The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich
A new, updated and expanded edition of this New York Times bestseller on how to reconstruct your life so it's not all about work
Features
The book that put "lifestyle design" into circulation. Tim Ferriss argues for building income that does not depend on you being at a desk, then arranging your life around that rather than the other way round.
What it covers
- Defining what you actually want, rather than defaulting to earning more
- Cutting the work that produces little, using the 80/20 principle aggressively
- Automating and outsourcing so income is not tied to your hours
- Negotiating remote work, and the mechanics of running things from anywhere
Who it suits
Read it for the mindset rather than the instructions. It first appeared in 2007 and some of the specifics have dated badly, particularly the sections on virtual assistants and arbitrage. The core idea, that you should design the work around the life instead of hoping the life fits around the work, is the bit that stuck.
Worth knowing it is aimed at building a product or systemised business, not at freelancing itself. If you sell your own time, treat it as a book about eventually not doing that.