The 4 Hour Work Week Review

Off topic from real estate, but I thought I would write a very condensed review of a book I just completed titled "The 4 Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferriss. Can you actually work only four hours a week? Highly unlikely but you can take several steps to streamline your day. This is the basic premise of the book.

Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. But don't fix your weaknesses, let someone else handle these areas for you. If your focus is totally on your strengths, you will be far more productive. The author actually recommends that you not only create a "to do list" but also a "not to do list."

Common daily time wasters are meetings, irrelevant discussions, certain phone calls, unimportant emails and web surfing. (Does facebook ring a bell?) Just stop and think how much of your day is spent on all this. He also suggests you take a one week fast from specific time-wasters, which means:

• No newspapers or magazines
• No TV - not even one second
• No news websites

I know it may be a crazy thought, but this time could be spent with loved ones.

Other ways to be more productive is to determine your most important task first thing every day and complete it by 11 AM. This is usually an item that makes the most money. Many of us begin the day doing non-productive busy work, trying to convince ourselves we are doing something important. So true if you think about it.

If you need to eliminate your unimportant busy work, and don't we all, you can obviously hire someone cheaply or you can look into a virtual assistant. This idea has been gaining popularity. You can hire someone from all over the world for about $10/hour to do just about anything you can imagine in both your professional or personal life. You can find virtual assistants at elance.com, for example.

The book goes into great detail how to only focus the important things in your day-to-day life. The bottom line: if you're doing something that can be done by someone earning minimum wage you're wasting your time. It also covers how you can make a living online and set it up to be totally automated. I highly recommend this book. You can find it anywhere and it's currently about $15 on Amazon.