Transcription
These are 20 lessons from the book *The Four Hour Work Week* that really helped me leave my nine to five when I was 24. Hopefully, some of these tips can help you guys out as well.
Retirement is actually the worst-case scenario. Retirement as a goal or a final destination is kind of flawed. When we think of retirement, we usually think of once you're 65, you're able to leave your job and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Even if you're part of the FIRE movement and looking to retire in your 30s or 40s, you're still kind of leaving everything behind. This shouldn't be the way we look at retirement.
First of all, this mindset means that you don't really enjoy the thing you're doing for the main part of every day during the best years of your life, and that's just not really an option we should have. On top of that, if you are someone who has saved up enough money to leave their job early and retire, eventually, you're going to get pretty bored. There's a stat that you're a lot likelier to die once you leave your job. If you're a very motivated person, within a couple of weeks, you're going to be chewing your fingernails off out of boredom. So, retirement as this big end goal shouldn't actually be the big end goal.
Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty. This is something that I've seen so much, and I've definitely felt that myself. When there's anything new or different, we often choose the safe thing to do, even if we know that it doesn't make us happy and it's not what we want to do for the next 5, 10, 20, or 30 years. Instead, we choose that over taking a risk and stepping out into the unknown.
This actually leads into the next point: risks are not as scary once you actually take them. A lot of people get stuck in their jobs, ruts, or relationships because they're scared of taking risks and stepping outside of their comfort zone. It's much easier to move from one job to a very similar job or to go back to school or just stay in the same relationship. But it's a lot harder to do something different, to start a business, to travel, to take a lot of ownership over your life. Because of that, a lot of people never take that first step.
I remember when I first left my job, or when I first was going to buy a rental, or when I first posted myself as some bumbling person who had terrible audio and had no idea how to edit or anything onto YouTube that my friends and family were watching. All of those seemed super scary, but it was mostly the lead-up to them that was scary. Once I actually did them, they weren't that bad. For the most part, it's just in our heads. It's not actually doing it that's scary.
It's not giving up to put your life on pause. This was honestly one of the main factors when I was considering leaving my job. I was looking at different options, and it was this idea that it's okay to put your life on pause and try something else. Worst comes to worst, if I had left my day job, tried YouTube, and it didn't work out, I could go back to relatively exactly where I was. I wasn't making a ton of money, so I could probably go somewhere else and not make a ton of money.
Even if you do earn a decent amount of money and you take six months or a year to travel the world or do whatever you want to do or focus on something new, try to start a business. For most people, as long as they plan financially ahead of time, they can go back to relatively the exact same place they were before. Plus, they will most likely have been changed by those life experiences.
Rehearse poverty regularly. Tim talks about this idea of restricting even moderate spending for one to two weeks and giving away maybe 20 percent of the clothes that you don't wear that often, which for most people is like 80 percent of their wardrobe. This helps you see what it's like to have the bare essentials and realize that you can still be happy. This is kind of like his idea of fear-setting, where you look at what is the absolute worst-case scenario if you take one of these chances.
If this doesn't work out, it would be living like this in relative poverty temporarily. But if you're a hard worker, you know that you can get out of that eventually, and it's not actually all that bad. When I look back, and when most people look back, it's when they were just barely struggling to get by. I remember we were living on an insanely small amount of money, having the cheapest food possible. Everything was really cheap when I was first getting started at my first multi-family. I had spent everything I had on that investment. That was an extremely fun, exciting, and happy time, even though I didn't have a lot of stuff.
So see what it's like for a week, and you realize that the worst-case scenario isn't really that bad. The opposite of happiness is not unhappiness; it is boredom. Tim talks about this idea of excitement being what is closest to happiness. When you're going out and doing things that are fulfilling and exciting, and experiencing new things, that's what a lot of us should be chasing.
So if you don't really know what to do in life, instead of asking, "What do I want to do?" or "What should my goal be?" we should be asking, "What excites me?" Is it reaching half a million subscribers by the end of the year so that I can give away ten thousand dollars in a video? Because I think that would be super exciting, but it only happens if I get there by the end of the year. Or is it finding a way to travel the world and work a few hours a day on your laptop, or maybe not even work at all, but get to experience new things and new cultures?
