Twit Rapper: Four Hour JOLT! - The Movie!

Twit Rapper: Four Hour JOLT! - The Movie!

Here it is… our Twit Rapper video/slideshow summary of Book Rapper's Four Hour JOLT! and all derived from Timothy Ferris' The Four Hour Work Week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkx0zTPgLyk

Twit Rapper: Four Hour JOLT! - Part 2

Twit Rapper: Four Hour JOLT! - Part 2
Twit Rapper: A Book Rapper Book Summary in 26 tweets…
Numbered tweets, 1A= first book, tweet A.
Read all 26!

Back to our first half of these Tweets and our previous post.

Here's the second half and remaining tweets from Book Rapper's Four Hour JOLT!

2K TIM’s DEAL: DEFINE what you want, ELIMINATE everything extraneous, AUTOMATE income streams & LIBERATE yourself - live your way

2L DEFINE the rules you’re living by. Want a new life? Live by your new rules.

2M ELIMINATE anything that doesn’t contribute to your dream. Time is limited. Time wasting is your archenemy.

2N AUTOMATE your cash flow. Put it on autopilot and stop turning up to earn it. Start a business to reap your income rewards.

2O LIBERATE yourself! If you weren’t chained to your current location where would you live? Be mobile to be free!

2P Dear Boss, I know you want to hide this book. Don’t be an ostrich! Help me achieve my goals and I’ll help you get yours.

2Q Retirement is your worst-case scenario. Keep planning for this AND have some fun along the way.

2R The New Laziness: work smarter rather than for work’s sake.

2S Information Underload: Eliminate your futile attempt to keep up to date with too much stuff. TV, newspapers, web surfing, twitter…

2T Don’t manage your time. Manage your focus. Only do the things that impact. Eliminate the rest.

2U What’s your time worth? Outsource anything that can be done for less per hour by someone else – anywhere in the world – virtually.

2V One of the simplest ways to autopilot your income is an online product. Pick a niche. Select a product. Test. Roll out. Automate.

2W Get out of the office! Start with a trial one-day per week. Keep adding a day until you’re in total remote control.

2X Stop taking vacations! Start taking 3-6 month mini-retirements every year. Earn dollars, live where it’s cheaper. Asia, South America…

2Y WANT MORE? Get the complete Book Rapper issue: Four Hour JOLT!

2Z Want even MORE? Follow @tferriss and buy his book! It’s the real DEAL! New Expanded Edition: #FourHourWorkWeek

More

1. Visit TwitRapper.com
2. Previous Twit Rapper issue: Design Advantage: Roger Martin, The Design of Business
3. Tweet with us http://twitter.com/twitrapper
4. Read the Book Rapper Issue: www.bookrapper.com
5. Read Timothy Ferris's The Four Hour Work Week

Twit Rapper: Four Hour JOLT!

Twit Rapper: Four Hour JOLT!
Twit Rapper: A Book Rapper Book Summary in 26 tweets…
Numbered tweets, 2A= second book, tweet A.
Read all 26!

Here's the first half of the tweets from Book Rapper's Four Hour JOLT!

Four Hour JOLT!

2A The Four Hour JOLT! – Derived from: @tferriss #FourHourWorkWeek, Vermillion, London, 2007. Newer edition now available.

2B Big Idea: Our live-to-work culture is obsolete. The Industrial Revolution’s 40 hour a week Deferred Lifestyle has reached retirement age

2C Speed RAP: The Three currencies of this global, digital revolution are: TIME, INCOME and MOBILITY. Tim’s TIM! LOL!

2D Your Challenge: JOLT the way you think about work and metamorphose the way you live.

2E Book Review: Tim’s Deal may not be your deal. It’s action-filled. And, it’s the best selling JOLT you need.

2F Book Rapper Thinks... OMG! I’ve been doing it all wrong! Working to get by, working to die. Time to rework my work!

2G The 3 Keys to #LifestyleDesign: TIME, INCOME and MOBILITY. Design your life around them! Got it?

