily tasks done, and if you can control this flow of information, you can make yourself more productive. Going on an information diet can be as simple as “unsubscribing” from all those pesky ads, newsletters, and blogs that you get in your inbox, but rarely read, to as draconian as shutting off your email, and only checking it several times a day.
Timothy suggests using an Auto-Responder to let the sender know what your schedule is, so that the expectation is set as to when you will reply to their email.
There are other gems like this in the 4HWW that make it worth reading (or listening!), such as the concept of mini-retirements, balance of home and work, and to stop doing work for work’s sake. Some things like outsourcing might be a little “out-there”, but the sentiment is correct, even if you call it “delegation”.
I highly recommend this book, especially if you feel like work is something that you only do to pay your bills. Other people that love what they do, might wonder what they will do with all those recovered hours!
Click here for The 4-Hour Workweek.