Yesterday I left fresh from a Skype Consultation with a client who, almost as we were finishing told me in all seriousness that with my advice he was ready to join the four-hour-week crowd.
I know what he was talking about. Tim Ferris’ book on working just four hours a week, itself written and titled after web trends on popular searches researched by the author has inspired thousands and lent yet another hand to the momentum that somehow you can work less and achieve more.
I have read the book not least because I happen to like the author’s style and I actually buy into the fact that unless you stay focused on your goals the mundane overload of everyday tasks will absorb your energy and stop you from achieving what you want by tiring you out and distracting you. Having read the book I also note his sleight-of-hand in defining work. Ferris says that his definition of work is doing all the things he does not like doing which means that many of the things he likes doing in his line of work he does not consider work.
Fair enough. On that basis he has become successful and wealthy on what might well be a 100-hour week of which probably four or maybe five hours are devoted to the tasks he really does not like doing. Using that definition my own week which consists of at least 30-hours of research and about half that of writing and consulting is probably no more than four hours which is the additional time I take to reply to emails, update my expense accounts and take care of administrative or executive tasks related to my website’s development.
Ferris’ book is useful in actually drawing attention to the fact that it is way too easy sometimes to get sucked up in tasks which can take up all our time (I could spend hours dealing with emails and planning which I now use more productively). It is inspiring and empowering but as with most books of its kind it cannot be taken at face value.
Business of any kind, in order to succeed, requires vision, passion and energy. It also requires you to have a clear understanding of why you do it, the ‘What gets you out of bed in the morning’ question. If you can answer that then you should be able to find yourself in a zone which allows you to devote the time and energy required on the things which really matter.
The client I was talking to hopes that automation will give him wealth whilst vastly increasing his available leisure time. Any of us who have been through the job market in the past three decades know full well that automation actually increases the amount of time available for more work rather than give us leisure time and working online tends to blur every boundary between work and life until the two become almost indistinguishable.
The real gain is that when you do something you love then the time and effort you put in are a rewards in their own right and it does not feel like work. My father worked a forty hour week getting up at the same time each morning and coming home the same time every evening and, probably, having the same lunch hour break for twenty years. My work week (and yours) is based around the time and energy we devote to work we love. I often find myself updating this blog from hotel rooms in Berlin, Athens, Sydney or Miami and each time the time zone will be different, the people I will be talking to will be different and their website SEO and online business exposure needs will be different but, in each case, I find myself feeling truly privileged that I can take my ‘office’ with me, that I can work from the beach if I want to (truly overrated activity, the beach is really for enjoying leisure time) and that I can work until 3.00am one day and then not start again the next day until almost midday.
The point is that automation, technology and the web have enabled us to break through the barriers of work time limits where someone imposed upon us a set number of hours and paid us enough to survive a lifetime working for them. It is that which we should rightly celebrate and feel great about rather than the supposed (and erroneous) idea that we will work less and earn more.
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