2H In terms of Time, if you’re still working 50-70 (or more) hours a week, then you’re doing no better than they did in steam driven England

2I What if you cancelled your retirement? Or dropped dead before you got there? What are you working for?

2J Is your lifestyle scalable? Time’s limited. How are you going to do more in less time? Solve this to win your prize.

2K TIM’s DEAL: DEFINE what you want, ELIMINATE everything extraneous, AUTOMATE income streams & LIBERATE yourself - live your way

More

1. Visit TwitRapper.com
2. Previous Twit Rapper issue: Design Advantage: Roger Martin, The Design of Business
3. Tweet with us http://twitter.com/twitrapper
4. Read the Book Rapper Issue: www.bookrapper.com
5. Read Timothy Ferris's The Four Hour Work Week

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 11

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 11
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Grey Workers: A Hot New Management Trend coming soon to your workplace
Following from our Review/Context post of The Four Hour Work Week…
In those two posts we put The Four Hour Work Week into a contemporary context.
We suggested…

The way we see it is that the global perception and practice of work has undergone a seismic shift.

Here's a further observation we've noticed recently that supports this view…

One of the ways that global work is changing is the fast moving talent pool.
People join organisations, build up some working knowledge and leave.
Traditionally, employees stayed for a lifetime or at least a decade.
Today, it's more likely they'll stay 2-3 years.
Career advisors today even advocate to enhance your career prospects you're better to move often to multiple organisations to broaden your experience.

This is a major expense for organisations.
The cost of employing people, training them and getting them up to speed can be an additional 20-30% of the employees salary in the first year.
That typically translates into $10,000 to $30,000 in the first year.
To see that investment walk out the door when the talent leaves is to see money walk out the door too.

What's even worse, when the talent leaves for better pastures, the knowledge they gained whilst working in your organisation walks out too.

This can be a disaster!

A few years back I did a contracting role where in the first week my boss quit so I replaced them. Then, a week later the next boss quit so I replaced them too. Within 2 weeks I was leading a project I had no history in and knew very little about - all that experience lost! Three months later the project was complete and I was the expert in the organisation in that specific area. And, my contract finished. I accepted another opportunity and walked out the door without even a debrief! Talk about an organization failing to learn!

Anyhow, what's the solution?
I've been blogging about The Four Hour Work Week.
It points to the breakdown in the traditional 9-5 working week.
And, a quest from employees to work in new ways:

• flexible hours,
  
• mini-retirements,
  
• shorter weeks,
  
• working remotely, etc.

Knowledge will continue to walk out the door because employers continue to straight jacket their employees lifestyles.
A better balance is required.
A response suited to the time is required.
Extending Four Hour Work Thinking, organizations need to think about their employees as consultants and manage their input and their physical presence differently.
We need 'grey employees' rather than 'black and white' employees.
Rather than 'you either work here or you don't', a blend of how you work here will alter the problem of lost knowledge over time.

This is part of the Four Hour Work Week trend.
It's not that everyone will want a four hour work week in the way that Tim Ferris proposes.
And, it is likely they will want to manage their working lives in more flexible ways.

My sense of it is that Australian managers in particular have not grasped this concept of managing out-of-sight team members.
With the rise of outsourcing, contracting, mini-retirements, tele-conferences, webinars and career changes this will become more of an issue.

Stay tuned at your workplace for more flexible roles with more flexible time expectations and more flexible location requirements.
If it's not coming to your workplace soon, I suggest you consider voting with your feet!

Get the complete Book Rapper issue The Four Hour JOLT! derived from Timothy Ferris' The Four Hour Work Week.

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 9 - Action Plan

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 9 - Action Plan
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Actions: Live Your Dream
PROFIT: So you want to give your lifestyle a JOLT... Are you sure? Well, you’d better take some action then. Complete our Four Steps to Living Your Dream and you’ll be well on your way... JOLT yourself today! Share the process and JOLT your friends and colleagues too!

