The 4 Hour Work Week

[Peter S C]

Considering all the hype that has surrounded this book in 2007 I must admit I only recently read it.

In short, I loved it. I think it has, to a certain extent, changed the way I view money in way I haven't experienced since reading "Rich Dad, Poor Dad".

Also, while reading the book my mind was on overdrive generating new ideas. My suggestion is to keep a pen and paper close while you read the book.

[ellie]

I saw this thread very briefly and just skimmed, but it gave me the idea to outsource my work too.

Although, I wont do it through india and I want to be fair with my payments and requirements. Well I would be happy for indians to do it, but I would want to pay them a fair amount.

I've got three people doing the same job for me, so I can test the waters. I've payed them a bit more than what I first quoted to them because I want to be as fair as possible. I will be interested to see the result.

I just worked too long on trying to code up a site. If there is anyone on here that is good at html, php skills and interested in working with a designer in the future let me know. I have no work at present but maybe in the future. Pm if you're interested

[ellie]

Well that exersise is over. I outsourced it to three people. All saying it would be easy and would be done in a few hours.

The first guy seemed good when I talked to him, but had to work it on the next morning because he needed some sleep.

I was a bit worried he wasn't going to complete it in time so I outsourced the job to two other people. The second guy was really nice and helped me a bit, but instead of doing it himself he wanted to take me through the code, line by line for me to change and upload to my server. Which was kind of good because I learnt a bit, but still I didn't want to waste any of my own time on it, hence why I wanted someone else to do it for me. Anyway, he couldn't get the code to work in the end so we left it.

The third guy said he had finished and before I could see it I would have to pay him half the money. So I did, and I got the files and they were all wrong, so I emailed him back with all the problems, but he never got back to me. Anyway, I lost a tiny bit out on that but it wasn't too much, still I have learnt to ask to see the work in progress before I hand anything over.

So in the end, the first guy was the best. He ended up doing the code, pretty much to my specs, the only problem was that it broke up in a few browsers.

In the meantime I was playing with the site myself, because I thought none of them were going to do it, right. Eventually I came up with the best solution, which was to recode all page in css, so it didn't break-up in different browsers. So actually I came up with the best result in the end - lol!

[hotwired]

Hi
I have done quite a bit of outsourcing on scriptlance in particular. Sounds like your experiment went just right! I've been regularly outsourcing there for 3 years and now have 3-5 programmers I know to use for certain things and the process is now flawless. I can now pretty much pay $200 for a job and bill $300 or more and spend maybe an hour "orchestrating and communicating". That's a generalization and not each job is exactly that "perfect" but very close.

Another thing that I think is important. I beleive that as an information society we underestimate the power of excitement. (and its' cousins passion, chomping at the bit, unbridled enthusiasm). I really believe, based on my own experience, that being excited and optimistic can make up for many other shortfalls. Hence, I loved the 4 hour workweek simply for that reason. I was pumped the whole time reading it. Absolutely pumped, and I gotta tell you. Being pumped will carry you a long way toward wherever you want to go.

[rebelwithacause]

I agree Ken.

I just finished up a training and I talked about the difference between being committed 99% vs 110% in what you do.

Since most people here are believers of the law of attraction, and you get what you put out...

My experience is that whatever you are working on and desire to achieve in your life, comes down to that foundation of commitment and excitement energy around
what you are doing.

People are drawn to people that are leaders, and have that contagious energy...it's what everyone wants to be around...

Definitely written off as fluff sometimes, but it really is an important factor in what you do everyday...

Everything is energy, and that goes out and draws liked minded people to you and your experience for the day...

Great stuff...

Alright, I almost hit my hour for the day of the 4 hour work week...time to chill!

[AndrewPavelski]

Interesting, thanks for sharing this!

Originally Posted by Dwane J.

Interesting speech from the recent South By Southwest Conference:

http://audio.sxsw.com/podcast/intera...urWorkweek.mp3

Learn how to work 4 hours a week and experiment in lifestyle design by outsourcing your work to Indian MBA's for 4 dollars an hour!

The site: The 4-Hour Workweek and Timothy Ferriss

[RFSCOACH]

Hi Elle-

I am not sure what site you used for your freelancer. But I used getafreelancer and they have an escrow account you can upload to and hold the money till the job is done. I would think that there is something like that on the site you used. I think you will like outsourcing once you get your system down.

Have a wonderful night.

Julie MacKenzie

[localman]

I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for specific companies to outsource software development work to? (c# asp.net)

[TonyRush]

Originally Posted by Lucas

And the concept of serving others before yourself goes as far back as the Bhagavad Gita and futher.

