This is a book for people trying to get the most out of life by working smarter, not harder. It’s a book full of what is now known as “Life Hacks.” Tim Ferriss starts with a story about how he was running his vitamin supplement website by himself. After a few years, he found himself overworked, exhausted and without the time to enjoy any of the modest success he was having. He decided he needed to clear his head and go on a month long trip to Europe. He outsourced his responsibilities and created processes for his website to remain running in his absence. After his trip was over, he found things actually ran better without him and he made more money without much effort. So, he decided to keep it going.
Tim argues that the best thing you can do with your career and life is to create a passive flow of income so you can focus your time on the things you are passionate about. For him, this meant traveling and picking up new hobbies and skills like learning foreign languages or ball room dancing. By careful planning, he was able to hunt down deals on travel and hotel enabling him to live in exotic locations while only working 4 hours a week from his laptop. He gives plenty of practical tips for accomplishing this, such as hiring a virtual assistant of out India to inexpensively manage your work schedule or ideas for creating new online businesses.
If you work for someone else, Tim outlines ways you can transition to working from home by convincing your boss that your performance is more important that your presence in an office. Once out of the office and away from distractions from co-workers and pointless meetings, you can be hyper-productive and accomplish your workload in a fraction of the time and free your time up so you can have your desired lifestyle.
I don’t think all of Tim’s ideas will work for everyone but he definitely gives some interesting things to think about.