The 4-Hour Workweek este una dintre cele mai bune cărți citite recent. Este o poveste de viață și o carte procedurală al naibii de motivantă care pornește de la ideea celor două monezi cu care jonglăm toată viața (cash flow and time).
Este scrisă de Tim Ferriss – un tânăr antreprenor a cărui carieră este rezumată aici și care a încercat să-și aplice în viața proprie Principiul lui Pareto și Legea lui Parkinson – și se adresează acelui public (indiferent dacă cineva este angajat, freelancer sau antreprenor) care dorește să câștige timp și independență.

Mai departe am ordonat notele de lectură împărțite în cărțile recomandate, citate din alți autori și structura de bază a The 4-Hour Workweek.

Note de lectură
The commonsense rules of the “real world” are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.

People don’t want to be millionaires – they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.
Is it really necessary to work like a slave to live like a millionaire?

Test the most basic assumptions of the work-life equation.
Different is better when it is more effective of more fun.

Less is not laziness: Focus on being productive instead of busy.
Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.
Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.
Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Lack of time is actually lack of priorities.
Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time alloted for its completion.
Deadlines create focus.
Am I being productive or just active?

Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. If you prioritize properly, there is no need to multitask.

The timing is never right
For all the important things, the timing always sucks. Conditions are never perfect.
“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.

Ask for forgiveness, not permission:
If it isn’t devastate those around you, try it and then justify it.
Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitant to get in the way if you’re moving.
Get good at being troublemaker and saying sorry when you really screw up.

Be bold and don’t worry about what people think. They don’t do it that often anyway.

Do not try to impress people you don’t like.
Learn to be difficult when it counts. Having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
You only have the rights you fight for.
People can dislike you but they should never misunderstand you.

Things in excess become their opposite:
– pacifists become militants
– freedom fights become tyrans
– blessing become curses

“If only I had more money” is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to creat a life of enjoyment.

Do not e-mail first thing in the morning before you’ve completed at least one of your critical to-do items.
People, even good people, will unknowingly abuse your time to the extent that you let them.

Start small, think big
It’s lonely at the top. There is less competition for bigger goals.
Having an unusually large goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal.

The choice is between multiplication of results using strenghts or incremental improvement fixing weakness that will, at best, become mediocre.

It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.
It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsability and indicate that you trust them.
Create systems to limit your availability via e-mail and phone and deflect inappropriate contact.
Do you have a failure-to-success story that could be turned into how-to-product for others?

Challenge Comfort
The most important actions are never comfortable.
Most situations are simple – many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.
People use children as an excuse to stay in their comfort zone.
Is isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.

Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
A person’s succes in life is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he is willing to have.
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
People who avoid all criticism fail. It’s destructive criticism we need to avoid.
There are no statues erected to critics.

self-correcting business arhitecture

Companies go out of business when they make the wrong decisions or, just as important, make too many decisions.
Adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it.
Don’t accept large ore costly favors from strangers (the karmic debt will come back to haunt you)

Are you having a breakdown of a breakthrough?
Regret is past-tense decision making.

Rehearse poverty regulary

Citate:
Anyone who lives within theirs means suffers from a lack of imagination. (Oscar Wilde)
Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life. (J.F. Kennedy)
Many a false step was made by standing still. (fortune cookie)
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. (Mark Twain)
There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. (William Gibson)
The best defense is a good offense. (Dan Gable)
Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. (Machiavelli)
A formula for success: Double your rate of failure (Thomas Watson)
The simple willingness to improvise is more vital, in the long run, than research. (Rolf Potts)
I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time. (Herbert Bayard Swope)

Cărți:
The Entreprenorial Imperative
Lonely Planet Hawaii
The Magic of Thinking Big – David Schwartz
How to Make Millions with Your Ideas – Dan S. Kennedy
Vagabonding – Rofl Potts
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Less is More – edited by Goldian Van Denbroeck
The Monk and the Riddle – Randy Komisar
The 80/20 Principle – Richard Koch
Secret of Power Negociating – Roger Dawson
Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl