SHARING ALL SBD'S EARNED WITH 1 GOOD COMMENTER AND 1 RESTEEMER! I recently wrote a post to defend Tim Ferriss' "4 Hour work week"
I recommend it often ...just as often nobody bothers to read it...
As I said in that post, the main problem is that it is in the "Get rich quick schemes" area and it is understandable that it's perceived as a bit shady.
I think it is actually a very important book because it is an awesome curated toolkit full of tools that allow you to apply leverage in your life.
Most people don't understand why this is
so important, most don't even understand what leverage is !
First of all the word. It is most often used in financial instruments etc.
But basically you need to understand that leverage is about a multiplication effect.
In the physical world, if you need to move a heavy object, you can try to do it either with brute force or with ingenuity...
By choosing well where to put a lever and a place to support it (the fulcrum) you can multiply your own force and move the object easily.
That is the idea in a more abstract sense in many other fields in life.
Instead of leverage, think "multiplier" effect.
If you look around a bit, using leverage is what makes us uniquely human:
The first way we obtained leverage as humans was through being social.
Collaboration is how we got much more done than working on our own.
By organising ourselves in groups, collaboration became ever more efficient.
In the end a natural consequence of collaboration was specialisation. A
few people are extraordinarily good at something for some reason so
they dedicated most of their time to that. And got even better and smarter.
Note that the result of collaboration, if done well, can be much greater than the sum of its parts. It is a big multiplier!
The second way we obtained leverage is through tools (technology actually) from very
primitive (say a stone axe) to now highly sophisticated (say a chainsaw) we are able to get much more done that we would be able to through our own puny physical power alone.
By harnessing energy from our environment and focus it through technology we got huge multiplier effects.
But even more interesting, once we started to combine tools and social organisation , we started to create systems.
The process we use to do this is design.
Systems usually are optimised through design to perform a function.
Say you have a pile of rocks, that pile does not perform any function.
Say you build a house by deliberately stacking rocks into an igloo shape: great!
You have a tool to protect you from the elements!
This fundamentally means you can save your energy because you won't be cold at night. That is a multiplier effect #1.
But a system is much more powerful than that !
Say you build 20 of these rock igloos and fill them with 20 families, now you have a village ! That is much more useful than 1 house!
It generates security for everyone, improves ability to gather & store food and the exchange of ideas helps to develop even more sophisticated tools !
That is the difference between tools and socio-technical systems !
(Steemit is such a system by the way! It is much more than say a blogging tool.)
Design is not just about making your Iphone look cool !
Lately design has gotten a bad reputation, people think design it is about how pretty we can make something.
The ability to intelligently choose how to arrange elements, use tools
to manipulate them or focus their energy and where we need to apply our
own energy is how we got where we are now.
[to design]
From http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/design
1 to work out the structure or form of (something), as by making a sketch, outline, pattern, or plans
2 to plan and make (something) artistically or skilfully
3 tr to form or conceive in the mind; invent
4 tr to intend, as for a specific purpose; plan
The problem with tools and design is that they require effort to make,
use and execute. Or if you are not making them, they areexpensive to buy (how much was that Iphone again?)
So there are trade off's involved !
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
- Abraham Lincoln quotes from BrainyQuote.com
Well that all depends on the size of the tree doesn't it? It is a
clever quote that demonstrates that your return on investment for your
efforts can be much greater if you invest upfront in improving your
tools.
HOWEVER. He never said how big the tree was did he?
What if he was only cutting down a sapling? Or a 5 Inch tree?
Does it still make sense to sharpen that axe for 4 hours?
This is something I see in a lot of areas in life: we get too obsessed
with the tools, that we forget one important thing: "good enough".
Optimization: good enough
As important as tools are, it is much more important is to choose the appropriate tool for the job.
This is part of the design process, as an engineer understands it, not an interior decorator.
Jobs, houses, education they are all mere tools to satisfy certain basic needs, but have we optimized them to the right size?
Tools are expensive
The key with anything is the return on investment.
Tools are expensive and a pain in the ass to maintain.
(4 hours to sharpen an axe? Dude... !)
Better tools only make sense if we are going to use them intensely.
If we only need them once, why bother owning an expensive tool? (other than that it looks great of course). Can you borrow, rent or improvise with stuff you already have lying around for free?
The great news of the sharing and digital economy is that tools are becoming more and more accessible, in some cases even "free".
Tools: Return On Investment
This is the genious of the Four hour workweek.
It questions everything from this perspective: jobs, cars, houses, education, food, news & media... they are all tools of potentially great utility but they have inherent costs too.
(For those "free" tools, they cost most of all: your attention!** Using and maintaining might take so much time they are simply not worth it)
Many people are blind to this aspect, the assumption seems to be that if having one tool is good, more tools the better right?
What Tim brilliantly highlighted is that most people have poorly designed their lives.
Not in the sense of "cool" factor or fashion but in the engineering sense of optimizing your life plan (design) for the outcome you want.
In aviation we are obsessed with optimisation, because you can't afford to overengineer. Anything on an aircraft that is not optimised for its function will add weight and cost.
E.g. choose the wrong engines for the job and that can be the difference between an airline failing or succeeding.
In life, the problem is that we often don't challenge our assumptions behind an our design decisions. For many people they kinda happened...
When starting with the wrong or outdated assumptions, we are forced into involuntary lifestyle decisions
These are trade-offs that aren't designed to optimize for our life goals, but to follow the logic that comes with the "standard recipes".
An example:
A default design might start like this ;
"I am getting a job : well duh! I need an income right ?
So better get a high paying job!
Great, found one ! Uf, this city is pricey !
(Let's look at how much a "high" paying job really costs...)
Where am I going to live? Better start looking at the 'burbs. It's a longer drive but we get more house for the money, and the kids can go to a ''better" school. House costs 750K, oops, better get a loan...but it's all right! House prices will keep going up, good "investment", right !
Now I need a car right? Why not get a "nice" one. It "will keep its value better" and l will be spending 10-15 hours a week in it, so l'd better like it. (20-30K, + 400 USD/month to run it)
Only get 2 weeks holiday, but we don't have the money yet anyway to go somewhere!
But if I work hard, I'll get that promotion and then ... but to get that promotion I am expected to work 60hr weeks !
Pity, don't see the kids before they get to sleep ... Damn, childcare is expensive!
But I'll work hard now to make a bundle and enjoy when we retire, right? Oops, college is expensive too! Better add some more years to that career..."
That was the logic for many people, and like any bubble , it worked well for a while.
But many of the underlying assumptions are based on quicksand!
When things go wrong, it turned into:
"Damn ! Lay-offs in the company, promotion freeze! Pay cut ! Argh ! Need a better job ! Can't ! Stuck here because housing values plummeted, we're upside down on the mortgage ... if we just can hang on until the kids graduate..."
There is a saying I like very much and I use it often : "When you find yourself in a hole, first stop digging !"
In the end, money itself is a tool too, it is only one method of obtaining what we want, but by no means the only one.
Overoptimising for money, can generate tradeoffs that go directly against your long term interests.
I am not saying money is bad, it is a great tool which is universally useful, but how much is it really costing you ...
Your ultimate resource on this planet is time :
are you happy with what you are getting in return ?
Few people can answer "Yes" to that question... in fact many are not comfortable at all with this question and prefer to bury their head in the sand and hope for the best.
Guess what? If you don't change a thing, things stay the same!
The whole argument of the 4HWW is that you should be obsessive about optimizing your life and its design to suit your needs.
Sometimes you might needs some radical design choices...
There is a saying I use often in coaching: "When you find yourself in a hole, first stop digging !" EDIT already said that! Though! I 'll say it again!
Does that mean you have to become a beach bum, like the digital nomad stereotype ?
Of course not! The whole point is not to have to follow generic recipes anymore, you can fully optimize and customize your life to suit your needs.
The principle of location independence is a huge multiplier though.
Separating your income from a physical location allows you to optimize a lot of factors in your life and will create a whole bunch of options which can re-enforce other leverage techniques!
As any financial guru will tell you, you need to know 2 things:
How much is coming in vs how much is going out...
But you can make that exercise much more interesting by exploring different aspects:
Can I drastically reduce money going out while maintaining or improving my lifestyle ?
(Hmm, might need to move but in principle yes)
What is it that I want? What is the minimum amount to achieve that cutting all the fluff?
Can I improve my money for time exchange rate? (Improving USD/hr. Hmm yes, but will need to get creative...)
Can I do both so I have to work way less for equivalent or better lifestyle? (Mmh might need to read the book)
In short, the bad news is that lifestyle design will go from a luxury to a necessity because of the transition of our economy to our innovation economy... there will be a lot of change and crisis.
2008 was probably only the beginning...
Automation, technological progress and outsourcing will only increase, and normal life will suffer as a result.
These trends will reduce the income of many people in many industries ... and rather than a life of leisure they will need to adjust to doing more with less.
The good news; it is more and more accessible and feasible, the abovementioned factors make a 4 HWW style life easier to achieve.
Steemit.com can be one more tool in the arsenal of the 4HWW lifestyle designer!
My other articles might interest you too;
My defence of the 4HWW
The idea economy, why everything will change and why I am betting on Steemit.com
About the standard assumptions people have and why you need to check them...
