I completed reading the book “The 4 hour work week” (escape 9 to 5) by  Timothy Ferriss.
This book explains with real examples how you can escape the 9 to 5 rat race and live like a millionaire by working just 4 hours per week. Techniques defined in this book are applicable to both employees as well as individuals running their own business. It explains how you can increase efficiency by eliminating the unwanted, automated the wanted and by working remotely. Although there are lot of things described well in this book but below i mentioned 44 things in my own words that touched my heart.

1. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

2. Few things writer focuses on:
> It’s not like to ‘work for yourself’ but it’s like to have others work for you
> It’s not to retire early or young, as inactivity is not a goal but it’s to have mini-retirements on regular basis throught out life, doing things that exites you.
> It’s not to buy all the things you want to have but to do all the things you want to do.
> It’s not to be the boss or employee but to be the owner (neither the boss nor the employee). To own the trains and have someone else ensure they run on time.
> It’s not to make a ton of money but to make a money for some chase, some reason.
> It’s not to reach the big pay-off, whether IPO, acquisition but to think big but ensure payday comes every day: cash flow first, big payday second.

3. You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

4. Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.

5. This is how writer Ferries defines New Rich (NR): The employee who rearranges his schedule and negotiates a remote work agreement to achieve 90% of the results in one-tenth of the time, which frees him to practice cross-country skiing and take road trips with his family two weeks per month.

6. Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

7. Most who avoid quitting their jobs entertain the thought that their course will improve with time or increases in income. This seems valid and is a tempting hallucination when a job is boring or uninspiring instead of pure hell. Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.

8. Doing the Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing the Realistic, Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre.

9. Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase.

10. People are fond of using the “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

11. Follow pareto 80/20 priciple and ask yourself these 2 questions everytime:
a) Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? : Create not-to-do list for these.
b) Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness? : Create to-do list for these and focus on these core strenghts.

12. Working every hour from 9–5 isn’t the goal; it’s simply the structure most people use, whether it’s necessary or not. – With this statement writer focuses on useless meetings, staring at your screens, moving papers here and there even if it is not required to just think you as busy while you can easily do your stuff in much lesser time.

13. If you’re an employee, spending time on nonsense is, to some extent, not your fault.

14. Since we have 8 hours to fill, we fill 8 hours. If we had 15, we would fill 15. If we have an emergency and need to suddenly leave work in 2 hours but have pending deadlines, we miraculously complete those assignments in 2 hours.

15. Atleast 3 times per day, ask this question to ourself – Am I being productive or just active ? – If you are active on not so important stuff even with high efficiency, it doesn’t make you productive. Focus on being productive.

16. Elimination is the key. Instead of adding task, start eliminating least 80% of tasks and multiply efforts on top most 20%

17. People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

18. Replace the habit of “How are you?” with “How can I help you?” – Save time on asking general questions of no use, directly come to the point.

19. Do work in batches. Like instead of spending 30 minutes on emails each day for 5 days, spend 60 minutes 1 day a week. It will do the same work.

20. Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.

21. Outsource your day-today tasks and focus your time on bigger things. Use this sort of automation to replace yourself.

22. The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. – Automation is the future but do make sure it is being applied to good operation.

23. Never automate something that can be eliminated

24. Creating demand is hard. Filling demand is much easier. Don’t create a product, then seek someone to sell it to. Find a market, define your customers, then find or develop a product for them.

25. It is more profitable to be a big fish in a small pond than a small undefined fish in a big pond.

26. You can easily show yourself like you are expert with doing simple things like:
a)    Join 2-3 related organisations (it costs very less or maybe free and not more than 5 minutes to join online)- just for name.
b)    Read 3 top-selling books on same topic and summarize each on 1 page.
c)    Give free seminars at 1-2 universities or others.
d)    Showing you have done steps 1&3, write 1-2 articles in some big magazines to name yourself as contributor.