Is it being an author and sharing that story that's kind of inside of you? Is it spending time with your kids? What is it that excites you, and how can you get closer to that? In today's world, with so many different ways to do things, it's more possible than ever. It takes a lot of work, but honestly, it's so worth it and so fun to do something that you love every single day because you love to do it, not because somebody's making you do it.
I feel so fortunate I get to do what I'm doing here, but that's not really the point.
Anyways, moving on, make a dream line. If you guys want to do this for yourself, I'll leave a link down in the description to a worksheet that you can download. I've done this a bunch of times, and it's really exciting and kind of life-changing. You start off by listing three to five things that you want to have, that you want to be, and that you want to do. Then you calculate the monthly cost associated with each one of those. A lot of the time, most or all of those will be close to free or relatively cheap, or a lot cheaper than we think they are.
You do this in a 6 or 12-month time span. Then you ask what the next step is, and you do something every day to get closer to that next step. He talks about doing this in a six-month or 12-month timeline, not in a five-year timeline, because then it's a lot easier to push things down the road. I love having three-month timelines for any goal that I'm trying to accomplish because then it's something that I need to get started on right now. That puts a sense of urgency there to make a big change in your life, to have, do, or be these things that you really want and that would really change your life.
So try dreamlining; it's a lot of fun.
Being busy is actually a form of laziness. I know that I do this myself all the time. It's when I have a few things that are super important to do, I will put off doing them for the sake of doing anything else. Honestly, I'll procrastinate. I'll be nervous, and a lot of times it's because those things that are really important are also the things that you can publicly fail or succeed on. Therefore, we are scared of taking that risk of actually taking action on them.
Before I shoot a video, I procrastinated for like an hour before shooting this today because if I don't do a great job, this video won't do well. People could make fun of me. I'm putting my own opinion out there. I'm talking about somebody who's somewhat controversial, and I'm wicked introverted, so there's that as well.
Instead, we get busy with checking email all the time. We waste time on our phones, scrolling through Instagram, watching YouTube, binge-watching Friends again, listening to music or a podcast. We'll do anything else besides those important things. Oftentimes, in today's society, we take busyness as a sign of pride. When people ask how you're doing, you're like, "Oh, I'm busy. Work's crazy. This is nuts right now." It shouldn't be a sense of pride. When you're taking it as a badge of honor, it generally means that you're not prioritizing your time.
We're going to get into how to get rid of all that in the next couple of points.
80/20 your life. I try to do this once a week or at least once a month. Use the Pareto Principle and ask myself what 20 percent of the effort is leading to 80 percent of the results, or what 20 percent of the activities are leading to 80 percent of my problems or my stress. You can ask this question in almost every area of your life. What 20 percent of actions make you 80 percent of the money? What 20 percent of people do 80 percent of the stress?
When you ask yourself this question in literally every area of your life, you realize what those priorities are. You have to ruthlessly figure out how to cut out all those other things. It takes a lot of effort, but if you can cut those out, you have so much more time. This applies to so many things. Even clothes: most people wear 20 percent of their clothes 80 percent of the time. That's why I pared down my wardrobe so much. Now I only have cuts because they just fit really well, and I like to wear them all the time.
Not a sponsor, but there is an affiliate link down in the description if you guys want to check them out. Honestly, this just applies to so many different things in life.
Use Parkinson's Law. This law states that work will fill the time that is allotted to it. If you look at this in your own life, it's definitely true. I know it's true for me. If I have a week to get a project done, it'll take me a week. If I have a day, it'll take me a day. If I have two hours, I'll somehow figure out how to do it in two hours, whether it's cleaning my house, making a video, or writing a paper.
If you set yourself a very firm deadline, you will figure out how to do it in that amount of time. But a lot of times, we don't set deadlines, and therefore all this work just clutters up and fills up our lives. If you can set some very firm deadlines, your work will just magically take a lot less time because you'll figure out how to do it quicker.
Alright, put this on your calendar: Am I being productive or just active? So many times, I am just checking email again. I'm researching something that doesn't need to be researched. I'm working on something that's a month away instead of the things that I should be doing right now. Just every day, throw that on your calendar, and you'll be shocked at how many times that will pop up. You'll just be like, "You know what? I'm not actually being productive right now. I'm just kind of filling time." It really helps.
