Book: 20190509 to 20190712，"The 4-Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss

20190509， chapter 0. Introduction "First and Formost"

At the moment, I work around 2 hours per day.

Some people think I am doing good job because normally it needs 4 people to handle it, but obviously my manager doesn't think so.

By the quote from "Timothy Ferriss", I am in the worst case: "a  tolerable  and comfortable  existence  doing  something  unfulfilling".

The salary is not bad, but I can and want to do much more work, and to get much higher pay.

So this book is perfect for me.

This "Introduction" chapter is great. It simply tells us that life style transformation is not easy, but, it is possible.

20190510， chapter 1. "Cautions and Comparisons"

I am not completely convinced. But what Timothy Ferriss said makes sense.

Money is not as important as it looks like. It's not the ultimate target.

Meaningful life is different to different people. I have not interest in travelling around the world, but I know this books still worth reading.

I do want to change life/work style. And, to understand more about "life".

20190511， chapter 2. "Rules that change the rules"

The chapter is still more like "Chicken Soup for the Soul".

There are many concepts/things we take for granted, and never analyse it carefully. Such as, money.

I am expecting next chapter will give me some substantial content, which I can use in work/life.

20190515， chapter 3. "Dodging Bullets"

"Don’t save it all for the end."

Completely agree. The problem is, what should I do now?

Below is my answers to the questions at the end of this chapter.

1.  Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. What doubt, fears, and "what-ifs" pop up as you consider the big changes you can—or need—to make? Envision them in painstaking  detail.  Would  it  be  the  end  of  your  life?  What  would  be  the permanent  impact,  if  any,  on  a  scale  of  1–10?  Are  these  things  really
permanent? How likely do you think it is that they would actually happen?

Divorce. Lose 70% of savings. Kids.

2.  What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily? Chances are, it’s easier than you imagine. How could you get things back under control?

Another marriage. Make similar salary income. Spend time with kids.

3.  What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios? Now that you’ve defined the nightmare, what are the more probable or definite positive outcomes, whether internal (confidence, self-esteem,  etc.)  or  external?  What  would  the  impact  of  these  more-likely outcomes be on a scale of 1–10? How likely is it that you could produce at least a moderately good outcome? Have less intelligent people done this before and pulled it off?

More life experience. The impact is around 8. 70% chance to get a better result.

4.  If  you  were  fired  from  your  job  today,  what  would  you  do  to  get things  under  financial  control?  Imagine  this  scenario  and  run  through questions 1–3 above. If you quit your job to test other options, how could you later get back on the same career track if you absolutely had to?

It should be relatively easy.

5.  What are you putting off out of fear? Usually, what we most fear doing is what we most need to do. That phone call, that conversation, whatever the action might be—it is fear of unknown outcomes that prevents us from doing what  we  need  to  do.  Define  the  worst  case,  accept  it,  and  do  it.  I’ll  repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most  is  usually  what  we  most  need  to  do.  As  I  have  heard  said,  a  person’s success  in  life  can  usually  be  measured  by  the  number  of  uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that  you  fear.  I  got  into  this  habit  by  attempting  to  contact  celebrities  and famous businesspeople for advice.

Absolutely agree. We should always Start from the most important and most critical actions.

6.  What  is  it  costing  you—financially,  emotionally,  and  physically—to postpone action? Don’t only evaluate the potential downside of action. It is equally important to measure the atrocious cost of inaction. If you don’t pursue those things that excite you, where will you be in one year, five years, and ten years? How will you feel having allowed circumstance to impose itself upon you and having allowed ten more years of your finite life to pass doing what you know will not fulfill you? If you telescope out 10 years and know with 100% certainty that it is a path of disappointment and regret, and if we define risk  as  "the  likelihood  of  an  irreversible  negative  outcome,"  inaction  is  the greatest risk of all.

I can see where I am in the next 30 years if no action. It's boring but safe.

7.  What are you waiting for? If you cannot answer this without resorting to the previously rejected concept of good timing, the answer is simple: You’re afraid, just like the rest of the world. Measure the cost of inaction, realize the unlikelihood  and  re-pairability  of  most  missteps,  and  develop  the  most important habit of those who excel and enjoy doing so: action.

Yes. Action is needed.

20190517， chapter 4. "System Reset"

"What would excite me?"

"Boredom is the enemy, not some abstract 'failure'."

"The easier, the harder."

These are the quotes from this chapter. Brilliant.

