Timothy Ferris - The 4 Hour Workweek

Timothy Ferris - Key secrets of freeing up your time

First and Foremost

FAQ - Doubters read this

You can keep your job and you do not need to be a risk taker.
You age doesn't matter.
The objective is to create freedom of time and place and use both however you want.
You don't have to be (born) rich.
No Academic Title is necessairy.

My Story and Why You Need This Book

How can one achieve the millionaire lifestyle of complete freedom without first having €1,000,000?
DEAL is an acronym for the process of becoming a member of the New Rich:
1. D is for Definition
2. E is for Elimination
3. A is for Automation
4. L is for Liberation

Step I: D is for Definition

Chapter 1: Cautions and Comparisons - How to Burn €1,000,000 a Night

The New Rich can be separated from the crowd based on their goals, which reflect very distinct priorities and life philosophies.
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 yo do it (the "freedom multiplier").
Options - the ability to choose - is real power.
Each path begins with the same first step: replacing assumptions.

Chapter 2: Rules That Change the Rules - Everything Popular is Wrong

Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.
The following rules are the fundamental differentiators to keep in mind throughout this book.
1. Retirement Is Worst-Case-Scenario Insurance
  Don't mistake retirement for the goal.
2. Interest and Energy Are Cyclical
  Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly.
3. Less Is Not Laziness
  Focus on being productive instead of busy.
4. The Timing Is Never Right
  If it's important to you and you want to do it "eventually", just do it and correct course along the way.
5. Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission
  If it isn't going to devastate those around you, try it and then justify it.
6. Emphasize Strengths, Don't Fix Weaknesses
  Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.
7. Things in Excess Become Their Opposite
  Lifestyle Design is in the positive use of free time, defined simply as doing what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.
8. Money Alone Is Not the Solution
  The problem is more than money.
9. Relative Income Is More Important Than Absolute Income
  Absolute income is measured using one holy and inalterable variable: the raw and almighty dollar. Relative income - the dollar and time - is the real measurement of wealth for the New Rich.
10. Distress Is Bad, Eustress Is Good
  Distress refers to harmful stimuli that make you weaker, less confident, and less able. Eustress is stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.
Questions and Actions:
1. How has being "realistic" or "responsible" kept you from the life you want?
2. How has doing what you "should" resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else?
3. Look at what you're currently doing and ask yourself, "What would happen if I did the opposite of the people around me? What will I sacrifice if I continue on this track for 5, 10, or 20 years?"

Chapter 3: Dodging Bullets - Fear-Setting and Escaping Paralysis

Conquer fear by defining it.
Uncover fear disguised as optimistic denial.
Questions and Actions: Antidote for conquering the fear of the unknown / radical change
1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.
2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?
3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios?
4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?
5. What are you putting off out of fear?
  What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
6. What is it costing you - financially, emotionally, and physically - to postpone action?
7. What are you waiting for?

Chapter 4: System Reset - Being Unrealistic and Unambiguous

Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are easier to achieve (and they are more exciting too).
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.
Doing big things begins with asking for them properly. The question you should be asking isn't, "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me?"
Boredom is the enemy, not some abstract "failure".
Dreamlining differs from goal-setting in several fundamental aspects:
1. The goals become defined steps.
2. The goals have to be unrealistic to be effective.
3. Dreamlining focuses on activities that will fill the vacuum created when work is removed.
Questions and Actions: Dreamlining
1. What would you do if there were no way you could fail? If you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world?
2. Drawing a blank?
  - What would you do, day to day, if you had €100 million in the bank?
  - What would make you most excited to wake up in the morning to another day?
3. What does "being" entail doing?
4. What are the four dreams that would change it all?
5. Determine the cost of these dreams and calculate your Target Monthly Income (TMI) for both timelines.
6. Determine three steps for each of the four dreams in just the 6-month timeline and take the first step now.
Comfort Challenge: Develop the uncommon habit of making decisions, both for yourself and for others. Also learn to eye gaze at total strangers.

