The 4-Hour Workweek - Timothy Ferriss

Check out other quotes from other related books here.

Before reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss I had heard mixed reviews on it. Tons of people called him crazy, lucky, and a salesman. Regardless with such a controversial reputation I figure that there had to be some interesting points. Plus, in the end I would be the judge for myself. 

I ended up really enjoying his story. I found that a lot of information isn’t applicable to me yet. Mostly because of the lack of a business that is putting out 10+ units a week, didn’t have much to automate. But towards the end once Tim took a step back and started to talk about his themes of life, I found that I could relate. I enjoyed his theories, philosophies, and perspective about how to think about life.

Most of these have to deal with life themes but there was a ton of practical resources in the book as well

Here are my ten favorite quotes from the 4-Hour Workweek. :

“The manifesto of a dealmaker is simple: Reality is negotiable. Outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broke, and it doesn’t require being unethical”

The world is divided up into a couple different types of people. Two of which being those who are going to run through life following the rules and being played by the game, and those who are going to play the game themselves and make life form to them.

“Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. I call this the freedom multiplier….Options–the ability to choose–is real power”

Tim gives a great example and something that I believe in. Which case would be the better scenario, the 80-hour-per-week, $500,000-per-year invesetment banker or the man who works ¼th as much for $40,000 that has the ability to choose when, where and how to live. Sure the money is more, but what can he really do with it?

“Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”

Its easier to fall back on and complain about.

“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where…” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.“

One of my all time favorite quotes. It goes both ways, if you know what you want, then you know the path, if you don’t care where you go, then the path doesn’t matter and you should wonder.

"Bear with me. What is the opposite of happiness? Sadness? No. Just as love and hate are two sides of the same coin, so are happiness and sadness. Crying out of happiness is a perfect illustration of this. The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is–here’s the clincher–boredom. Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.”

In order to find out what you really want to do in life you need to find what you’re curious about, find what excites you. You always see those ven diagrams with circles labeled, “What I love to do” “What will make me money” “What I’m good at” Trying to make money is the fun/interesting/easy part, focus on what you want to do. The hard part is figure that out, the easy part is setting the path to get there.

“Remember: There is a direct correlations between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.”

“Life starts at the end of your comfort zone” “Do one thing a day that scares you”—–these quotes are soooooo cliche and sound like they should be posted in your freshman sisters dorm room, but if you really think about it, when do you get that nervous feeling/stomach tingling/life-gut feeling? Its when you dive into that pool of cold water, knowing very god damn well that it is going to be freezing, but it doesn’t matter.

“But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.”

If you hang out with loser friends, you won’t be pushed to be better yourself. If you hang out with people smarter than you then you will want to achieve a lot. I was lucky to have an all-star group of friends in high school and the cool thing to do was go to a good school. We have all continued that path and I’m stoked to see everyone doing awesome things.

“I believe that life exists to be enjoyed and that the most important thing is to feel good about yourself. Each person will have his or her own vehicles for both, and those vehicles will change over time. For some, the answer will be working with orphans, and for others, it will be composing music. I have a personal answer to both—to love, be loved, and never stop learning—-but I don’t expect that to be universal.”

If you talk to Keith Ferrazzi you’ll know that relationships with other people is the real currency that runs the world. I agree with both Tim and Keith here, you need to focus on loving yourself first, and then learn to love others. Always trying to learn something new will keep the world fresh in your eyes, the anti-repetition. Recently read this article on why time seems to go by faster when you get older. The author stated that this is because as adults…we’ve seen that same thing over and over again. Our mind identifies that we’ve done a certain activity before and it goes into autopilot mode.

When talking about mistakes that successful people make –“Striving for endless perfection rather than great or simply good enough, whether in your personal or professional life.”

He goes on to give a great example of why striving for perfection isn’t the way to go. “Most endeavors are like learning to speak a foreign language: to be correct 95% of the time requires six months of concentrated effort, whereas to be correct 98% of the time requires 20-30 years.

"Slow meals = life. Have at least one 2-to-3 hour dinner and/or drinks per week–yes, 2-3 hours— with those w make you smile and feel good”

European countries do this right. Chill tf out and eat slowly focusing on conversation. My ideal situation would be to start with wine in Italy at 4pm on a summer night in August. Continue with libations and food for the next 4 hours during the sunset before going out.

March 26th, 2014 2:26pm