RE: A defence of Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Week - important book for other reasons than you think
I think our work lives work very much the same way as steemit. Let me explain. One of my philosophy teachers put it this way: "How much time would you be willing to work to earn an X amount of money?" He then let us think about it. After we had thought about it, he said: "What if I told you that it doesn't matter when you start, but you will anyway work the same amount for that amount of money". What this meant was that one could start at school, or at work, the more time and effort you put into developing yourself the more you would earn. If you start early on, you'll get a job that pays much more for your time than if you put minimal effort before. Or if you work hard at first you can eventually slow down and still make the same amount.
Of course, I think it really comes down to what your workplace will pay you. Some people manage in 4 hours what others in 40 hours, but their work week is still 40 hours. But with a higher chance they will go higher up in ranks and earn more.
The way I can see a 4 hour work week become reality is to work harder in the beginning by saving and investing, to become financially independent/ free and only use a few, maybe 2-4 hours a week to check the situation of your investments and live off of them. However, with regular work, well good luck trying.
I agree that effort is unavoidable but as l wrote here in my article about leverage : choosing where to apply your efforts intelligently can give you much better rewards in return. Going for a job means you
are giving responsibility for generating the money that pays your income to the company that hired you. They pay you less than your labour is worth (or they'd go out of business) in return your risk and headache is somewhat reduced. Your downside is limited to losing your job , but you don't have to deal with the liability or put up the working capital of the company .
That might be a great strategy, or it might not. You don't control your destiny and you are a mere tool as far as your company is concerned, become too expensive and you are out. (the true meaning of Human Resources: you'll be considered more as a resource then as a human)
For me, one of the most useful aspects at the time was that it showed me that having a regular job is not the only viable avenue anymore to earn a decent income. Mind you that was in 2008. Since then tools and possibilities have increased exponentially to generate income either in parallel or in substitution of a fulltime job.
Even within a fulltime job there is more leeway then you'd expect. The whole premise of an 8 hour workday is more and more ridiculous . If your job is producing x things an hour , yes it makes sense. But in most cases it doesn't. Some questions need to be asked about jobs , no one does that better than Ricardo Semler : check out
his presentation :
Yeah, I suppose that is true. However, just about everyone has the possibility to start as an entrepreneur. Doing that, you can work as much as you like, but the less you work, the greater the risks are.
However, if you've done a lot of work before, it might not be that risky anymore.
I think the notion of an 8h work day is mostly about the work that would go into checking if someone did enough, so by having everyone do 8h balances the risk. But, not sure if 8h is actually the best amount. I don't know where it comes from. Some studies show that 6h a day is more productive. Well, hard to say.
l think it is a remnant from the industrial age: 3× 8 hour shifts is 24 hrs of production. If you are producing something @X / hr that might make sense. But cognitive demanding work after 3-4 hours stops being productive : you are basically warming your chair : in aviation human error has been studied a long time and Human Performance factors are well understood : if you are fatigued you have the same mental performance or being legally drunk... Always makes me laugh when you hear these stories of lawyers or bankers doing 100 hr+ weeks : phsiologically they are functional idiots , their brains are fried, unless they are doing drugs which they probably are, these hours don't have 20 % of the work quality and the likelihood of serious errors climbs exponentially.
They are masters at window dressing though...
I agree. I always try to limit the amount of studying I do. I know my own limits. I cannot study during the night, and I cannot study the whole day. Pulling an all nighter is a no brainer. But I still see many people doing it. I don't know if people still do while working, but it makes no sense. Even though people seem to prefer it for some reason.
Regarding the becoming an entrepreneur, l think there is a lot of success fetishizing going on. Running a business is definitely not for everyone ... I think there'll be more and more interesting hybrid formats in between employee and entrepreneurship and the standard relationships and expectations will change . Even companies themselves will shapeshift eventually.