Step II: E is for Elimination

Chapter 5: The End of Time Management - Illusions and Italians

It is possible and mandatory to accomplish more by doing less. Increase your personal productivity by 100% to 500%. Maximum income from minimal necessary effort is the primary goal.
The goal is to decrease the amount of work you perform while increasing revenue. This will set the stage for replacing yourself with Automation, which in turn permits Liberation. Remember: most things make no difference and a lack of time is actually a lack of priorities.
Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Effectiveness is doing things that get you closer to your goals. Focus on the latter.
What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.
Apply Pareto's Law and answer these 2 questions every day:
1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?
Apply Parkinson's Law. Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
Define both a to do list, as well as a not to do list.
Questions and Actions:
1. If you had a heart attack and had to work two hours per day, what would you do?
2. If you had a second heart attack and had to work two hours per week, what would you do?
3. If you had a gun to your head and had to stop doing four-fifth of different time-consuming activities, what would you remove?
4. What are the top-three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I've been productive?
5. Learn to ask, "If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?"
6. Put a Post-it on your computer screen or set an Outlook reminder to alert you at least three times daily with the question, "Are you inventing things to do to avoid the important?"
7. Do not multitask.
8. Use Parkinson's Law on a Macro and Micro Level.
Comfort Challenge: Learn to propose - offer a solution!

Chapter 6: The Low Information Diet - Cultivating Selective Ignorance

Develop an uncanny ability to be selectively ignorant. Learn to ignore or redirect all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable.
Develop and maintain a low-information diet.
How to read 200% faster in 10 minutes:
1. Two minutes: Use a pen or finger to trace under each line as you read as fast as possible.
2. Three minutes: Begin each line focusing on the third word in from the first word, and end each line focusing on the third word from the last word.
3. Two minutes: Once comfortable indenting three or four words from both sides, attempt to take only two snapshots - also known as fixations - per line on the first and last indented words.
4. Three minutes: Practice reading too fast for comprehension but with good technique (the above three techniques) for five pages prior to reading at a comfortable speed.
Questions and Actions:
1. Go on an immediate one-week media fast.
2. Develop the habit of asking yourself, "Will I definitely use this information for something immediate and important?"
3. Practice the art of nonfinishing.
Comfort Challenge: Ask for at least 2 phone numbers a day from strangers from the opposite sex.

Chapter 7: Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal

Learn to be difficult when it counts. Have a reputation for being assertive. This will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
It is your job to train those around you to be effective and efficient.
Focus only on those things that move the top three clients one step closer to signing a purchase order (in bussines) - or getting you one step closer to your defined lifestyle (in personal life).
An interruption is anything that prevents the start-to-finish completion of a critical task. Interruptions can be divided into 3 categories:
1. Time wasters can be ignored with little or no consequence.
2. Time consumers are repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high-level work.
3. Empowerment failures are instances where someone needs approval to make something small happen.
Eliminate time wasters by limiting access and funneling all communication toward immediate action. Examples:
- Limit e-mail consumption and production - turn of the audible alert in Outlook, turn off automatic send/receive, check your e-mail only twice per day, create an e-mail autoresponder, etc.
- Screen incoming and limit outgoing phone calls - use an office (non-urgent) line and a cell phone (urgent) line with voice mail and answering machine, treat cell phone calls really as urgent and get to the point quickly, suggest to get detailed e-mail if possible, etc.
- Avoid meetings - steer people toward the means of e-mail, then phone and only after that in-person meetings communication, respond to voicemail via e-mail whenever possible, only meet to make decisions about predefined situations, define the end time of the meeting, don't permit casual visitors in your cubicle, use the Puppy Dog Close to help your superiors develop the no-meeting habit, etc.
Eliminate time consumers by batching the tasks to the lowest frequent batch schedule possible without increasing total cost (i.e. the value of hours worked and any additional costs as a result from batching).
Eliminate empowerment failures (being unable to accomplish a task without first obtaining permission or information - can be eliminated by granting employees and contractors full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. Give people more responsibility and indicate that you trust them, so you give them a chance to prove themselves.
Questions and Actions:
1. Create systems to limit your availability via e-mail and phone and deflect inappropriate contact.
2. Batch activities to limit setup cost and provide more time for dreamline milestones.
3. Set or request autonomous rules and guidelines with occasional review of results.
Comfort Challenge: Use "no" ("I really can't - sorry...") as your default answer to all requests.

