
Ask HN: Is Anyone Living “The 4-Hour Work Week”? - Dejital
A book popular in our industry is now a decade old.<p>Has anyone put the advice from the author Tim Ferriss into practice?<p>If so, how did you manage to do it and what have you learned from the experience?
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Sindrome
No, but my grandfather owned a successful restaurant. Invested all the profits
into real estate. Built an empire of 5mil+ as a Mexican immigrant. Towards the
end, he had everything pretty automated by people he hired. Property managers
for the rentals and a mix of family and a good restaurant manager for the
restaurant. He would just come in on Sundays to count the money/accounting.

Side note. Our entire family has been destroyed by fighting over money. Money
isn't everything. :)

~~~
ap46
That turned dark real quick.

~~~
mstade
It definitely did. I feel for OP – my family has also had its issues with
money. Particularly money grabbing individuals who don't mind walking over
bodies, family or otherwise, to get what they perceive as "theirs" by some
metric. Whether or not these people are technically correct doesn't really
matter when in the end, people who truly used to love each other are now sworn
enemies. Cliché as it may be, it's very sad to see and be close to.

~~~
soneca
My mother's family went through the same dispute over my grandparents' real
state and destroyed the family. Keep in mind that it is a lower middle class
family in a developing country (Brazil), not that much money. One of the most
vicious aunts in the dispute had actually the same or more wealth than my
grandparents.

Money has a way of being the perfect "excuse" for vicious people to expose
their viciousness.

~~~
mstade
My case isn't very different from yours, except we're in a well off country
and individually pretty well off also. Goes to show vicious greed isn't
necessarily a class thing.

In my case, a certain person did things so despicable that in my view until
they atone for their crimes (actual crimes, not just wrongdoings) in prison, I
will never be able to even start forgiving them. Instead, they're living the
high life. It's very sad.

I hope you and your family are ok, if nothing else the ones you still care
for. These episodes in my life have certainly made me appreciate my immediate
family in a different and stronger way.

~~~
soneca
At the end it was for the better (except for my mom's and grandmother's - when
she was alive - deep suffering of course). We divorced from the vicious part
of the family, no contact at all with a few aunts and cousins, my parents
fortunately could afford to give up of their part of the inheritance and it
was totally worth to buy our freedom of any need for future contact with them.

For me, it was a lesson that absurd unethical behavior within a family happens
in real life, it is not a thing of soap opera.

Fortunately, there was no crime committed in my case. "Only" obnoxious
behavior, greed, and extreme selfishness.

------
ShirsenduK
The book is about being "the new rich". The new rich is not about having a
billion dollars in your bank. Its about having enough money and most
importantly the time and brain space to enjoy your time.

In the book Tim, emphasises that burning through 90 hour work weeks are
pointless if you are not able to enjoy the $$$ it will bring in. Rather spend
some money to reduce your workload and focus on things that excite you.

While most the examples he cites are not very useful for me. (I am from India
and outsourcing the boring jobs to India isn't very effective ). It helped me
focus on what I want in my life. And what is the $$$ amount which will help me
achieve that. Its a hard conversation which most of us don't have with
ourselves.

I sum up the book as; "There is no point in feeling like shit in your 20s and
your 30s for a great life in your 40s which might not even come." Its not
exactly YOLO as it emphasises to have a great time and not just let life
happen.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I've never tried to work less tbf; I'm 31 years old and if I was given more
free time, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I'm not the hipster adventurous
type, traveling somewhere exotic doesn't appeal to me (I'd be more afraid of
getting robbed and scammed), I'm not very social, etc. I prefer my 9-5 life so
far. Just bought a house too.

~~~
fsociety
Obviously spend your life however you like, I just want to put it out there
that it sounds like you don't like to put yourself outside of your comfort
zone (like pretty much everyone, even the hipsters).

There is nothing 'hipster' about doing something outside of your normal
routine, like travelling or yoga. I'd recommend you try it more often, you'd
be pleasantly surprised at what sort of things (good and bad) will happen.

