THE 4 HOUR WORK WEEK

You’re working too much! You’re working too hard! And you’re not earning enough for the amount of time and effort you’re putting into this thing you call your profession or vocation. I’m not sure exactly where the idea of working hard for your money came from, but it’s all but destroying you from the inside out.

In today’s show we’re going to be talking about earning more in less time, and why it’s the only way to think when it comes to business and an even more important way of thinking when it comes to your life. We’re also going to be talking about some life and business wisdom from a very successful author.

If you’re not familiar with the author, and famous podcaster and investor, Tim Ferriss, It’s time to get to know him through the book that made him famous. The book is called ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’. You may have read it and hate it or maybe you read it and love it. It’s a controversial and polarizing book, for sure, but that doesn’t make what’s inside of it any less compelling or worth considering. Especially if you are able to look at it through the lens of when it was written, and then update some of the ideas given where we are today, which I hope to do for you in this episode. 

Let me set the basic premise for you (my opinion, not necessarily paraphrasing from the book): the basic premise is that you’ve been lied to. The basic premise of the book as it relates to how we work, why we work, and when we get to stop working and actually enjoy our lives, is that we’ve been lied to. If you’re like me, you’ve been raised in a society that teaches you to go to school, get a good job or choose a profession and career that can sustain you while you set some money aside for this magical thing called retirement.

Retirement is supposed to be the best time of your life because it’s the time when you can finally stop working and go do all the stuff that you’ve been dreaming of doing since you were in your teens, 20’s and 30’s. There’s one big problem: you’re now 65 years old, the best years of your life are behind you, you’re likely not as agile, healthy, spontaneous, adventurous, capable, or any of the things you were back in your 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. Things are more expensive, not less; your money supply is likely finite, not infinite; and, assuming you’re reasonably healthy and active yourself, you’re counting on your life partner or significant other to also be in that condition and be up for whatever you’re ready to do now that you can finally relax and enjoy life.

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Your retirement years are supposed to be your ‘golden years’, the easy time when all of your worries are gone and you can now really enjoy your life. The term ‘Golden Years is a phrased coined in 1959 by a man named Del Webb, who was the founder of the Sun City Retirement communities, as a way to make your retirement years sound like the best years ever, and that’s not to say that they aren’t for some people. But the idea that you are supposed to work for almost 50 of your best years before you get to really enjoy your life is part of what spawned the idea behind the 4 Hour Work Week. So, let’s talk about some of the key ideas behind working less and making more so that you can enjoy your life more today, and not have to wait until some later date when you might not be able to.

One of the foundational thoughts behind some of the ideas in the book is that most people would rather choose unhappiness over uncertainty. I’ve talked many times on the show about this need for familiarity and certainty and how it’s hard wired into the DNA of human beings. Most people seek more comfort, not less, and will slowly, over time, give up the hunger and drive they once had to do more, be more, and live more for safety over what really makes them happy.

Not that everyone can be an entrepreneur and start their own business, but there are a lot of people in the world who dream about having more control over their own destiny that could potentially benefit from creating some additional income by turning a passion into a small business. Well, at least that’s one of the ideas in the book, and, while I don’t believe everyone is cut out for entrepreneurship, I tend to agree with the idea that most people would rather work for somebody else unhappily for a long time than face the fear and uncertainty of trying out something on their own, even if that something made them much happier in the near term.

Again, its not for everyone, but I believe If you have any shred of talent, skill, motivation, or abilities in a particular area, not trying to create some sort of small business, especially with how easy it is to do in the digital age we live in, is a mistake too many will make as they choose to live unhappily to avoid any uncertainty. The book’s premise as it relates to working for someone else is that, when you work for somebody else, you’ll typically get paid less than you’re worth, you’re going to pay more in taxes, and you are always at risk of being let go. Of course, there are those who are probably being paid more than they’re worth, but those likely won’t be the people reading the 4 Hour Work Week and becoming entrepreneurs and that tends to be the nature of corporate life once companies reach maximum complexity. 

And again, to clarify, I don’t necessarily agree completely with this idea that everyone can just venture out into the unknown and create more income with their own business. However, I do believe in taking risks when it’s tied to your happiness, especially when viewed through the idea that life is short, the best years of your life do NOT begin at 65 (they’re typically from 20-60ish), and, who knows, you might just stumble into something that truly changes the trajectory of your life forever.