Review TIM's DEAL: http://www.bookrapper.com/2010/02/four-hour-jolt-part-3.html

Define
Blog Link: http://www.bookrapper.com/2010/02/four-hour-jolt-part-4.html

Start defining your lifestyle today. List the key elements here.
1 ____________________
2 ____________________
3 ____________________
4 ____________________
5 ____________________

Eliminate
Blog Link: http://www.bookrapper.com/2010/02/four-hour-jolt-part-5.html

Make a list of the things you are going to eliminate - starting now!
1 ____________________
2 ____________________
3 ____________________
4 ____________________
5 ____________________

Automate
Blog Link: http://www.bookrapper.com/2010/02/four-hour-jolt-part-6.html

What elements of your life are you going to outsource and automate?
1 ____________________
2 ____________________
3 ____________________
4 ____________________
5 ____________________

Liberate

Blog Link: http://www.bookrapper.com/2010/02/four-hour-jolt-part-7.html

Finally, how are you going to liberate yourself from your current situation?
1 ____________________
2 ____________________
3 ____________________
4 ____________________
5 ____________________

Love to hear what actions you're going to take. Share them with others by posting a comment on this blog.

Get the complete Book Rapper Issue The Four Hour JOLT! including all the blog posts - now freely available in one document on our website: www.bookrapper.com

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 9

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 9
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Book Review and Context Part B: The 4-Hour Work Week
The Edition We Read: Timothy Ferris, The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, Vermillion, London, 2007.

Back to Part A: http://www.bookrapper.com/2010/02/four-hour-jolt-part-8.html

TIM's DEAL offers each game soul the key to enable them to pursue a personal dream or passion.
You can create a one-off blueprint, a personalised Lifestyle Design and live your ideal life.

The DEAL process is also the perfect lense through which to view changes in industrial, social and cultural evolution over the last 200 years.

In terms of Time, if you’re still working 50-70 (or more) hours a week, then you’re doing no better than steam driven England. It may be that your soul (sic) purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others!

When Absolute Income (hours in/dollars out) is the measure, we’re all better off.
However, the outstanding winners today are those who plan around, and insist on, Relative Income ($$$’s per hour worked).

Finally, if you’re commuting to a cubicle five or six days a week then you’ve only traded tools and method in the Mobility stakes since 1850; you’ve effectively swapped your loom for a computer, and your horse for an engine.

Tim Ferriss insists that you define what ‘work’ is for you.
Why are you doing what you’re doing?
He claims that it can only be one of two things: ‘income generation’ or ‘dream fulfilment’.

‘Work’ is a scientific term; it’s a measure of energy used.
It has nothing to do with generating an income or fulfilling a dream.
Will you choose to generate an income or pursue your passion and live your dream?

What might happen if you re-frame the word ‘work’ to ‘income’ or ‘dream’?

Be mindful that even when you don’t choose, you do!
Life is the original DIY: Lifestyle Design is your own personal ‘how to’ map.

Why should you change?
Family

• What did you miss out on growing up?
  
• Are you leaving the same legacy for your family or pumping for something different?

Career

• Is the cost of what you’re pursuing worth it?
• Are you in a game worth playing; a game worth winning?
  
• Are you going through the motions or training yourself for a better tomorrow?

Self-Image

• Are you holding onto habitual beliefs that keep you from pursuing opportunities to show what you secretly believe you’re really made of?

Listen, really listen, to your internal voice, your instincts, your intuition.
You can’t store time in a bottle.
Drink deeply today, down to the last sip.
Don’t waste a drop.

The 4-Hour Work Week could JOLT you to make a paradigm shift in how you relate to yourself and to your world.
It’s about being you first, in designing yourself as a person, who you are and only then about what you do to earn the income you need to practice, act as, behave, experience being who you are.

It’s an inspiring book when read as that - an account of how one person lives an inspirational life.