I recently went on a trip, and when the plane landed my first thought was that
I wished I stayed home. Good and bad things happened on this trip, but boy am
I glad I did it.

~~~
partisan
While I am sure it comes from a good place, I wonder why there is a
prescription being given when he states he is happy the way he has it and has
no interest in living any other way? Coulent he be genuinely happy with his
life and in no need of change?

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gobengo
I saw a flash of it once. I was in the middle of vagabonding in the
philippines (Cebu) where breakfast on the corner was $1 and a private room
$15/night. I got a contract for 8hrs at $120/hr = $960.

So I rented a desk for $10 overnight (EST hours) and billed the hours after 2
nights.

In Cebu, $960/month is more than enough to live comfortably. So I realized I
made an entire months living (traveling) expenses in one day of work. That's
almost like the "2 hour work week"

~~~
isostatic
I'm fairly sure you'd have broken the terms of your visa doing that.

~~~
Hnrobert42
Yes, but so would checking work email on vacation abroad. It's all a matter of
risk tolerance.

------
bsvalley
The point of this book like many other books "get rich quick and work less",
is to make the author richer. If you're successful, people will most likely
listen to you. So, you need to be successful in some way in real life and if
you do, Tim showed you how to leverage a success into a great business model.
This helped him generating more income by documenting his journey to a larger
audience. So, the content of his book is not the point I think. It's the
existence of that book in itself. So, to me it's still about luck and about
taking risks in life. It doesn't answer the question: "how to become rich?".
More like "how to create a business model based on your success".

Like any other book... There is no recipe for success. But there are a lot of
techniques on how to maximize your income.

~~~
Grustaf
I think the main value of books like these, including books on diets or
exercise, is inspiration. After you've read 4 hour work week you probably come
away with an increased determination to run your own business. That more than
any concrete advice it contains would be what recommends it to readers I
think.

~~~
joekrill
I've certainly "fallen victim" to this. I label it as that because -- for me
at least -- the determination fades very quickly. Maybe I just have to find
enough of these books to read consistently so I can keep my determinism up for
long enough to succeed?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Except then your main determination is to read more books, not to "succeed"
whatever your definition of that is.

The problem is that people read books and get a short spurt of inspiration and
desire, but said inspiration / desire is for the end goal - to get there you
need to do a journey first. Ferris didn't write his book overnight or even in
a few weeks (maybe the summary), nor did he just have the ability to write
books - that stuff takes time. It's just that looking at people who got to the
end result make it look easy.

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blueyes
For a lot of people, 4WW was a "think and grow rich" kind of pressure cooker.
Sure, you may be able to do with if you combine the highly marketable skills
of being a certain kind of programmer with a low-rent country. Those folks are
corner cases. The main beneficiary of the book was Ferriss, who's just selling
the dream, like a lot of people in the "information business".

~~~
Cthulhu_
The TL;DR of the book is basically "If you want a 4 hour work week, write a
book about achieving a 4 hour work week"

~~~
mattm
And even that will take more than 4 hours per week.

------
moat
I lived it for a couple of years based on the framework from the book. Living
on an island in Thailand diving everyday, hanging out in Bali or Barcelona.

Eventually I got a little bored with it and wanted to create bigger companies
so I dove back in, but I still attribute a lot of my success to stumbling
across that book one day.

~~~
_jdams
As a somewhat obsessive relationship with that book, I'm looking to get into
entrepreneurship soon. From everything I've read and researched about the
4HWW, people say its better to first have a working business and/or income
stream, then focus on ways to automate or make single processes more
efficient; As opposed to trying to start a business using the 4HWW from the
'get-go'.