People have begun to ‘wake up’ in the last 20 years or so to the realization that some of the things we’ve been told and sold don’t necessarily map with reality. As the world changes, as it shrinks with the advent of the internet, as things like YouTube, social media, and alternative media have become part of normal daily life, more people are coming to realize that they don’t have to suffer at a shitty company with a shitty boss, shitty coworkers, stupid rules, woke corporate initiatives, and a soul sucking to-do list that doesn’t do anything to advance their own goals and dreams, but only creates more income for the company at your fixed hourly or annual pay. The company benefits from your ideas and sweat while you go home depleted of your life energy and, more importantly, your life’s work. 

Friends, your best years don’t begin at 65. Your best years are from, say, 20 years old up to your 50’s and 60’s, and that’s if you stay healthy, watch what you eat, stay active, maximize your income and your investments, and don’t sustain any major injuries or ailments, which, by the way, are on the rise. There is simply no good reason to waste the real best years of your life doing something that kills you on the inside (and maybe on the outside too), only to realize too late that your best years are behind you.

From there we move the corollary of this idea of people choosing unhappiness over uncertainty and onto the premise that life is far too short to be spent in a cubicle. Of course, the cubicle is just a metaphor for doing something mundane and life sucking, or working for somebody who doesn’t care about you. Being told what to do, when to do it, and having to beg for embarrassing little wage increases is the adult form of elementary school.

Sorry to all of you listening that work for somebody else from the proverbial cubicle, I’m just relaying some of the things I learned from Tim Ferriss’ book that may resonate with you, and maybe they don’t. Obviously, when you work for someone else, you can’t get away with working 4 hours per week and keep your job, so it stands to reason, at least from what the book posits, that you’ll never really get ahead working for somebody else, but, of course, someone has to do it. Somebody has to work in those cubicles to keep the world running. The goal would be to, at the very least, not trade the best years of your life doing something you hate. If you have to work for somebody else, at least do something you enjoy and with people you enjoy working with and for.

I will also say, one of the takeaways for me after reading the 4 Hour Work Week was that you can definitely work for somebody else and still have your own business on the side and I’ll talk a little more about that later in the show.

The next takeaway from Ferriss’ book is something that I was coached on early on in my entrepreneurship journey and have been coaching others on for a couple decades, and it’s that most people will spend their valuable time doing things that somebody else would be willing to do (and probably way better at it) for a fraction of the cost. Bad businesspeople are notorious for doing $10 per hour tasks when their time is worth $50, $100, or $500 per hour. Smart businesspeople do the opposite; they hire somebody for $10 or $20 per hour to take all those tasks off their plate so they can work on the most valuable things that will propel the business forward and lead to more profitability.

Although many of my appraiser colleagues hate the word, and maybe even the idea of ‘outsourcing’, but any job or task that you don’t do yourself is outsourced. It doesn’t matter if your assistant sits right next to you in a brick-and-mortar office, he or she is your outsourced task manager. You’ve hired an individual that isn’t you to do the tasks that you shouldn’t or don’t want to be doing. That’s outsourcing and, if you run a business, you need to do it. Busy appraisers especially, if you’re doing all the stuff yourself, you’re not being a responsible business owner. Hire somebody to do all the $10 and $20 per hour stuff so that you can do the more valuable stuff, and probably a handful of things that would be worth $500 to $5000 an hour if you had the guts to do them.

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The next big idea is that audacious goals have very little competition. I’m not a fan of this one, at least not the way it’s delivered. The idea that goals have to be audacious or have anything to do with competition is to diminish the power of goals. Goals are supposed to give us direction, inspiration, motivation, and have something out ahead of us to shoot for, so it shouldn’t matter if somebody else has the same goal as me. I get the idea though. I think what Ferriss is trying to convey is the idea that, the bigger you think and act, and the more you try what might be considered strange ideas, the less BS you’ll encounter over the long term from copycats. If someone does try to copy you, they’ll likely give up within 90 days.

I know this to be true in my own businesses because I’ve done things in almost all of them that I was sure some of the other similar businesses in my industry at the time would eventually copy and exactly zero of them did. And I wouldn’t call any of the things I did audacious, by the way. One example is the podcast I started for my Aikido business, as well as the podcast I started for my local appraisal business many years ago. Zero copycats or competitors for something that absolutely set those businesses apart from every other similar business I might compete with.

