Last week I read The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss. Considering I currently don’t have any ‘workweek’ to speak of, I figure 4 hours might be a step in the right direction, especially if he’s suggesting that’s all you need to work. It was a decent read.

Like many of these self-help, get-rich types of book, most of his ideas could have been summed up much more concisely, but then he wouldn’t of had a book to publish, sell and hit the top sellers list with. It did have some unique ideas in it as well though.

The reality that interruptions, from email, phone calls, and meetings, seriously hamper ones work productivity, is nothing new. Ferriss, however, suggests you radically cut down on those distractions. Not just limiting your email and phone checking to once a week (or less), but even how to avoid meetings in the corporate world. The reason is the ultimate goal is to work remotely, thus being able to travel and anywhere.

After cutting back on your communication channels you’ll be way more productive and thus can suggest to your boss that you work at home a couple days a week, proving during a trial run that your way more productive that way, and eventually, cutting back to nearly complete remote work. I’m sure there is a lot of jobs this could work for, but none of my previous ones, or my wife’s current one fall into that category.

The last unique idea was to get a personal assistant for yourself, basically to do all the boring and time consuming things you have to do for both work and personal life. The idea is to ‘outsource’ and thus free up your time to do what you really want. Your Man In India is one of the sites to find a virtual assistant.

All that to say, the book was a decent read, but nothing phenomenal. If your ultimate goal is to work 4 hours a week and make enough money to travel the world on mini-retirements while doing so, then you might want to pick this book up, but it certainly isn’t a full proof guide.

His website, The Four Hour Workweek has some bonus chapters you might find interesting. I’ll leave the password in the comments

If you’ve commented on the blog recently, You’ve probably been confronted with a Error 500. Never fear, your comment has still posted, it just didn’t send you back to the page.

Anyways, I was going to post, but with limited time, I’m going to try and fix these errors today. Hopefully you’ll know the results soon.

I think I fixed it. Please do me a favor and comment below, let me know if you are able to comment without it going to a blank white page that says Error 500

Peace.

Once again, I’m slacking on posting. Fortunately, it’s not because I and the kiddo are sick, indeed we’ve been in great spirits and have been out enjoying the beautiful Minneapolis weather. Also, Mindy has been off for a bunch of days recently so we’ve enjoyed the almost mini vacation exploring our city. It’s been sweet.
At the same time, our internet service has been sub-par. I’m going to call them out on this one and just say that USI Wireless, who has been hired to provide wireless internet service throughout the city of Minneapolis, has done a horrible job thus far. I won’t go into all the details, but I will say that I have spent far too much time on the phone with them and far too much time with no internet to feel happy with the internet service I am paying for. Hopefully they can work out all the kinks, but in the mean time they have done a pretty poor job of treating their customers kindly. The service is considerably less expensive than any other service around, but you should still get Internet if your paying for Internet. (that’s my rant).

Since I’ve been slacking on the substantive posts, I figure I should update you on other rather introspective things…

• Spring is just around the corner. The kiddo and me are preparing for all day hikes, bike rides, bus trips and other city explorations. Any other stay-at-home dad’s out there?
• Giving Up, the novel I wrote and am working on self-publishing, should be available to order from Amazon.com in the next couple weeks. I’ll let you know when it launches. For now, here’s a sneak peek at the front and back cover.
• My next book/writing project is to send some children’s picture book manuscripts off to some publishers, Lord willing I might become a published author just in time for the kiddo to read my book.
• I’m still well on track with the book a week in 2008 goal. If you have any book recommendations let me know.
• We reached our goal of 20 people participating in the Economic Stimulus Giving Spree. Feel free to join in still and prepare to share your story about how you gave the money away.
• Lastly, I use wordpress for my blog, and it’s been acting up a little lately. Not sure quite what it is, and hopefully the whole thing won’t breakdown, but if there are any experts out there, I’d appreciate your help. Is everyone able to comment okay?