Step III: A is for Automation

Chapter 8: Outsourcing Life - Off-Loading The Rest and a Taste of Geoarbitrage

Get a remote personal assistant to learn how to give orders and be commander instead of the commanded. Remote management and communication is a critical NewRich skill. Plus, very remote management (jumping time zones and visiting third-world currency) has two pros:
1. people work while you sleep
2. the per-hour expense is less
Becoming a member of the NewRich is not just about working smarter. It's about building a system to replace yourself. The goal is to free your time to focus on bigger and better things.
Refine rules and processes before adding people.
Two guidelines for task delegation to personal and/or virtual assistants:
1. Golden Rule #1: Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-define.
2. Golden Rule #2: On a lighter note, have some fun with it.
The important metrics are cost per completed task (not cost per hour) and successful task completion rate after trial. Also assure to have fallback support by hiring a VA firm or VAs with backup teams, so your delegated task will be completed without interruption.
Two rules to minimize damage from information theft and allow for fast repair:
1. Never use debit cards for online transactions or with remote assistants (instead use credit cards with painless and near instantaneous refunds).
2. If your VA will be accessing websites on your behalf, create a new unique login and password to be used on those sites.
Practical tips to avoid common delegation mistakes:
1. Do not accept the first person a firm provides, and do make special requests at the outset.
2. Give precise directions and ask for task rephrasion and confirmation before starting the work.
3. Don't give a license to waste time by demanding periodic status updates, so further execution of impossible tasks can be halted before going out of control.
4. Set only short deadlines, within 72 hours or even 48 or 24 hours and break larger tasks into subtasks.
5. Give one but no more than two prioritized tasks at a time.
Questions and Actions: Virtual Assistant
1. Get an assistant - even if you don't need one.
2. Start small, but think big.
  - Look at what tasks have been sitting the longest on your todo list.
  - Ask yourself if a VA could do the task when you are interrupted or change tasks.
  - Delegate tasks that cause you the most frustration and boredom.
3. Identify your top five time-consuming nonwork tasks and five personal tasks you could assign for sheer fun.
Comfort Challenge: Use the Criticism Sandwich. First praise a person for something, then deliver the criticism, and then close with topic-shifting praise to exit the sensitive topic.

Chapter 9: Income Autopilot I - Finding the Muse

Our goal is simple: to create an automated vehicle ("a muse") for generating cash without consuming time.
First things first: cash flow and time are the fundamental requirements for building a muse.
Steps in the successful product creation method of the New Rich:
1. Step one: Pick an affordably reachable niche market.
  Find a market - define your customers - then find or develop a product for them. Ask yourself the following questions to find profitable niches:
  1. Which social, industry, and professional groups do you belong to, have you belonged to, or do you understand, whether dentists, engineers, rock climbers, recreational cyclists, car restoration aficionados, dancers, or other?
  2. Which of the groups you identified have their own magazines?
2. Step two: Brainstorm (do not invest in) products.
  Resell, license or create a product. There are several criteria that ensure the end product will fit into an automated architecture:
  - The main benefit should be encapsulated in one sentence.
  - It should cost the customer €50 to €200.
  - It should take no more than 3 to 4 weeks to manufacture.
  - It should be fully explainable in a good online FAQ.
Information products are low-cost, fast to manufacture, and time-consuming for competitors to duplicate - thus ideally suitable for your Muse.
It is very easy to become an expert in your market:
- "Expert" in the context of selling product menads that you know more about the topic than the purchaser.
- Expert status can be created in less than four weeks if you understand basic credibility indicators and what people are conditioned to equate with proof of superior knowledge.
Use the following questions to brainstorm potential how-to or informational products that can be sold to your markets using your expertise or borrowed expertise:
1. How can you tailor a general skill for your market - what I call "niching down" - or add to what is being sold successfully in your target magazines?
2. What skills are you interested in that you - and others in your markets - would pay to learn?
3. What experts could you interview and record to create a sellable audio CD?
4. Do you have a failure-to-success story that could be turned into a how-to product for others?
How to become a top expert in 4 weeks:
1. Join two or three related trade organizations with official sounding names.
2. Read the three top-selling books on your topic.
3. Give one free one-to-three-hour seminar at the closest well-known university, using posters to advertise.
4. Optional: Offer to write one or two articles for trade magazines related to your topics, citing what you have accomplished in steps 1 and 3 for credibility.
5. Join ProfNet, which is a service that journalists use to find experts to quote for articles.
Questions and Actions: Follow the Directions
1. Read this chapter and follow the directions.
Comfort Challenge: Find Yoda. Call at least one potential superstar mentor per day for three days. Have a single question in mind, one that you have researched but have been unable to answer yourself.