We are not really looking for happiness, or else, billionnaires will stay with drugs all day.

"Failure" doesn't hurt us, but "boredom" does, because we only have that much time in our life, and boredom make us dumb.

"Easy" means less moat, means more competition, means hard to maintain or increase profit/salary/income. That's why so many people try to be a "Doctor". Doctors don't have much competition.

As a software developer and SharePoint administrator, I have my own "moat", but that's not enough. I may still get bored, if stop learning new, hard, complex technology. I also need to utilize my knowledge more effectively to increase income.

The "moat" don't just apply to competition among companies.

20190521， chapter 5. "The end of time management"

This chapter is great!

1. "Effectiveness vs Efficiency"

This is the ultimate reason that we didn't arrange our time properly. It can be resolved through the actions 2 and 3.

2. "Don’t ever arrive at the office or in front of your computer without a clear list of priorities."

This tip make the idea crystal clear. Plan before move.

3. "Are you inventing things to do to avoid the important?"

Important tasks first! Hard tasks first!
Another one is: don't choose "easy" option because it's easy. The correct approach could be hard, but normally it can save huge amount of effort in long term.

4. Don't do anything else during eating.

I have this bad habit. How serious the problem is? I guess quite serious. I can "get" extra 15 minutes from breakfast and lunch, but may lose nutrition and enjoyment.

If I don't do web surfing in bed, I also should not do web surfing during meal.

Two web sites to help time management:

https://www.rescuetime.com/

20190522， chapter 6. "The Low-Information Diet"

We are in "information explosion" age. Most information/news are "negative, time-consuming, irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable".

We don't need so much calories, and we don't need so much information. Self-control is critical to both.

Less is more. The less input, the more output.

"Feed reader" software/web site such as "Feedly" is brilliant. Yes, for most of the news, I only need to read their titles. That means, I only need to read around 3 minutes of news per day, unless there is something really important or interesting to me.

And now I understood why Tesla stock price is going down to $205. People are too busy. They only read news titles and don't have time to read the content. That's how the shorters manipulate the stock price, and don't need to take any legal responsibility.

20190524， chapter 7. "Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal"

1. "It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficient. No one else willdo it for you."

2. "Streamline email" to avoid back-and-forth.

These two tips help to improve efficiency, but not effectiveness. "Meetings" are always the worst, especially general disucssion with open ending.

3. "If  someone  likes  a  puppy  but  is  hesitant  to  make  the  life-altering
purchase, just offer to let them take the pup home and bring it back if they change
their minds. Of course, the return seldom happens."
Elon Musk utilized this tip to sell Tesla cars. It's also like the probation period for job candidates.

I can try the same thing in work: "Can we try it this way instead of XXX, if that doesn't work, then we can change it back."

It should also work on Jeremy and Tianchi. "Let's try it once. If it doesn't work, then we can try something else next time."

4. Work in batch is very important.
It costs a lot to "set up" the mini environment for some specific task. So it's more productive to handle 3 large tasks than 30 small tasks.

5. "You only have the rights you fight for"
We need to set up good habits for ourselves. We need to set up the rules/policies for ourselves in office.
It's hard, but not as hard as we believed.

6. Medical Tourism seems attractive.

20190528， chapter 8. "Outsourcing Life"

"Outsourcing" is a bit like building software.

1. Needs to understand the business requirements. Figure out what tasks are necessary.
2. Design the software well. Make it easy to manage/modify.
3. Only optimize critical parts. Make it high efficient.

Compare to our daily work, it's same but with one extra step: trying to outsourcing tasks to computers, not human.

It's better to treat "outsource" as low IQ computer.

1. Give him/her interview first
2. Don't assume they understand the task. Ask them to repeat the task by their own words.
3. Ask for updates as soon as possible.
4. Specify deadline.
5. Let them understand the business logic behind the task.
6. Ask him/her to tell you their plan. What do they plan to do to fix the problem.
7. Don't assign tasks to others if the tasks are not time-consuming.
8. Ideally, assign the tasks to computers.

Last chapter is about how to improve ourselves. This chapter is about how to manage others.

20190605， chapter 9. "Income Autopilot I"

This chapter is about how to choose business direction.

1. "Start Small, Think Big"

Don't be greedy. We have very limited resource, and have a lot to learn (and pay the intuition fee).

Reading helps, but there are stuff can only be learnt during real work.

2. "Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is much easier."

Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk created demand. I am not that competent, and don't have that much resource. So, the better choice is searching for demand, instead of creating demand.

3. "If everyone is your customer, then no one is your customer."

If everyone is my customer, then I have to compete with those giant fish in the same pond. That's not gonna work.

4. The price of the product should be $50 to $200, can be built in 4 weeks, less after sale support.

We need enough profit margin (x8 build cost), less "time cost", and easy to support.

There are a lot of stuff need to consider carefully. Demand, competition and maintenance(after sell) are just three of them.

20190614， chapter 10. "Income Autopilot II"

Test. Test. Test.

The earlier we found the problem, the less we need to pay for it.

Don't assume the demand is there. Don't assume that the whole procedure would go well. We need to verify them.

This chapter is about how to find and test the real demand of some product or service. How to do it at low cost and in short time.

20190701， chapter 11. "Income Autopilot III"

A lot of tips about "Autopilot".

Not much I can utilize immediately, but it's good to know that how to pretend to be a big company, and how to handle different request volume with different strategy.

What can I do tomorrow? "No Fear." ------ keep this in mind.

So, no need to be afraid to talk to strangers, no need to be afraid to attract the attention from other people. And, don't waste time.

20190703， chapter 12. "Disappearing Act"

How to work 4-Hour per week?

First of all, you need to be able to complete 80 hours of work in 4 hours.

Then, show it to your boss, and get recognized.

Then, 4 hour work per week.

So, it's mainly about productivity, not really the "4 hour work per week".

This chapter is mainly about the second step: how to prove that you can work more efficiently from home (although actually 4 hour work per week).

I think even if this is possible, it's not going to be stable. The manager may ask you back to office anytime when the company policy is changed. So, we have to be a contractor/solo trader/entrepreneur to reach that aim.

However, distance = speed * time

If we can run 10 times faster than other people, it's much better to still work 40 hour per week and get 10 times reward. Even Elon Musk needs to work 80 hours per week.

The reward is not going to change much, the best thing we can do is to utilize the time smartly.

20190704， chapter 13. "Beyond Repair"

"If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the
stakes, and the quitting time. "

Life is a game. It's consisted of many challanges/tasks/projects. Each of them is a game.

To considering things objectively, it's always important to think about "rules, stakes and quitting time".

Don't get scared, but need to do something to minimize the cost and the risk.

PS: I should not hold Tesla shares forever. But, when is the right time to quit? This is not about "price", but "timing".

20190706， chapter 14. "Mini-Retirements"

This book is about how to avoid wasting life. Not just about how to improve productivity, or how to work remotely.

What do we do in mini-retirements? Timothy Ferriss learned local language, Tango, Boxing, etc. Are those good choices? I am not sure.

This chapter provides excellent to-do list for "before leaving" and "just arriving", which is useful.

I doubt it's so cheap to travel around the world. Credit card points don't really help to decrease flight ticket price, and food is expensive normally. However, I agree that it's not too expensive to live in another country in most of cases.

20190706， chapter 15. "Filling the Void"

"(For any question) If you can't define it, or act upon it, forget it."

This is close to one of my primary rules: "don't worry, act on it."

Timothy Ferriss recommends to fill the "spare time" with two tasks: learning and service.

Learning new stuff and help other people (such as oversea voluntary work).

I agree. So far, I don't know anything else worth doing.

For me, in the future, I may focus on something, and push it far, far ahead.

20190712， chapter final. "The best of the blog"

"Let the small bad things happen and make the big good things happen."

The bad things will happen. So, let them happen, unless they are critical. We should avoid the critical mistakes, and ignore the minor mistakes deliberately. This is how we can be brave, and be not scared of trying.

"Time" worth nothing without "attention". Only "attention" is more important than "time".

That's why we should stop checking email, share price, etc. all the time. It only takes 10 seconds to check them, but it may take hours to remove them from our mind.

"Choice-Minimal Lifestyle" includes six fomulas.

1. Automate decision making, to save attention.
2. Don't scan email box if don't plan to work on it. It's waste of attention.
3. Don't postpone decision. Or else, part of our attention will be wasted.
4. Learn to make trivial decision quickly. "Fast decisions preserve usable attention for what matters."
5. Variation means "fun". Simple routine means "efficiency".
6. "Regret" is useless and waste of attention. Learn from mistake and do better next time.

The last section is a "rule list", which allow other people to handle all different kinds of emails. Pretty good for task outsourcing. Simple, repetitive tasks can all be outsourced.