Tim clearly set out his process and it is a repeatable one.
Otherwise, you know all the stuff in it.
It’s the little brother of 1984 and the 80/20 rule.
Great principles that we all need reminding of now and then – eliminate crap: work on what brings in 80% of your income.

You know all that.
And frustratingly, you don’t follow it.
Why?

Could it be that you’re not being your true self.
Are you acting out of what you have to do – what is expected - and not what you want to do.

Are you being YOU?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 8

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 8
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Book Review and Context Part A: The 4-Hour Work Week
The Edition We Read: Timothy Ferris, The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, Vermillion, London, 2007.

Business/Self development books bring to mind sheep in wolfs clothing; they’re a better fit with ‘auto-biography’ than the ‘fix it’ genre.
What they represent is life experience pulled together, bowerbird style, into a personal ethic, philosophy, research paper, manual, etc.
The unifying theme is: ‘buy my book/ebook; CD/DVD; workshop/seminar, and, I’ll show you how you too can get:

• rich/religion;
  
• motivated/thin;
  
• up early/up yourself;
  
• calm/connected;
  
• jailed/free;
  
• colour coded/colour integrated;
  
• multiple orgasms/organised;
  
• the perfect job/the bosses job;
  
• wired/unwired;
  
• a 3rd mortgage/a 3rd bankruptcy;
  
• a dodgy song into Eurovision/a colonic irrigation @ FutureLifeVision;
  
• a cubicle on the window side (when Roger retires)/a $50 million hand-shake (only a few of these)…

Get it?

They are published, for better or for worse, because the author wants us to feel as good as he does when we replicate his life, buy (sic) following his process/rituals/acronyms/advice.

At first reading, he Four Hour Work Week fits this genre: work less/play more; increase income/decrease hours; more freedom/less accountability.
Yeah, yeah...
Move on, you’ve read it all before; you know the drill!

But wait! This time it may be different.

Sure, Tim Ferriss walks his talk (lots do), tells it like it is (very Gen Y), has zero tolerance for ‘idiots’ (envy it), and yet, on second (and third) reading, there is more, much more here.

It’s rests in what Tim Ferriss doesn’t say.

It’s what he, and a few others of his generation, (unwittingly) demonstrate in who/how they connect, commit, commune and communicate with their species; in the way they engage life.
What Book Rapper is flagging is perhaps something that you don't yet know you will want to know.

The way we see it is that the global perception and practice of work has undergone a seismic shift.

We’re in the beginning of an ‘Industrial’ Revolution (we’ve had several of them; a major one was the 40 hour work week) and the 4-Hour Workweek concept makes the Short Time Movement look like an all day sucker!
The Short Time ‘8 Hour Day’ movement grew out of the atrocious conditions of England’s Industrial Revolution’s factories.
With working days of 12-16 hours commonplace Robert Owen launched a plan for an 8 hour day way back in 1817.
His innovative vision was for a 24-hour-day plan comprising 8 hours of work, 8 hours of play and 8 hours rest.
Whilst skilled workers in Australia and new Zealand were awarded a union negotiated 8 hour day as early as the 1850’s it didn’t become a typical day for all workers until around 1920.
One hundred and fifty years later, the end of the 9-5, M-F 40 hours work/live for the weekend lifestyle is rolling into a workplace near you...

Like Owen, Tim Ferris has posted a radical vision – a 4-Hour Work Week – and it’s close to the mark of the promised ideal offered at the beginning of the Information/Knowledge Age.

Remember the Age of Leisure (freedom) with which visionaries of the recent past have tantalised and motivated us?
Well, Ferriss shows us that he has achieved it; he’s pulled the plug on an 80 hour, office bound week and freed himself to live his ideal lifestyle.
Continued in Part B...

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 7

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 7
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP6: Liberate
PROFIT : What are you going to do with your time when you are no longer chained to your desk for most of your waking hours? How are you going to fill the void? TIM’s DEAL points you to the possibility of a mobile lifestyle. Instead of taking a holiday fling to unwind, you can choose to live where ever, and how ever, you want.