Of course ALL the SBD's I earn from this post will also go to
1 re-steemer with a good reason in the comments why you re-steemed it
1 commenter who has a constructive (positive or negative) answer to my logic or questions in this post.
I UPVOTE good commenters too!
I am seeding the pot with @randowhale to get a good start!
I agree wholeheartedly that we need to customize our lives, and not live them according to generic, rigid rules that can be misapplied and misunderstood in a million ways. Tim Ferriss is awesome, but his approach to life is not for most people. People have a hard enough time building a single habit...optimizing one's life is like science fiction.
Agreed. Only u can make it happen here but that is a Sci-Fi movie.
I'd agree that a full on Nomad lifestyle is not really for everyone, not even Digital Nomads. Most start looking for some kind of base.
I like the concept of geo flexibility. Spend most of my time in a few specific places and travel when I want. Constant travel becomes a drag after the initial exitement wears off.
Although now I am ready for another dose ;)
https://steemit.com/digitalnomad/@the-traveller/so-we-are-selling-all-our-stuff-and-will-hit-the-road-again
The road beckons! :)
Yeah, the issue that folks have with books like 4HWW is that they are still chasing the shortcuts, the easy fixes, and the underlying philosophy and value of such a book gets ignored. On the other side of the spectrum, people tend to build a shrine to those concepts and hold on to them rigidly, without any serious thought or flexibility.
And you're right, even lifestyles we embrace may need to move like a pendulum, each in its own appropriate time.
Regarding science fiction I beg to differ... I have done it to some extent (minus the passive income but lived in Spain for 4 years working globally)
I met many others who did it. People with no money at all, people with kids, people with great jobs they quit people with lousy jobs...
It is definitely science fact :)
Not necessarily easy of course but more and more feasible.
I totally agree that there are no magic shortcuts. The lever is there to multiply your efforts but if you don't put in the initial effort it won't budge a thing...
Of course it is definitely not all rainbows and unicorns and you can and will fail if you don't take it seriously like any business. The interesting thing about the 4HWW is that the downside of failure is relatively limited and upside often surprisingly bigger than expected...
I agree and I didn't mean to imply that it was "science fiction", but rather that many people treat it as such.
I am the first one to attest to the fact that Tim's advice is solid and it works...I've been geo-flexible since 2008 thanks to internet marketing and stuff like the 4HWW.
Hehe cool! Must have a chat one of these days!
Great post, I agree with you Tim Ferris books are misconceived as "get rich quick content" when all they are, are tools to help you achieve a healthier more productive life style. Four hour body was a good read as well but again people misunderstand the nature of what he is trying to say in the book, I just picked up Tools of Titans can't wait to give that one a read. Again thanks for the post!
Only you control your destiny.
Tools of titans I read but I guess I need to look at it again. I listened to most podcasts and they were consistently good and usually had a few take aways. Reading Tim's analysis on top of that is a great value added because he reveals trends and links so you get a more meta view.
The tools of titans has not sunk in yet like 4HWW I guess.
That one I kinda lived so I internalized the lessons. The Titans concepts at the moment are theoretically interesting but I need to seriously apply these concepts to know how useful they really are.
Favourite quote is from Derek Sivers "If information was all it took, we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs!"
haha I love that quote, its so true!
I liked that book too. I'll never have the money to apply most of it, but It was still fun to read. Yes, fun.
I only dropped in to get a chance to up vote one of your articles, (I figured I'd find a good one here, I did.).
I just moved half my life savings over to Steem Power, and wanted to see what my votes worth now. A whole nickle! Thats right, half my life savings...just over $50.
I dont have money, I have kids. Thats OK. I wouldnt trade, they're better than money anyhow.
But thanks, for the good read.
Great to hear that you are taking action to back up your belief in steem.
I was thinking about your comment. "I don't have money, I have kids" there might be some hidden assumptions behind that statement you need to check.
I know kids can be expensive and you can't give them back to the store or put them on craigslist.
But I also know that kids' products are marketed with the most conniving manipulative marketing imaginable. Much of it is manipulating parent's emotions to make them think you can't deny your kids certain things or you are a bad parent.
I'd try an experiment to see if the money you spend on them really is necessary.
Before you try it, it seems ridiculous but asking yourself the question "What if I did the opposite for a while?", can be eye opening.
The trick is that you only experiment for a reasonably short time so you always feel you can go back... Also keep the experiments small in the beginning, too drastic at once and it will be upsetting...
