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