What would your advice be? As someone who's lived the success, do you think
its possible to start from the ground up with 4HWW in mind?

~~~
moat
No I don't think that is usually possible. I think your first idea is correct.
Work like crazy to get something working and profitable, and then work to
automate it (which is frequently harder than you might think).

Doing this has helped me create bigger things as well. I create a business,
more or less automate it, and then use that cashflow to work on other
businesses. Eventually creating a portfolio of cashflow businesses, with a few
exits in the middle.

------
4hwwperson
I have lived the 4 hour work week for the last 2 years. I created a course
online and earned half a million dollars from it in the first year alone,
after spending 3 months creating it (I was 29 when I created it). Many of the
ideas from that book (4hww) were ideas that came naturally to me prior to
reading that book. I think anyone who considers themselves resourceful
(particularly with utilizing Google search) would say the same thing. Most of
the world's information is on the web, so if you want to create a lifestyle
that optimizes for high earnings and low work hours, you should start by
searching Google.

It's striking to me how people seem so baffled about anything anymore these
days. Is there a God? The best framework humans have discovered for figuring
things out is the scientific method, and according to that, the answer is: not
as far as we can tell. Why is this even a question anymore and why do
religions still exist, 20+ years after the internet has been around for the
public? Again, the answer to that is on the web as well (the answer probably
has to do with how longstanding institutions take a long time to die without
meteoric disruption - and physics research/the discovery of the Higgs boson
clearly wasn't enough to disrupt religion, nor was the recent rise in
popularity of Nick Bostrom's simulation theory which happens to be my favorite
theory about what this universe is, etc.).

Anyway, I digress...the point is that nearly anything can be figured out via
Google. Want to become a rocket scientist? Google it. Read the best books out
there. Don't sell yourself short. Want to be an engineer? Google it. And then
do it. You can also learn almost anything with very low cost, thanks to the
Internet.

I just gave you the secret to the 4 hour work week. Google + determination.

If you're struggling with accepting this answer - start with getting better at
searching Google. You can get good at it like any other skill.

~~~
fefb
Cool, was it a video course or some ebook?

How did you do the marketing?

~~~
4hwwperson
It was a video course. Without divulging too much, I Googled around and found
some sites that had massive audiences that were similar to the audience I was
targeting with my course. I contacted them and they cut me a deal to
distribute my course to their audience. That brought in tens of thousands of
students in the first year alone.

~~~
laksmanv
How much was your course priced at and what was the split like?

------
Ilurkyeahsowat
I have not, but I know a friend who did this for a while directly out of high
school. I've never read the book, but most of these types of books say "create
passive income using ____________" he made a pdf and charged 15 bucks for it.
Sold it on his own website and made ~$1500-2000 a month. the money he used to
live and built some other not so successful websites. We were straight out of
highschool though so this was enough money to live on and he didnt TOUCH the
webpage for like 2 years steady income. Sometimes people just get lucky I
guess.

~~~
nyukid97
Out of curiosity, what was the topic of the PDF?

~~~
Cthulhu_
And how were payments handled? Taxes? I find that to be the most daunting
part, I mean there's distributors like leanpub and co but I'm afraid they take
a huge cut.

------
vbsteven
I'm not living the 4HWW but that book kickstarted my journey from employee ->
full time freelancer -> part time freelancer + working on my own products ->
100% my own products.

I'm currently transitioning into the part time freelancing phase.

~~~
e59d134d
Why are you transitioning in to freelancing phase? Products business is
slowing down?

~~~
vbsteven
I'm not there yet, I'm currently transitioning from full time freelance to
part-time freelance combined with launching some products of my own.

------
stealsomesteel
I’m living 4 hour work week and it’s one of the best books that ever helped
me. Just use the advices in the book, pretty simple. I spend most of these
days working on side projects, feels great! This also allowed me to earn a lot
of money, so definitely not downshifting.

Actually kinda amazed that there aren’t many similar people in the thread...I
can email you from a public address, it would prove I have a real reputation
and not just Tim’s paid commenter.

~~~
_jdams
As the other request said, please post more information. I want your lifestyle
and hope one day I can come up with an idea and put it into action to achieve
it.

~~~
stealsomesteel
Dig deeply into some area, become a professional.

Then hire other people and try to optimize your business to work without your
control. It's very important to be able to manage the company remotely.

A lot of people are trying to get to some huge expertise to achieve "bigger
salary" or something. But no one really focuses on earning a _small_ regular
no-hassle income.

That's mostly it...Focus on 20% of stuff which gives 80% of results, like the
book said.

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dahoramanodoceu
I work one hour or two every morning to pay the bills. I spend an additional
3-4 hours working on things I want to see happen in the world. The hardest
part is self-discipline, so I cut out all social media (no reddit outside of
work-related stuff and limit HN). No movies and no porn surfing.