You are right to a great extent. I mostly like to spend money on doing stuff with them rather than having things for them. Their dad and the grandparents collect more than enugh kids junk to clutter up the house. But, what you said made me think of a big display of bouncing balls that my boy just had to have one of when he was about 6. At first, I was impressed too. Then I asked him why it was better than the bouncing balls he already had taking up space in his room. He didnt know, but he was sure it was. So I explained about the marketing and contrasting colors and how once he had it home with the rest of his stuff it wouldn't be any better than the ones he already had. He didnt believe me that that wasnt the bestist bouncing ball in the whole wide world. So I bought it for him, and let a couple days go by. Then before I needed to go back to the same store I made a point to play with several of his balls in the yard first, including that one with him. At the store, when we got to that display, I stopped and he stopped. I knew he was thinking about it and he knew I was too. Then he admitted, it was the presentation and not so much the ball it's self. Not exactly the same thing. My bigger problem is I spend all my time on them and not much time where I could be making more cash. But then again, I did pay twice what a Fidget Spinner was worth, in BTC, to be sure to get them before school let out. So, there's that and you probably have a good point.
Hehe the second bouncing ball was probably money well spent if it made him think...
Don't get me wrong I get just as obsessed by my toys too (too bad they're even more expensive) but lately I have more and more bought second hand previous gen gadgets. Work almost the same for -40% -60% discount.
Need to post about how good / evil the whole marketing game has become. Check out "the minimalists" documentary on Netflix! Will make you think... at one point they said that the marketing budget targeted at kids has gone from 7 Billion a year in the 80's to over 100 billions a year in 2012 ( probably more now)
I am not in any position to give parenting advice, but my guess is that there are a lot of assumptions behind raising kids that should be critically looked at...
The assumptions, for sure. I did so much better with the 1st one when I didnt know what I was "supposta " be doing, than this last one now that I've had so much more help and advice. Been thinking a lot about that the last couple days. As for the documentary, I dumped Netflix a while back when they opted to put all their efforts into their orignal content instead of variety. Its been a while now, maybe they've improved since then.
Life would be a lot more easy to navigate if we would declutter our lives.
I believe physical clutter on its own is a big obstacle to how we utilize our time and has a direct impact on our motivational state in many ways.
Then there is mental clutter. For instance, if you look at some examples of highly successful influencers like the late Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, they wear simple clothing and often times re-wear the same outfits over and over again. This reduces the amount of brain power and energy they waste in making 'fashion' decisions by just using a set of items that work.
Funny you should say that. We just watched the minimalists on Netflix. We are definitely on that trajectory. Currently we are in Asturias (great food btw!) And travelling with the "light" configuration.
Great rehearsal and definitely useful to go through the minimalist mental processes...
But rather than minimising I like optimizing. It looks very much the same but it is less stressful :)
The four hour work week is a scam. He probably worked 80 hours a week writing that book. If you want something down you need to work hard at it, long hours, and lots of effort. That is the way to achieve goals, not by being lazy, and only working 4 hours a week.
Well if you think that you need to read my other post...
https://steemit.com/economy/@the-traveller/a-defence-of-tim-ferriss-s-four-hour-week-important-book-for-other-reasons-than-you-think
As I explain in the beginning, yes Tim's marketing did not help himself. I explain the misconceptions about this book pretty thoroughly
This book is about multiplying your per hour impact through discovering leverage in your life. I But I personally know many people who are living a 4 HWW life by applying concepts from this book.
I highly doubt any profitable business person works 4 hours per week. Bill Gates for example has probably worked 80 hour weeks for most of his life. It is in rich peoples best interest to promote the claim being lazy can make you money so that there is less economic competition for them.
go on doubting then.. If you are not willing to experiment you will not change anything in your life...
This post received a 1.4% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @the-traveller! For more information, click here!
So give me a general idea... how is it done?
First, read the book :)
Second forget about the business aspect that might come later.
Third start to ask yourself some hard questions about your current life and its trajectory...
Like the answers?
Great don't change a thing...
Don't like the answers?
Start looking for ways to improve them and take action...
This is a mere toolbox, might not be the best for you but it helps to create a different world view
Scott Adams' book is great too
Or in the words of the great Jocko;
"Don't like it?
Make exit plan.
Execute."
Great writeup and explanation. Thanks for sharing.
This post earned me 1.411 SB so that will be split between 2 commenters:
@brandylynne
@foodie.warrior
They get 0.705 SBD each.
This is part of my JULY EXPERIMENT where I share ALL my SBD's earned with one commenter and one resteemer.
Condition for the re-steemer to win is to make a comment with a good reason WHY you are resteeming. No re-steemers for this post.
EVERY POST I MAKE IN JULY WILL SHARE ITS SBD's I EARN, even if that means I make 1000 SBD, I´ll GLADLY share that with people who make constructive comments.
I explain why here
Oh. Wow!! Thanks so much.