The Myth of the 4-Hour Workweek

This year I re-read the The 4-Hour Workweek. For the 8th time.

“Freedom is like a new sport.”
-Tim Ferris in the 4-hour Workweek

Back in mid-2007 a co-worker told me to read Tim Ferriss‘ book.

“You will love it” she said.

A week later I requested all remaining vacation hours and took a 3-week surf trip to Costa Rica.

I returned home sunburnt and happy, and the next day I promptly quit my job, started work as a professional blogger, and left on an indefinite sojourn to S. America that started with an expedition over the Chilean Andes.

Such is the power of the book to inspire action.

Over 7 years later I find myself waking up in Budapest, Hungary, pursuing wilder goals than I could have imagined at the time.

If you’ve read the 4-hour Workweek (4HWW) you might expect me to say all this was easy–all I had to do was start a website, hire a virtual assistant, and get on a plane to Europe–where I would occasionally check to make sure money kept flowing into my bank account.

For those of you who haven’t read Tim’s palm-tree studded Bible of lifestyle-design, or for those who didn’t really get it, here’s the punchline: it’s not really about working 4 hours a week.Continue reading >>

The 6 Phases of Lifestyle Design

You quit your job. You buy a plane ticket. You leave to travel around the world. Then you figure out a way to make some money.

Most people go through a predictable series of steps on the road to a location-independent lifestyle. While the six phases listed here aren’t definitive or exactly linear, they sum up the lifestyle progression I’ve seen from dozens of travelers and veteran laptop nomads.Continue reading >>

Location-Independence: Musings from My 3rd Year on the Road

What if home was everywhere?

After more than two years on the road it finally sunk in: location-independence is not an aberration. Moving around the world at will is a perfectly valid and (extremely) advantageous lifestyle choice, but ultimately just another way to navigate through life.

It has, however, warped my notion of reality over the last 6 months. Continue reading >>

Defining Success in Life: the Dreamline Exercise

Without concrete goals you’ll never develop concrete plans to achieve them.

Above: One of my all-time dream destinations, Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

Last week Dan and Ian revisited a favorite topic: the Dreamline exercise. Despite having read the 4-hour Workweek at least 5 times, it was listening to the LBP#91 (Are you A Hustler or an Entrepreneur?) back in March that finally inspired me to sit down and go through the motions. (I wrote most of this post then, but this recent podcast inspired me to finish it).

Dreamlining can profoundly change your life. You just have to sit down and do the work.

Like a chess master, you want to see the end-game.

A chess master knows exactly what the end-game is and they’ve already thought through the next 20 moves to get there. When variables change they make small course adjustments, but ultimately check-mate is inevitable, if not in this game then in the next.

What’s surprising about my own life is how often I’ve been operating without a plan. A lot of us drift through life with general goals, like ‘get in better shape’ or ‘travel more’, but without more substance behind them these are just day-dreams.

One of the most effective ways I’ve found to define success in a concrete and action-oriented way is the Dreamlining exercise from the 4-hour Workweek.
Continue reading >>