3 Lessons Learnt From 'The 4-Hour Workweek' book

Main points

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1. The 80:20 principle

?Tim tells the story of how he was working 15 hours days, 6 days per week and facing burnout when he heard about the 80:20 principle. When he applied the principle to his customers he discovered that just 5 out of 120 were bringing in 95% of his sales. This information totally transformed his approach to handing his customers.

He stopped contacting 95% of his customers (they could still order on line or phone in) he focused all his attention of the other 5%. He also focused his marketing efforts of finding more customers like his 5% ones.

Maximum income from minimum effort became his new goal.

Within one month his income had doubled and his hours dropped from 80 down to 15 hours.

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Parkinson’s law

If somebody is given a week to do a job, they will take a week to do it.

Give somebody a day to do the same job and they will get it done in a day.

When Tim was in college, he had an assignment to do but only discovered 24 hours before hand about the deadline. He asked his professor for an extension which was refused so he had to do it in 24 hours. He drank loads of coffee, stayed up all night and got it completed on time.

?If we combine Pareto and Parkinsons law we get:

Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to your income and schedule them with very clear and short deadlines.

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2. Rules around communications

Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate actions.

How many time per day do you check your e-mail ?

How often does the phone interrupt your day ?

What about meetings, both external and internal ?

?Again this is not rocket science and anybody who has attended a time management course will be familiar with some of these concepts but I still think that Tim has an interesting take on some of these issues.

His big message is that you need to be in control of your time, your output.

Some of his rules are:

A.??? Complete your most important task before 11am.

B.???? Don’t open your e-mail first thing in the morning.

C.???? Never open e-mail more than twice per day.

D.??? If somebody leaves a voicemail, e-mail them a response.

E.???? If somebody wants to meet you, ask them to send on an e-mail.

F.????? If you have to do a presentation, ask to go on first and you then have the option of leaving early.

G.??? Avoid unnecessary meetings.

Tim’s communication preferences are in order – email, phone, meeting.

?3. Automation & systems

Just like Michael Gerber covered in his landmark book ‘The E-myth’, the key to having a successful business that can run without you is to have good systems and Tim covers this in some detail.

The bad news if you have a service business is that the 4 hour work week is harder to achieve. If you have a product, it’s easier to automate a system which delivers a regular income with the minimum input from you.

If you have a service, the good news is that it’s possible to develop products and automate them so that you can work towards a 4 hour work week and Tim takes you through some of these steps.

?Neil