Be dumb. This might not have been the best title for this point, but it's this idea of kind of selective ignorance. I do this with the news, most types of politics, and anything that's going on in the world. My philosophy is if it's newsworthy, it probably won't affect me because it's newsworthy.
Just stop watching, listening, and reading the news. Having it be something that you check out for an hour as soon as you wake up, then listen to it on the car ride, and then talk about it with your friends. You're on a bunch of different websites, you listen to podcasts about it, you get home, and you watch the news again. Generally, it will add absolutely nothing to your life and will add a lot of stress to your life, which will most likely make you sick and has a bunch of other different negative health implications—all from something that doesn't really matter whether you know that it exists or not.
If you do have a problem with this, you can always ask a friend or a family member. I have a few people who I ask once a week or once a month, like, "Hey, did World War III happen, or is there anything I should know about?" They'll tell you everything you need to know in like 10 minutes, and you'll just save a bunch of time, stress, and headache. You won't have to worry about all this crazy stuff that's going on because it doesn't really affect you. You have to choose what you have your attention on: is it better in your life, or is it just keeping up with everything that's going on?
Batch your emails. There are so many different productivity tips in this book. I could talk about any of these points for like 20 minutes each, but we have to narrow it down. One of the best ones is to stop checking email all the time. The average person checks email about 15 times a day, and I think for most people, it is much higher than that.
Actually checking your email is kind of like those one-armed bandits, those lottery machines, where you pull the thing down and see if there's anything new or important. You get a little dopamine high out of that. It's kind of the same thing with checking the news or checking Instagram. You see if there's anything new, and your brain kind of likes that.
But instead of doing this constantly and always getting distracted, because you work for 15 minutes, check your email, something comes up, you stop what you're doing, put out that fire, then come back, and get another email, now you're thinking about something else. You can't actually be all that productive. You can't get into flow states where you get a lot of stuff done and really enjoy your work because you're constantly being taken out of that state by checking email.
So instead, schedule three to four blocks throughout the day that you can check that email. He talks about getting it down to maybe once a week. That's not going to work for everybody, but see if you can get it down to a few times a day where you can batch get everything answered at once—in the morning, afternoon, and evening—and then you don't think about it the rest of the time. Don't open stuff on Friday night that you can't deal with until Monday, and it ruins your whole weekend when there's nothing you can do about it. So just don't check it.
Fake a phone call. This is another one of my favorite hacks. I used this for a while when I was in management before I left my job. You can use it in a bunch of different ways. When you have somebody come over to your desk or someone stops by your house, you can answer and say, "Hey, I'm right in the middle of something. How can I help you?" They're going to most likely be like, "Oh, I can call back another time," or "I can stop by another time."
You can say, "No, no, I got a minute. What's up?" They'll most likely tell you what they would have taken 20 minutes to tell you in under a minute. Or if they're rambling on and on, you can say, "Sorry, I have to get back to this. Can you send me an email about this?" They'll either not send you an email, and it'll just go away, or they will send you an email, and you can answer it in 30 seconds instead of again taking 20 minutes.
I use this all the time. It's amazing, especially for phone calls where you don't want to spend an hour on the phone, but you want to get this taken care of. It's super helpful; just try it out.
Outsource everything that you can. A lot of times, we don't value our time, and we don't think that we can or should or deserve to outsource stuff. But it's something that I started doing recently that is super fun and saves me time and money, which is kind of weird. He recommends taking five non-work-related activities and seeing if you can outsource them, just maybe for a week or a month, just to see how it feels.
Maybe it's cleaning; we hired someone to deep clean our house once a month. Maybe it's your lawn care, your laundry, or cooking. All of these things you can find creative ways to get done relatively cheaply. If you can save 10 hours a week by outsourcing things, and the amount of money it costs you can earn in maybe two hours, then you're buying back and adding like a full day to your week by outsourcing these things and just working a few hours extra. That's definitely valuable; it's worth something.
So see what things in your life you can outsource. It's honestly a lot of fun. You can do this in your work life as well. It doesn't work for everybody, but if you can find things to outsource in your work life, and maybe you make fifty dollars an hour and pay somebody twenty dollars an hour, then you can actually, in essence, earn more money for working less.
Anyways, just try to outsource anything that you can. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to subscribe, and I'll see you next week.