Chapter 10: Income Autopilot II - Testing the Muse

To get an accurate indicator of commercial viability, don't ask people if they would buy - ask them to buy.
Steps in the successful product creation method of the New Rich (continued from last chapter):
1. Step three: Micro-test your products.
  Micro-testing involves using inexpensive advertisements to test consumer response to a product prior to manufacturing.
The basic test process consists of three parts:
1. Best: Look at the competition and create a more-compelling offer on a basic one-to-three page website (one to three hours).
2. Test: Test the offer using short Google AdWords advertising campaigns (three hours to set up and five days of passive observation).
3. Divest or Invest: Cut losses with losers and manufacture the winner(s) for sales rollout.
Besting the competition means that each product you want to sell must pass a competitive litmus test. This involves searching the top Google terms you would use to try and find your product, and analyzing the three websites that consistently appear in top search and PPC positions. Next you create a one-page (300 - 600 words) testimonial-rich advertisement that emphasizes the differentiators and product benefits using text and either personal photos or stock photos from stock photo websites.
Testing the advertisement means that you test actual customer response to your advertisements. This involves setting up simple Google Adwords campaigns with 50 - 100 search terms, aiming for specific terms when possible and second through fourth positioning.
Investing or divesting means that you tally the results after 5 days of advertising.
Steps Doug from ProSoundEffects.com made to become a successful New Rich:
1. Market Selection
2. Product Brainstorm
3. Micro-Testing
4. Rollout and Automation
Comfort Challenge: Rejecting First Offers and Walking Away. Negotiate always for much lower prices. Reply to first offers with "What type of discount can you offer?" Furthermore, negotiate near closing time, choose your objective price, bracket, and make a firm offer with cash in hand for that amount. Practise walking away if your objective price isn't met.

Chapter 11: Income Autopilot III - MBA = Management By Absense

Once you have a product that sells, it's time to design a self-correcting business architecture that runs itself. Create a process driven instead of a founder-driven business.
Our goal isn't to create a business that is as large as possible, but rather a business that bothers us as little as possible. Try to remove the human element.
The main principles in designing a self-sustaining scalable virtual architecture are:
1. Contract outsourcing companies that specialize in one function vs. freelancers whenever possible.
2. Ensure that all outsourcers are willing to communicate among themselves to solve problems, and give them written permission to make most inexpensive decisions without consulting you first.
There are three phases in scaling your business:
1. Phase I: 0-50 Total Units of Product Shipped
  Do it all yourself.
2. Phase II: >10 Units Shipped Per Week
  Add an extensive FAQ to your website and find local fulfillment companies who can respond to order status e-mail or phone calls from customers.
3. Phase III: >10 Units Shipped Per Week
  Now you will have the cash flow to afford the setup fees and the monthly minimums that bigger, more sophisticated oursourcers will ask for.
Having fewer options leads to more revenue. The art of "undecision" refers to minimizing the number of decisions your customers can or need to make. Reduce most service overhead with these few methods:
1. Offer one or two purchase options, and no more.
2. Do not offer multiple shipping options.
3. Do not offer overnight or expedited shipping.
4. Eliminate phone calls completely and direct all prospects to online ordering.
5. Do not offer international shipments.
Prevent problem customers from ordering. Here are a few additional policies that attract the high-profile and low-maintenance customers we want:
1. Do not accept payment via Western Union, checks, or money order.
2. Raise wholesale minimum to 12-100 units and require a tax ID number to qualify resellers.
3. Refer all potential resellers to an online order form that must be printed, filled out, and faxed in.
4. Never negotiate pricing or approve lower pricing for higher-volume orders.
5. Offer low-priced products instead of free products to capture contact information for follow-up sales.
6. Offer a lose-win guarantee instead of free trials.
7. Do not accept orders from common mail fraud countries such as Nigeria.
How to look Fortune 500 in 45 minutes:
1. Don't be the CEO or founder
2. Put multiple e-mail and phone contacts on the website
3. Set up an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) remote receptionist
4. Do not provide home addresses
Comfort Challenge: Relax in public. Once per day, simply lie down in the middle of a crowded public place at some point - give no explanation at all. Get used to acting outside the box.