Get Out of the Office
If you’re a lifetime careerist/employee, before you can automate, you have to get out of the office.
Start with one day a week working remotely.
Propose a clear plan and say exactly what you want to do to work remotely.
When you get your chance to work remotely perform!
Demonstrate that it works to every ones advantage.
Turn one remote day into two, then three...

Remote Control
Adopt a totally mobile lifestyle.
Ideally, when the business has been automated, you will need to check in once a week via email to make decisions.
Pick up the phone for a few hours each week and train your people that you’re only reachable during that time – they’ll start to take initiative and solve problems themselves.
When you design and streamline your workload you can:

• Educate your kids while globe-trotting;
  
• Volunteer social capital to something bigger than yourself;
  
• Outsource tasks, and
  
• Go virtual so that you can live anywhere, anyhow.

This is your one shot at life.

The Work Void
“What the #$%@?! am I going to do today?”
Surprisingly this is the biggest concern of the New Rich - at least at first.
Like going on holiday it can take a little while to settle into the routine of not having to work today.
Yet, if you stop and think about all those wonderful things you could do... you might just get excited about the idea.

• Live in a foreign land,
  
• Establish a kinder in Vietnam as a group of 4HWw devotees are doing,
  
• Scuba dive the tropics,
  
• Help the locals,
  
• Write poetry...
  

What’s your escape?
Start thinking about what you’ll do when you join the New Rich and you might just get motivated to take some action.
It is achievable!

Mini-Retirements
Stop taking vacations!
That’s right, stop taking those one or two days, and those odd weeks where you cram all that travel and all that site-seeing into a stress filled holiday.
Start taking mini-retirements for 3-6 months every year!
Consider, how much it would cost to live in Thailand or South America for three months.
It’s a lot cheaper than staying at home with your nose to the grindstone.
Most of what we earn goes in taxes and in keeping our current lifestyle afloat... the car, the house, the...
Instead you could be ‘working’...

• In the sun on your high-tech yacht,
  
• Learning a foreign language,
  
• Volunteering on a fresh water project in China or...
• Sipping local lager in Laos.
  

Go on, you know you want to...

Liberate Questions

1. How would you work remotely in your current job?
2. How could I demonstrate my increased productivity?
3. How much money do you need to take a mini-retirement for 3 months?
4. What else do you need to consider to make it happen?
5. How would you spend your time if you didn’t have to turn up to a job?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 6

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 6
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP5: Automate
PROFIT : The 40 Hour Week is all about turning up. The 4 Hour Work Week focuses on creating a cash flow vehicle that runs on auto pilot by tapping into contemporary digital tools and global realities. If you want to work less and still get the job done, earn a good income, and live life on your terms, there are news ways to leverage your efforts. This applies to entrepreneurs AND employees.

Outsource
In the good old days only companies outsourced their staff.
Today, via the global, connective internet we can all outsource ourselves.
YourManInIndia, Guru, Elance and other websites enable you to employ someone, mostly MBAs, from India or China or the US who’ll take on the tasks that you don’t want to do.

• What could you achieve with a Remote Executive Assistant?
• How could you outsource your current job?

Quantify the value of your time and outsource anything that can be done for less per hour by someone else – anywhere in the world – virtually; do more by doing less.

The Art of Delegation

• Before delegating tasks, eliminate all the unnecessary ones to make your life easier.
• Delegation requests need to be well-defined.
• Get an assistant - even if you think you don’t need one.
• Start with small tasks and the ones stuck on your to-do list.
• Avoid managing others until you can manage yourself! A Basil-esqe management styles is not a good look.

Income Autopilot
One of the simplest way to generate automatic income stream is to build a product that can sell itself on the internet. Here’s an overview...

1. Market Selection - Find a niche that you can reach and research what problems they are experiencing.
2. Product Brainstorm - Consider a range of product offerings including reselling some one else’s product, licensing a product or creating your own.
3. Micro Testing - Using Google Adwords test responses to your ads to attract people to your website.
4. Roll out and Automate - Create online systems to automate your business. Including: advertising, shopping carts, fulfilment/delivery, banking and customer service.

