Timothy Ferriss: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Expanded and Updated

My first action was to think “what is the worst that can happen on a scale of 1–10” if I quit my well-paid, very secure government job? The power of this thought process is incredible.

I quit my job, sold my house, and went camping for three months with two kids under two and a half and a pregnant wife (mini-retirement). We (very slowly) drove the SE coast of Australia from Sydney to Adelaide.

With the complete clarity of mind that comes from being in a field with your family with no immediate worries, I put into action a plan that I had been tinkering with for 12 months. I bought a wireless Internet dongle and created an info product for electrical engineers, and wrote some software to go with it.

Managed this by (a) going on info diet, (b) working 9 p.m.-midnight in a campsite with no other distractions, (c) outsourcing everything that I would find difficult or time consuming (like the tricky programming stuff and the illustrations for my book).

After about four weeks I had an automated informational website that had replaced ½ of my full-time income—requiring > four hours per week to maintain.

The original plan was to arrive in Adelaide and get a J.O.B. But with my passive income, I decided to simply grow my new business and am currently very close to replacing 100% of my previous income. It feels f&*#ing brilliant.

Now we plan to travel the world slowly until the kids are ready for primary school…

Who says kids hold you back?! —FINN

One month and one year ago, I read 4HWW on the recommendation of my sister’s boyfriend after I had been talking for months about changing my life drastically and moving to Argentina to learn Castellano. After reading the book I stopped talking about my dreams and immediately started setting short-term and long-term goals. I bought a notebook to track my monthly goals and tasks. I did lots of research on potential remote working situations and I started telling my close friends and family about my new plans. Everyone that I told thought it was just an idea and I wasn’t actually going to go through with it. They thought it was a “some day I’d like to do this” idea and that I wasn’t actually setting daily goals to get me there. They knew that I loved my job so why would I leave it for a life of uncertainty? I didn’t think of it that way. I wasn’t scared, I was excited at the prospect of a new way of life, a fresh start, and even though I loved my job I also had other things I wanted to accomplish in my life. At first I thought about teaching English to make a living down there, but deep down inside all I really wanted to do was continue working for my current company, just doing it remotely. The book gave me the confidence to think this was actually possible, when everyone around me thought it was impossible.

I decided to write up a proposal 92and present it to my boss even at the advice not to do it from everyone I knew. If my boss rejected my proposal, I had enough money saved up to live in Argentina for at least six months to get me by until I could figure out how I wanted to make money there. I was not giving up on my dream of living a freer, happier life with less work and more time for myself. All odds were against me but I took a calculated risk and had faith in myself. After I handed in my proposal, I was ready to expect the worst. Everyone around me was waiting with baited breath and words of encouragement after I got rejected. When I left the meeting with my boss I couldn’t believe it. She accepted and was eager to talk to me about the details. She even had a smile on her face and told me how awesome my proposal was. No one else could believe it when I told them. After the shock wore off, I realized that I could actually do this, and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. The hardest part was over and now I could start thinking of more possibilities for my new life.

I set my goal to move to Argentina for September 2008. I arrived here on September 3 and have been here for about six months now. I live in the capital city of Jujuy, Argentina, a small province in the northwest of Argentina. I work about 5–10 hours a week and I find that I am much more focused now that I am out of the office and working alone. I have a private Spanish tutor that I meet with for two hours, five days a week. I have a handful of friends that I spend time with, practicing my Spanish. I go to the gym three times a week and go to yoga two times a week—something I didn’t do in the States because I didn’t have enough time. I eat healthier because I have more time to focus on what to eat. I have more time to dream up bigger things that I want to do with my new free time. I have dreams of owning a bar or cafe, so maybe a few years from now that will be my next endeavor.

My advice to 4HWW readers is to take from my experience. I rely heavily on the advice of my friends and family, but sometimes you have to ignore the advice of your loved ones to really make some thing happen. If you believe the impossible can be made possible, it will happen. —A.K. BROOKMIRE

I’m a 37-year-old Subway franchisee owning and operating 13 stores. Been doing this for seven years. Prior to reading 4HWW I was KING at W4W (translate: work for work’s sake)! I’d never given myself “permission” to behave differently than I did as an employee in the past. 4HWW was absolutely liberating for me. I literally “caught myself” and began the process of curing my addiction to W4W. I used to always be “on” and I was never really “present” anywhere—too busy doing the “blackberry prayer” at the dinner table instead of spending quality time with those who were present. Holidays were just a remote office for battling the e-mail tsunami. 4HWW gave me a new paradigm and I began to look at my business as a “product,” the (original) purpose of which was to provide me with a disproportionate amount of income vs. time invested personally by me—to what end? To ENJOY MYSELF and to have complete autonomy over my schedule and activities. So I got off my own back, told myself it was OK to pursue the original purpose and here’s what I did:

Crunched my “always open” workweek into four days and 20 hours. I immediately began taking Mondays OFF, giving me a nice three-day weekend. (Fridays are in the “CROSSHAIRS” next!) Tuesday to Friday I work 11 A.M.-4 p.m. (20 hours per week). With the “unluxury” of time in this crunched workweek I was forced to appraise everything through the 80/20 filter and found that 50% of the 80% was pure crap and the other 50% of the 80% could be done by someone on my payroll. Great!

Everything I do now has to somehow either increase sales or decrease costs otherwise “it’s someone else’s job.” You can’t be “half-pregnant,” so when I’m “on” I’m really on and when I’m “off” I’m off—good luck trying to contact me. I still carry portable e-mail but I’ve killed “auto-sync” (the bane of modern mankind in terms of interruption) now it’s on a Tues-Fri, 11 A.M.-4 p.m. schedule. Outside of that window it waits.

My e-mail autoresponder eliminated 50% of my e-mail within two weeks as people sending me meaningless crap got fed up looking at my autoresponder and stopped including me—love it! I keep a short, compact “to-do” list and anything time-bound is in my calendar. These get my attention before any other “inbox” does because I’ve previously decided what’s important for me to get done—the rest can wait.

I could go on, but all in all I think this is a message that the self-employed need to hear so badly. With no “boss” and no “clean edges” to work-life/home-life it’s so easy to fall into a W4W grind and your business becomes a tractor beam that trails you inexorably down that path. 4HWW is the antidote!” —ANDREW, self-employed in the UK