Step IV: L is for Liberation

Chapter 12: Disappearing Act - How to escape the office

It is no longer necessairy to work 8 hours in the office per day to get your work done. The new mantra is: Work wherever and whenever you want, but get your work done.
Escaping the office in five simple steps:
1. Increase investment
  Take additional training (attend master classes) paid by the boss.
2. Prove increased output offsite
  Use vacation days to work a few days from home with increased productivity.
3. Prepare the quantifiable business benefit
  Create a bullet-point list of how much more you achieved outside the office with explanations.
4. Propose the revocable trial period
  Confidently propose a one-day-per-week remote work trial period for two week.
5. Expand the remote time
  After the trial periode clearly show that working from home leads to greater productivity and ask for expansion of remote time.
Getting what you want often depends more on when you ask for it than how you ask for it.
Questions and Actions
1. If you had a heart attack, and assuming your boss were sympathic, how could you work remotely for four weeks?
2. Put yourself in your boss's shoes. Based on your work history, would you trust yourself to work outside of the office?
3. Practice environment-free productivity.
4. Quantify current productivity.
5. Create an opportunity to demonstrate remote work productivity before asking for it as a policy.
6. Practice the art of getting past "no" before proposing.
7. Put your employer on remote training wheels - propose Monday or Friday at home.
8. Extend each successful trial period until you reach full-time or your desired level of mobility.

Chapter 13: Beyond repair - Killing your job

Forget pride, it is stupid. Being able to quit things that don't work is integral to being a winner.
Quitting is easier and less painful than you think:
1. Quitting is never permanent. A change of direction is often reversible.
2. You will be able to pay your bills. Have a new job or a source of cash flow before quitting, and/or temporarily eliminate some of your expenses.
3. Health insurance and retirement accounts stay. They can be quickly transferred to another company, if needed.
4. Quitting is good for your resume. Do something interesting to make job interviewers jealous and say: "I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do [exotic and envy-producing experience] and couldn't turn it down. I figured that, with [20-40] years of work to go, what's the rush?"
In the world of action and negotiation, there is one principle that governs all others: The person who has more options has more power.
Questions and Actions
1. Reality check: Are you more likely to find what you want in your current job or somewhere else?
2. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?
3. Take a sick day and post your resume on the major job sites.
4. If you run your own company, imagine that you have just been sued and must declare bankruptcy... How would you survive?

Chapter 14: Mini-Retirements - Embracing the mobile lifestyle

If you've gone through the previous steps, eliminating, automating, and severing the leashes that bind you to one location, it's time to indulge in some fantasies and explore the world.
The alternative to binge travel - the mini-retirement - entails relocating to one place for one to six months before going home or moving to another locale. Mini-retirements are recurring (it's a lifestyle) and can be done several times per year, but take at least two months do disincorporate old habits and rediscover yourself without the reminder of a looming return flight.
Traveling the world and having the time of your life can save you serious money.
The prime fear of all parents prior to their first international trip is somehow losing a child in the shuffle. Use bribery as a persuasive tool to get the kids under control, and to the following to remove any remaining fear you have:
1. Before embarking on a long international trip with your children for the first time, take a trial run for a few weeks.
2. For each stop, arrange a week of language classes that begin upon arrival and take advantage of transportation from the airport if available.
To get airfare at 50-80% off:
1. Use credit card reward points for large muse-related advertising and manufacturing expenses.
2. Purchase tickets far in advance (three months or more) or last minute, and aim for both departure and return between Tuesday and Thursday.
3. Consider buying one ticket to an international hub and then an ongoing ticket with a cheap local airline.
Get rid of clutter disguised as necessities. Take less with you on travel. Pack as if you were coming back in one week. Here are the bare essentials, listed in order of importance:
1. One week of clothing appropriate to the season, including one semiformal shirt and pair of pants or skirt for customs.
2. Backup photocopies or scanned copies of all important documents.
3. Debit cards, credit cards, and € 200 worth of small bills in local currency.
4. Small cable bike lock for securing luggage while in transit or in hostels.
5. Electronic dictionaries for target languages and small grammar guides or texts.
6. One broad-strokes travel guide.
Questions and Actions
1. Take an asset and cash-flow snapshot
2. Fear-set a one-year mini-retirement in a dream location in Europe
3. Choose a location for your actual mini-retirement. Where to start?
  1. Choose a starting point and then wander until you find your second home.
  2. Scout a region and then settle in your favorite spot.
4. Prepare for your trip. Here's the countdown.
  - Three months out - Eliminate
    - What is the 20% of my belongings that I use 80% of the time?
    - Which belongings create stress in my life?
  - Two months out - Automate
    - After eliminating the excess, contact companies (including suppliers) that bill you regularly and set up autopayment with credit cards that have reward points.
    - Give a trusted member of your family and/or your accountant power of attorney.
  - One month out
    - Have all mail forwarded to a friend, family member or personal assistant.
    - Get all required and recommended immunizations and vaccinations for your target region.
    - Set up a trial account with GoToMyPC or similar remote-access software.
  - Two weeks out
    - Scan all identification, health insurance, and credit/debit cards into a computer from which you can print multiple copies, several to be left with family members and several to be taken with you in separate bags.
    - If you are an entrepreneur, downgrade your cell phone to the cheapest plan and set up a voicemail greeting announcing strict email communication.
    - If you are an employee, consider getting a quad-band or GSM-compatible cell phone so that the boss can contact you.
    - Find an apartment for your ultimate mini-retirement destination or reserve a hostel or hotel at your starting point for three to four days.
    - Get foreign medical evacuation insurance if needed for peace of mind.
  - One week out
    - Decide on a schedule for routine bases tasks such as e-mail, online banking, etc. (i.e. Mondays).
    - Save important documents to a small handheld storage device that plugs into a computer USB port.
    - Move all things out of your home or apartment into storage, pack a single small backpack and carry-one bag for the adventure, and briefly move in with someone else.
  - Two days out
    - Put remaining automobiles into storage and cancel all auto insurance except for theft coverage.
  - Upon arrival
    1. On the first morning and afternoon after check-in, take a bus tour and a bike tour in the city.
    2. On the first late afternoon or evening, purchase an unlocked prepaid cell phone.
    3. On the second and third days, find and book an apartment for one month.
    4. Get settled and purchase local health insurance on move-in day.
    5. Eliminate all the extra crap you brought but won't use often.