If you want more... buy Tim's book!

Automate Questions

1. Can a Virtual Assistant complete this task for me? What can I eliminate before I delegate?
2. What are your top 5 time-consuming non-work tasks than you could assign to your assistant?
3. Which affordable-to-reach niche market will I sell to?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 5

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 5
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP4: Eliminate
PROFIT : Time management says we should be more efficient with the way we work. TIM’s DEAL demands you be more effective with your time by being more selective on what tasks you spend your time on. We’ve all been to too many meetings. It’s time to stop doing the things that get in the way of living our dream. Here’s some suggestions to get you started, I mean, stopping.

Single Focus
Stop multi-tasking - it only leaves you stressed and unfocused. You’re better off dealing with one thing at a time with your complete and full attention. Apply the Pareto Principle and focus on the 20% of effort that produces 80% of your results.

Information Underload
There’s a limit to how much information we can organise and digest. Information Overload is merely a futile attempt to keep up to date with too much stuff. Narrow your focus and go on an information diet. Eliminate unnecessary TV, news watching, magazine reading, web surfing, book reading, and email activity. Eliminate Inputs, Maximise Output.

Be Effective There is an efficiency epidemic among intelligent people to focus on how to do things better as opposed to what to do. Time management simply doesn’t work. The biggest gains in your productivity will come from choosing more wisely what activities you are going to take on. Eliminate the ones that make minimal impact.

Refuse Opportunities
Say ‘No’ to anything that doesn’t forward your dream. Remember your time is the currency of your life and you never get back what you waste. Stop trying to be popular with people you don’t care about and start living your dream.

Interuption Avoidance
Research shows that every time we get interupted it takes about 10 minutes to get back to where we were. Do what ever it takes to avoid being interupted. Know when to be a hermit and work from home and set up ways to signal that you don’t want to be interupted. Go to war on the Weapons of Mass Distraction like email, phone calls, meetings...

Schedule Time Wasters
Sounds like a contradiction and that’s exactly what you need. Schedule when you read your emails and when you answer/make phone calls. Grouping like activities saves the time we all need to get our heads around the task in front of us. It also avoids doing tasks more often than we really need to.

Quit Quick
Know when to quit. If a meeting is not turning out - leave. If a movie sucks - leave. If a task is failing - quit. Read Seth Godin’s The Dip for a fuller explanation.

Time Questions

1. Am I being productive or am I just being busy?
2. Am I working on something that builds my dream?
3. Am I working on the things that will produce the best results?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 4

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 4
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP3: Define
PROFIT : Defining requires first and foremost, in order of importance documenting what you say you want to DO, BE and then HAVE. What do you really want to do? What is the exact amount per month you’ll need to live a well-off mobile lifestyle? Determine what portion of your efforts are producing the results you want. Limit your time so that you limit yourself to the truly important.

Worst Case
Retirement is your fall back position. If all else fails, you keep working until you can afford not to. We’re not suggesting you don’t manage your finances, simply reconsider your lifestyle.

Not Everything
Money is important and it’s not everything. This is your lifestyle here. Money is only one ingredient in the mix. It’s probably the one that is making you stick to your current deferred lifestyle plan.

Today is the Day
When is it a good time to die? Never. The same applies to designing your dream lifestyle. It’ll never be a good time so either ditch your dream or start building it today. Today! Right now! Get started, the clock is ticking... tick... tick... tick...

Personal Note : A family member died suddenly in the prime of life whilst we wrote this RAP. He didn’t make it to retirement. Rest in peace Greg.

Relative Income
It’s not how much money you make, it’s how many hours it takes to maintain your current lifestyle. Is working 80 hours for a New York apartment better than 10 hours for a life on a tropical beach? It’s Dollars AND Time.

Lazy is OK!
The New Laziness is simply working smart rather than working for work’s sake. Don’t be busy, be productive and enjoy the rest of your life.