This is -- to me -- one of the best examples of lack consciousness that has pervaded our society. Everyone says that you're supposed to put others needs above your own.

It sounds good.
It looks good on paper.
But it's dysfunctional and emotionally imbalanced at best.

The truth is that you cannot be any good to others unless you take care of yourself first. The only way you CAN serve others is from a position of strength.

It's impossible to be hungry enough to feed everyone else.
It's impossible to give enough to make everyone else wealthy.
Etc.

The truth is that -- the best thing you can do for others is be an EXAMPLE of what's possible for them. This is often expressed in the humorous quote, "The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them!"

Ayn Rand put it another way. She said, "Before you can say 'I love you' to another person, you must first know how to say the word 'I'." This seems to support the words of Christ who suggested that one of the great commandments was to "love your neighbor as yourself". This, obviously, is based on the assumption that you've learned how to love yourself.

Selfishness gets a bad rap but -- in actuality -- a healthy self-interest is completely normal. Extreme altruism is just as dysfunctional as extreme selfishness. Both are unbalanced.

But, in day to day life, there is nothing wrong with serving others. At all! In fact, more people should do more of it! But, you can't feed someone across the ocean if you're so focused on others needs that you can't even feed yourself.

Just my perspective,
Tony Rush

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by TonyRush

This is -- to me -- one of the best examples of lack consciousness that has pervaded our society. Everyone says that you're supposed to put others needs above your own.

It sounds good.
It looks good on paper.
But it's dysfunctional and emotionally imbalanced at best.

The truth is that you cannot be any good to others unless you take care of yourself first. The only way you CAN serve others is from a position of strength.

It's impossible to be hungry enough to feed everyone else.
It's impossible to give enough to make everyone else wealthy.
Etc.

The truth is that -- the best thing you can do for others is be an EXAMPLE of what's possible for them. This is often expressed in the humorous quote, "The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them!"

Ayn Rand put it another way. She said, "Before you can say 'I love you' to another person, you must first know how to say the word 'I'." This seems to support the words of Christ who suggested that one of the great commandments was to "love your neighbor as yourself". This, obviously, is based on the assumption that you've learned how to love yourself.

Selfishness gets a bad rap but -- in actuality -- a healthy self-interest is completely normal. Extreme altruism is just as dysfunctional as extreme selfishness. Both are unbalanced.

But, in day to day life, there is nothing wrong with serving others. At all! In fact, more people should do more of it! But, you can't feed someone across the ocean if you're so focused on others needs that you can't even feed yourself.

Just my perspective,
Tony Rush

I can completely agree, but serving others is what everyone does. What you do comes back to you. You have to monitor both ends however and work to cultivate both ends. You cant just selflessly put everyone ahead of yourself without looking around at your situation.

I personally prefer the Ghandi quote "We must become the change we want to see in the world." I believe that people should not eat meat, therefore the only thing I can do is not eat meat and inform people when they ask about my lifestyle. I believe being wealthy and creating wealth is something everyone should do, therefore I can only live that way and answer questions about it when people ask.

Balance is everything.

I think we agree but you took my quote the wrong way.

[AndrewPavelski]

Nice, thank you for sharing the link!

Originally Posted by Dwane J.

Interesting speech from the recent South By Southwest Conference:

http://audio.sxsw.com/podcast/intera...urWorkweek.mp3

Learn how to work 4 hours a week and experiment in lifestyle design by outsourcing your work to Indian MBA's for 4 dollars an hour!

The site: The 4-Hour Workweek and Timothy Ferriss

[alexinspire]

Thanks for posting.

The speech is awesome!

[jaydeschizo]

I am currently listening to the audio edition of the book, and yes, his claims are sometimes wild and often inconsistant, this doesn't bother me too much, if he had something to hide I'd think he'd do a better job of covering the blatent inconsistancies in the numbers he sometimes uses.

I believe that he believes his system works. It probably works best for him, because he's young, energetic, doesn't have anyone depending on him and isn't too fussed about the ethical implications.
So most of what he's peddling might not apply to say a guy working in a mailroom for the past 10 years, with a wife 3 kids and debt. But I can see this working for me, I'm young, relatively debt free, and nothing really depending on me. Plus I don't think I can be too fussed about paying someone in the developing world a local wage to do the stuff I don't want to spend time on.

The book has at least shown me several ways to create income which would not require a lot of my time. Made the option more real to me, I liked that.

I guess I kind of agree with the nay and yay-sayers, just that I can see this working for me, and give me the financial and physical freedom to then work on something that is worthwhile but might not sustain me.

Edit: I see his ideas as a means to an higher end, not an end itself, as an end itself it is rather shallow.