Another example is the private Facebook groups I started for Realtors and Lenders in the markets we work in. I thought for sure I would have some competition in my markets with somebody else doing the same thing within a few months and yet, 7 years later, exactly zero competitors doing something that has led to multi-six figures in additional business every single year and has set us apart from every single other appraiser in our markets. It keeps me booked for speaking and teaching opportunities, fills our coffers with an over-abundance of private appraisal work, and has led to lots of opportunities to partner on investment deals and business opportunities that would not have been there had I not started those things years ago.

Don’t worry about competition; focus on thinking big, finding ways to differentiate, becoming a person of influence in your markets, and be willing to partner and joint-venture with other complimentary businesses and entrepreneurs in the markets you serve.  

This next takeaway from the book is one that goes against the grain of traditional thinking, but one I’ve come to agree with and it’s this; doing less is the path of the productive. Let me say it a different way: do less to do more. Let me say it yet another way: If you want to accomplish more, you must learn to do less stuff. I’m not sure if you’re hearing what I’m saying, so let me say it a different way: stop doing stupid shit. Oh yeah, and one more way to say it is that busyness is a form of laziness.

The way Soren Kierkegaard expressed it, and the way Tim Ferriss restated it is that busyness is laziness. Kierkegaard didn’t use those words exactly, but he did say that busyness is the sign of an unhappy person. The philosophical view is that busy people make themselves ridiculously busy to avoid the unhappiness of their existence and focus on some date in the future. Tim Ferriss and others have expressed that, when we rejoice in how busy we make ourselves, we’re doing so likely because we are avoiding doing something else that we know we should be doing, and would likely help us accomplish more, but we are avoiding.

I encounter this almost every week while coaching other appraisers and agents, as well as some other unrelated businesses. When pressed to analyze how people are spending their days, I’ll hear all kinds of busy-work being done, while none of the most important stuff is being done. When asked why they aren’t doing the things that will inevitably set their business up for long-term success, the answers always boil down to, “I’m too busy doing these other things”, which, by the way, are all BS. Most of the people I work with as a coach are not too busy to do the important stuff, they are simply afraid of doing the other stuff.

I talk about it all the time on this show, so I won’t bore you with a long rant on the topic, but, suffice it to say, if presenting, publishing content, creating new ways to productize and package your offerings, partnering up with other complimentary services, networking with the people who can and will refer your company, and managing your social persona out in the world is too much and too scary for you to do, you’ll always be working on the lowest ROI activities and stuck in the tyranny of routine, which is a phrase coined by Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth.

Check your calendar and start to question, ‘am I making myself busy to avoid doing something more important, more valuable, and/or something that would propel my life forward in some way, but maybe I’m scared to address? Am I keeping myself busy because I know how to do these things, but what If I’m not good at the other things? Am I keeping myself busy because it’s simply the way I’ve always done things and I’m afraid of changing up my routine and my flow even though I know I need to be doing these other things? Am I keeping myself busy because I feel valued and valuable when I’m running around looking important and busy? 

Ask yourself the questions and then just sit in it for a while. Wait for a few days to see what kinds of answers bubble up and remember, these questions and the subsequent answers are for you. They’re not for anyone else. The questions are to make you better and start to figure out how to start working on more valuable things so that you’re not wasting your life doing lots of busy work and then complaining because you can’t seem to get ahead. If you want to truly enjoy your work and your life, not to mention being in control of those 2 things, you have to have control of your time. It’s that simple. If you don’t control your time, you’ll never really be in control of either your life or your business.

The next big takeaway from the 4 Hour Work Week, at least for me, was the idea that success can often be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we’re willing to have. The great thing about this realization is that it goes both ways. What I mean by that is that the phrase, ‘uncomfortable conversations’ refers to conversations that will likely be uncomfortable for the person we’re talking with or to, as in hard leadership conversations, as well the conversations that may be uncomfortable for us, as in sales calls, networking conversations, holding people accountable, follow up calls, or whatever conversations you don’t particularly enjoy, but know you need to have regardless.

