The 4 Hour Work Week – Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich

The book “The 4 Hour Work Week – Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich” by Timothy Ferriss I just completed reading and implementing, and I must tell you that it has changed my life and my daily routine completely.

As my business is growing, I was not able to keep up with many things. I read a lot of productivity tips on the internet and implement them.

• Reduce social media usage.
• Reduce time-consuming tasks.
• Outsource
• Focus on todo lists.
• Get things organized.

Things were not working as I wanted it to be.

I was getting more things in my ToDo than I complete every day. So a workday of 12 to 14 and at the end of the day I had more to work on.

The feeling was horrible.

The 4 Hour Work Week – Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss changes my life completely.

The Impact

Suddenly I can do more. Focus on what is more important, and can dedicate a lot of fun time for my family.

You can see that for the last four weeks, and I can put more time into the BizTips blog, which I couldn’t for the previous few years.

Last four weeks, I had four articles per week (assuming this will go live on Friday). That’s 16 posts in 4 weeks.

And in the last 11 months, I could only manage 19.

The process didn’t stop because I am so thrilled by it that this is my posting schedule for the whole of 2019.

What changed?

I never realized that I am not that bigger a social media time waster, or rather, I did not have time for social media. Yet I was trying to save time by doing less of social media, which never helped.

4HWW book has so many examples that helped me realized that the issue is my email inbox.

I was an inbox freak. If I thought I would miss anything, I would drop a self email, so I remember it.

So once I realized, there are a few changes that I did.

When I check emails?

As suggested in 4HWW, now I check emails twice daily. 11 AM and 3 PM. Anything that is too urgent if it can wait till 6 AM when I wake up can wait till 11 AM as well.

Before 4HWW, emails accumulated from last night would take up 3 to 4 hours of my morning time. Client’s emails, blog emails, and other emails that I wanted to read.

So if I am working 12 hours, 33% of my time was gone.

Now I check emails at 11 AM. So the time between 6 AM to 11 AM is time for my blog. In the middle of the writing time, I go for a morning walk (which I never was able to before) from 7 AM to 8 AM as well as 9 AM to 10 AM is time for breakfast and other morning activities. After 12 PM, it’s all the client’s work.

The result is I can write daily.

Once I am clear about what I should be doing when I have more time for everything.

How I check email?

A question may popup how an email that used to take 4 hours is now only handled in 1 hour?

4HWW suggested not to use a web interface for emails, and the idea behind was to retrieve emails only when you want and not when it arrives. I looked for good offline mail programs (Thunderbird, Apple’s Mail), but then I decided to keep things in a different browser than to use an offline email program.

When I am going through the emails, if there is any client work, I put them on my client list instead of completing it right at that moment. If there is anything that should be done for my blog, it goes to my blog list, and the rest that I need to reply to and some other emails which I prefer reading are kept open as tabs in my Safari. My work browser is Firefox.

The implementation of the task and the time to check email is now different. If you are working in batches, you don’t waste time in context switching.

Productivity killer emails

If I had 10 mins before a meeting, what I used to do was check email assuming I am utilizing the time. However, what was happening was, I was cluttering my mind with things that just arrived in my inbox. It was reducing my productivity in the meeting and even after without me realizing it.

So instead of checking emails for 10 mins, now I use those open tabs that I want to be reading in the free time.

Email on Phone

Changed email synchronization on my iPhone from automatic to manual, so I don’t get notification of emails that I don’t want to be checking. I have disabled notifications for emails as well.

Conclusion

This book helped me realized what was the most significant time killer for me and helped me make small tweaks to help me do more in much less time. The best part is now I can manage things in a lot better way.

I think the system and method explained in the book is pretty much a must-read book for every entrepreneur as well as those doing a traditional job. It can help you achieve a lot more in your job. In short, the 4 Hour Work Week is a must-read book for everybody.