Chapter 15: Filling the Void - Adding Life after Subtracting Work

More idle time (retired and ultrarich) isn't the end goal. Moving towards social isolation neither is. Living more - and becoming more - is. Go nuts and live your dreams.
Freedom is like a new sport. In the beginning, the sheer newness of it is exciting enough to keep things interesting at all times. Once you have learned the basics, though, it becomes clear that to be even a half-decent player requires some serious practice.
Stay away from outdated comparisons using more-is-better and money-as-success mind-sets. Find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow.
Before spending time on a stress-inducing question, big or otherwise, ensure that the answer is "yes" to the following two questions:
1. Have I decided on a single meaning for each term in this question?
2. Can an answer to this question be acted upon to improve things?
If you can't define it or act upon it, forget it.
Life exists to be enjoyed and the most important thing is to feel good about yourself. Two components are fundamental for this:
1. Continual learning: Before you travel, decide first how you'll obsess on a specific skill. I.e. focus on language acquisition and one kinesthetic skill. Blend the mental and the physical, and transport a skill you practice domestically to other countries where they are also practiced.
2. Service: Do something that improves life besides your own.
Questions and Actions
1. Revisit ground zero: Do nothing.
2. Make an anonymous donation to the service organization of your choice.
3. Take a learning mini-retirement in combination with local volunteering.
4. Revisit and reset dreamlines.
5. Based on the outcomes of steps 1-4, consider testing new part- or full-time vocations.

Chapter 16: The Top 13 New Rich Mistakes

Some slipups you may make:
1. Losing sight of dreams and falling into work for work's sake (W4W).
2. Micromanaging and e-mailing to fill time.
3. Handling problems your outsourcers or co-workers can handle.
4. Helping outsourcers or co-workers with the same problem more than once, or with noncrisis problems.
5. Chasing customers, particularly unqualified or international prospects, when you have sufficient cash flow to finance your nonfinancial pursuits.
6. Answering e-mail that will not result in a sale or that can be answered by a FAQ or auto-responder.
7. Working where you live, sleep, or should relax.
8. Not performing a thorough 80/20 analysis every two or four weeks for your business and personal life.
9. Striving for endless perfection rather than great or simply good enough, whether in your personal or professional life.
10. Blowing minutiae and small problems out of proportion as an excuse to work.
11. Making non-time-sensitive issues urgent in order to justify work.
12. Viewing one product, job, or project as the end-all and be-all of your existence.
13. Ignoring the social rewards of life.

Posted on 22nd November 2008 by Quintus Hegie

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