How many uncomfortable conversations have you had this month? How many uncomfortable conversations have you put on the back burner and made yourself busy to avoid? How many uncomfortable conversations could you have, should you have, that will lead to you working less and making more? There are a variety of metrics we use to measure success, but this is one that is often left off of the spreadsheet. Time to add it as an index card question posted above your computer; “how many uncomfortable conversations do I need to have this month?”

The last takeaway from the 4 Hour Work Week for this episode is this; being a people pleaser is a path to poverty. Those are my words and I like saying it that way because it’s easy to remember with all the ‘P’s’. ‘People pleasing is a path to poverty’ is a phrase I say to myself whenever I find myself wanting to solve somebody else’s issues or bend over backwards to help when, deep down, I know that’s not what they need. The poverty I’m speaking about is the emotional poverty that results from trying to please others while not taking care of your own emotional needs.

People pleasing shows up in a variety of ways, but the most common ones are the inability to say ‘no’ to people when asked to do something, wanting better for somebody else than you want for yourself, overcommitting yourself to things even when you don’t want to do them and probably don’t have to the time, apologizing to people when you’ve done nothing wrong, avoiding conflict at all costs even when conflict or uncomfortable conversations need to be had, having a difficulty recognizing your own feelings in a situation, and a lack of boundaries between personal and professional time.

Being a people pleaser is a low value personality and social trait and all but guarantees the ‘pleaser’ to be walked on, chewed up, taken advantage of, and left emotionally bankrupt at the end of it. People pleasers make some of the worst leaders and managers because of their avoidant personality behaviors and their inability to have the really difficult conversations with the people and topics that need to be addressed. I’ve worked with several people pleasers over the years that were in managerial, or leadership roles and it wasn’t that they weren’t willing to have uncomfortable conversations, it’s that they typically had them with the wrong party. People pleasers will pick the least likely person to get upset with them when It’s time to have a difficult conversation and they’ll avoid the other conversations if at all possible.

If any of this last part resonates with you as the one who identifies as a people pleaser, the easiest form of therapy and recovery from this trait is to practice saying ‘no’ on a daily basis. The most commonly recognized trait of the people pleaser is that they say ‘yes’ too often. They have some kind of unaddressed self-esteem issue that leads them to believe that, by saying yes, they’ll get love. Let’s be clear, people pleasers are nice people and they’re good people.

Being a people pleaser doesn’t make you a bad person, it just makes you weak, overworked, underappreciated, and emotionally exhausted by all the bending over backward to make other people happy at your expense. Stop it today and practice saying ‘no’ a lot more. Learn to challenge people’s ideas and requests, in a pleasant and respectful way, of course. The non-people pleasers, the strong leaders and managers, are not afraid to challenge other people and are happy to be polarizing and maybe even piss some people off if it’s the right thing to do. Progress often comes from a little chaos, and people pleasing avoids the chaos at the expense of growth. It’s time to stop all the people pleasing.

To wrap this one up, the goal of the 4 Hour Work Week was never to have someone really only working 4 hours per week, at least that wasn’t what I took from the lessons. Tim Ferriss works 50-60 hours per week and has more obligations than most. He’s breaking many of the things he presented in the book, but he’s also uber successful and has chosen what he wants to spend those hours on. That was the main point of the book. Stop wasting your life on things that don’t bring you peace, prosperity, and give you more life than what they take.

The goal of building a business is not to have the biggest, baddest, bestest business around, it should be to build a business that bothers you the least and pays you the most. The measurement metric and question should be, ‘what’s the smallest business I can build that gives me what I desire, pays me what I’m worth, gives me the most freedom, and bothers me the least?’

At the end of the day, life moves fast, and you only get one of them. Even if you believe in reincarnation and multiple lives, you won’t remember the other ones so it might as well be that you only live once. Treat it like it’s your only one, just like your body is the only one you get in this life. Give up the idea that you were meant to sacrifice your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and maybe even your 50’s just to have a mediocre existence when you’re 60, 70, and 80. Enjoy your life more by learning how to control your time, earn the most in the least amount of time, stop bending over backwards for those who don’t need you to do that for them, seek out more of those uncomfortable conversations, stop doing the things that should be delegated to others, and, if you find yourself miserable in a cubicle somewhere, get out now! It will end up robbing you of the best years of your life.