No internet at home helps me stay on track. When I need internet I walk to the
coffee shop with a to-do list.

~~~
icebraining
What do you actually do during those couple of hours to pay the bills?

------
gasull
This story is a good example:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-
the-4-hour-w...](https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-the-4-hour-
work-week-for-a-decade)

Also I have a couple of friends who have done it for a while.

------
bwb
My biz partner and I lived it for about 2.5 years. We finally sold the network
we had built up for 7 figures and ended up buying a company with 25 people, so
the opposite of 4 hours :)

------
tmaly
I wish I had read it sooner, but I have made small adjustments to my day job
to improve things.

For those that cannot work remotely, you can still improve your productivity.
I have a DND button on my phone that goes right to voicemail after one ring. I
funnel everyone into creating a Jira task instead of trying to email, call, or
ask in person for some work.

I document commonly asked questions like his FAQ in Confluence so I can point
all new hires in other departments to this introduction training material.

------
FrostAlot
Not exactly a '4-hour work week' but after reading the book, I have put in a
lot of effort into automating a lot of daily recurring browsing activity for
which I used to waste time daily. Since I prefer email as the main mode of
communication, I have developed automation to extract and send all the
important information (for which I used to browse) to me via email daily or
hourly. Activities like tech news updates with word cloud, real estate
searches, stock prices of interested stocks and many more. This saves me a ton
of time by not randomly starting to browse. I attend to only important emails
from these email updates.

------
miga
4-hour work week no, but I know pretty many people that wait to vest on 4-hour
workdays.

------
_tulpa
I really don't think there are many people at all who are in a position to
make use of the advice in the book, and of those who are I really don't think
there are any who would actually benefit from it.

Gotta milk that survivorship bias though!

~~~
demygale
Any success story is going to have survivorship bias. But yeah, 4 hour work
week is really the worst example of it.

------
csallen
Yvo Schaap, the creator of Directlyrics.com, recently wrote a detailed article
on Indie Hackers about how he's been living the 4-hour work week for the past
decade: [https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-
the-4-hour-w...](https://www.indiehackers.com/@yvo/how-ive-lived-the-4-hour-
work-week-for-a-decade)

He created product where the brunt of the work took place in the first few
months/years, but the SEO traffic paid dividends for years to come.

~~~
robtaylor
"Early in 2010 I made the decision to become fully licensed, which
significantly cut into my revenue. MetroLyrics did the same before me, and
AZLyrics eventually followed suit."

...is a key two lines to me.

------
afpx
I have two friends who did, independently. I surely doubt that they are still
running things as they did way back then. But, at the time, and for almost a
decade afterward, it enabled them to travel freely around the globe and have a
relatively luxurious lifestyle.

Interestingly, both eventually got married and settled down back in the
states. They each seem to be doing well - but have more conventional
lifestyles now (i.e. Living in the burbs with kids).

------
gorkamolero
Yes. The book sent me in a treacherous path and it wasn't easy but today I can
say I'm working remote, 3 hours/day (minimum though) and earning a good
living. Problem is, I am ambitious and end up working the whole deal, and
investing every bit of earnings while preparing for the future. But happily.
Still, I can say this book sent me on the path.

------
chunkiestbacon
It gave me the dream to work remotely from abroad. I'm relatively poor and
working a lot, but almost 2 years in Japan now.

~~~
wrath224
Do you just use a self-sponsored visa? I jump back and fourth but work for a
US based company on salary. Curious if I could do the same?

~~~
chunkiestbacon
I'm on a cultural visa and am learning a martial art under the guidance of a
teacher. I pay taxes in the origin country, but it's not optimal. If you have
enough money, found a company, then you won't have any problems and can renew
easily.

------
mchan
A friend of mine is - she trained to become a Pilates instructor a number of
years ago. Now she does 2 group classes a week (corporate clients) of 1 hour
each, earns about $300 per class. That's enough for her to live on.

~~~
tome
Where in the world can you change $300 an hour for pilates and live on $600
per month?

~~~
Hnrobert42
Same question, except $2400/mo.

~~~
tome
Aha! That's more understandable, though still somewhat surprising.

~~~
pwinnski
They're group classes, so each participant is paying only a fraction of the
$300.

~~~
tome
Even so ...

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michalpt
No, because most of these books are bullshit allowing their authors getting
rich by selling them to people who look for some kind of "magic success
formula" :)

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SirLJ
Yes, i can do it tomorrow with my side project

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widgetic
Yes, but it's about 6 hours.