27. Intuition and experience are poor predictors of which products and businesses will be profitable. Focus groups are equally misleading. Ask ten people if they would buy your product. Then tell those who said “yes” that you have ten units in your car and ask them to buy. The initial positive responses, given by people who want to be liked and aim to please, become polite refusals as soon as real money is at stake.

28. The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

29. Some tells you to keep employees first, some tells you to kick them in the balls, but the third option is to remove the human element.

30. Customer service is providing an excellent product at an acceptable price and solving legitimate problems (lost packages, replacements, refunds, etc.) in the fastest manner possible. That’s it.

31. The more options you offer the customer, the more indecision you create and the fewer orders you receive—it is a disservice all around. Furthermore, the more options you offer the customer, the more manufacturing and customer service burden you create for yourself. – Tim explains don’t give much options to customer as s/he will get confused and leave. Like while creating service packages, just show basic and premium package not more than 2. Why to let them time to think ?

32. The art of “undecision” refers to minimizing the number of decisions your customers can or need to make.

33. It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains. – Instead following others going in their direction even if it’s right, choose your own path to freedom, enjoy it to the fullest even if it’s gonna wrong.

34. By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

35. The key to cutting the leash is simple: ask for forgiveness instead of permission. – With this staement, writer mean that do what you want to, don’t ask for permission. If it’s go wrong ask for forgiveness.

36. All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

37. Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.

38. Several phobia that keep people on sinking ships: (Why not many take decision to quit job and do their desires ?)
a)    Quitting is permanent
b)    I won’t be able to pay the bills: There are always options. It might be emotionally difficult, but you won’t starve.
c)    It will ruin my resume: Instead, two interesting things happen upon returning to the working world. First, you will get more interviews because you will stand out. Second, interviewers bored in their own jobs will spend the entire meeting asking how you did it! If there is any question of why you took a break or left your previous job, there is one answer that cannot be countered: “I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do [exotic and envy-producing experience] and couldn’t turn it down.

39. The person who has more options has more power. Don’t wait until you need options to search for them. Take a sneak peek at the future now and it will make both action and being assertive easier. – This explains see about the future, and start increasing your options to work, to earn now instead of waiting till you need it.

40. Biggest risk in life wasn’t making mistakes but regret, missing out on things. You could never go back and recapture years spent doing something he disliked.

41. Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

42. Questions like “What if the train is late tomorrow?” should be ignored as these are not worthwhile questions. If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it.

43. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. – So, remaining free from any work and inactive is not a goal.

44. Striving for endless perfection everywhere is not a good choice – Most endeavors are like learning to speak a foreign language: to be correct 95% of the time requires six months of concentrated effort, whereas to be correct 98% of the time requires 20–30 years.

These are the few of many things i personally learned while reading the book. His blog also covers good articles which brought me to extent this list to 2 more:

45. Let the bad things happen: Say A guy moved somewhere for vacation and intentially didn’t do any work or check any emails. After arriving back, few things happened like one company shutted down due to CEO’s death, few joint-venture partnerships missed, missed radio & magazine appearances. And what a guy get due to letting it happen instead of being worried: followed rugby world cup in europe which was dream from last 5 years, attended Tokyo international film festival and so more..

46. You don’t have to recover losses the same way you lose them. If you lost $1000 in casino, doesn’t mean you recover them there only. Try to make alternative source of income for this.

I want to finish this writing with 1 small story i enjoyed the most, learned from it a lot and started applying into my life:

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.
“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.

“Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.

“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked.

“I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket.

“But … What do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.”

The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”
He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?”

To which the American replied, “15–20 years. 25 tops.”

“But what then, señor?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.”

“Millions, señor? Then what?”

“Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos …”

Hope the lesson from above story clears all doubts. What we want to achieve later in our life by working very hard, obeying other’s orders, not enjoying.. can be done now only by some basic principles if applied correctly.

Want to read this book – get it here.

Happy reading 🙂