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Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

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41–50 of 102 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#41
post #38

For a lot of people, 4WW was a "think and grow rich" kind of pressure cooker. Sure, you may be able to do with if you combine the highly marketable skills of being a certain kind of programmer with a low-rent country. Those folks are corner cases. The main beneficiary of the book was Ferriss, who's just selling the dream, like a lot of people in the "information business".

The TL;DR of the book is basically "If you want a 4 hour work week, write a book about achieving a 4 hour work week"

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#42
post #33

I lived it for a couple of years based on the framework from the book. Living on an island in Thailand diving everyday, hanging out in Bali or Barcelona. Eventually I got a little bored with it and wanted to create bigger companies so I dove back in, but I still attribute a lot of my success to stumbling across that book one day.

What product?

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#43
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main value of books like these, including books on diets or exercise, is inspiration. After you've read 4 hour work week you probably come away with an increased determination to run your own business. That more than any concrete advice it contains would be what recommends it to readers I think.

I've certainly "fallen victim" to this. I label it as that because -- for me at least -- the determination fades very quickly. Maybe I just have to find enough of these books to read consistently so I can keep my determinism up for long enough to succeed?

Except then your main determination is to read more books, not to "succeed" whatever your definition of that is.

The problem is that people read books and get a short spurt of inspiration and desire, but said inspiration / desire is for the end goal - to get there you need to do a journey first. Ferris didn't write his book overnight or even in a few weeks (maybe the summary), nor did he just have the ability to write books - that stuff takes time. It's just that looking at people who got to the end result make it look easy.

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#44
post #12

The book is about being "the new rich". The new rich is not about having a billion dollars in your bank. Its about having enough money and most importantly the time and brain space to enjoy your time. In the book Tim, emphasises that burning through 90 hour work weeks are pointless if you are not able to enjoy the $$$ it will bring in. Rather spend some money to reduce your workload and focus on things that excite yo…

I've never tried to work less tbf; I'm 31 years old and if I was given more free time, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I'm not the hipster adventurous type, traveling somewhere exotic doesn't appeal to me (I'd be more afraid of getting robbed and scammed), I'm not very social, etc. I prefer my 9-5 life so far. Just bought a house too.

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#45
post #22

No, but my grandfather owned a successful restaurant. Invested all the profits into real estate. Built an empire of 5mil+ as a Mexican immigrant. Towards the end, he had everything pretty automated by people he hired. Property managers for the rentals and a mix of family and a good restaurant manager for the restaurant. He would just come in on Sundays to count the money/accounting. Side note. Our entire family has b…

That turned dark real quick.

Yea, how on earth is that just a 'side note'...

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#46
post #8

I have not, but I know a friend who did this for a while directly out of high school. I've never read the book, but most of these types of books say "create passive income using ____________" he made a pdf and charged 15 bucks for it. Sold it on his own website and made ~$1500-2000 a month. the money he used to live and built some other not so successful websites. We were straight out of highschool though so this was…

Out of curiosity, what was the topic of the PDF?

And how were payments handled? Taxes? I find that to be the most daunting part, I mean there's distributors like leanpub and co but I'm afraid they take a huge cut.

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#49
post #9

I saw a flash of it once. I was in the middle of vagabonding in the philippines (Cebu) where breakfast on the corner was $1 and a private room $15/night. I got a contract for 8hrs at $120/hr = $960. So I rented a desk for $10 overnight (EST hours) and billed the hours after 2 nights. In Cebu, $960/month is more than enough to live comfortably. So I realized I made an entire months living (traveling) expenses in one d…

I'm fairly sure you'd have broken the terms of your visa doing that.

Re: Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”?

#50

No, but my grandfather owned a successful restaurant. Invested all the profits into real estate. Built an empire of 5mil+ as a Mexican immigrant. Towards the end, he had everything pretty automated by people he hired. Property managers for the rentals and a mix of family and a good restaurant manager for the restaurant. He would just come in on Sundays to count the money/accounting. Side note. Our entire family has b…

Were good quality standards maintained when your grandpa started his Sunday routine?
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