Too Much
Time is the key driver of a mobile lifestyle. Make the most of it. It’s not renewable. Deadlines are critical.

Good Stress
Experiment, question, argue, debate, pose. These are good stress inducers and necessary if you’re going to get what you want.

Dream Challenger
When you tell friends and family your lifestyle plan, the natural reaction may be that they want you to pull back. Living your dream may force those around you to contemplate what they’re doing about theirs - and they may not like it. You may need to let bad things happen so that you can do your big things. Don’t ask for permission; ask for forgiveness later.

Take a Break
Pace yourself. No one can sprint all day everyday without having a breakdown every now and then. That’s the whole point of mini-retirements. Spice up your life with a break - now, not when you’re too old to enjoy it.

Build Strengths
Stop trying to be an expert in everything. Start focussing on your strengths and get somebody or some system to handle the rest.

Lifestyle Questions

1. What is it you want to create from a lifestyle standpoint?
2. How much would that lifestyle cost?
3. What are the financial realities of defining your ideal lifestyle?

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 3

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 3
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week - New and Expanded Edition Now Available!
Tim's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

RAP2: TIM’s DEAL
PROFIT : It’s time to abandon the deferred lifeplan. Instead of career planning, opt for life planning. The new DEAL requires you to become a DEALMAKER. TIM’s DEAL is a four-part repeatable process. He suggests that when you get off track, go back to step one (Define) and go through the process again, and again, and again... Until you’re living your dream.


1 Define
What are the rules you are living by? If you want a new lifestyle, it’s time to change your rules. Remember, you made them up or simply adopted them from others. The first step in TIM’s DEAL is to define what you really want. What does your dream lifestyle feel like?

2 Eliminate
Time is life and it’s passing by never to be regained. Your new golden rule is to eliminate anything from your life that doesn’t contribute to you achieving your dreams. Time Management is dead. This second step deals with the first lifestyle ingredient: Time.

3 Automate
Put your cash flow on autopilot and stop turning up to earn it. Start a business that you can reap the benefits from without being in the critical path – Tim calls these muses. This third step deals with the second lifestyle ingredient: Income.

4 Liberate
If you weren’t chained to your current location where would you live? It’s time to adopt the freedom that is available. Rather than flash-by holidays, start taking mini-retirements and escape. This fourth step deals with the third lifestyle ingredient: Mobility.

Dear Boss,
At first thought you might want to hide this book.
It’s a JOLT!
A mega-challenge to every employer from small to big.
The world has changed; ‘Work’ has changed.
To attract and keep the best people to enable you to achieve your goals, you’re going to have to help them achieve theirs.
This may mean rethinking work:

• A 20 hour week,
  
• Working remotely some days,
  
• Working a four day week, or
• Some variation of these.

Personalized workplace arrangements are the opportunity to define the specific and measurable results your employees need to produce to earn their income.
Relate to your valued employees differently.
Enable them to achieve their lifestyle goals whilst they help you achieve your business goals.
This is the best way to win the best people in the Talent War.

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 2

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 2
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week
New and Expanded Edition Now Available!

RAP1: The 3 Keys to Lifestyle Design
PROFIT : So what do you need to design your lifestyle? Let’s start with a couple of questions to JOLT you out of your current slumber. Then we present the three primary Lifestyle Currencies you need to consider: Time, Income and Mobility. A personalized lifestyle design demands integrity with yourself and others. It requires transparency; always be up-front about how you are living your life.

To shift ‘work’ gears, consider these two fundamental questions that Tim kept front of mind whilst writing The Four-Hour Work Week:

1 What if you cancelled your retirement?
How do your decisions and priorities change if retirement will never be an option?
In other words, if you’re going to have to work in some capacity until the day you die, how do your priorities change, how do your decisions change?
He asserts that you’re way too smart, way to easily bored to ever retire.
Retirement would see you so bored that you’d ‘want to put bicycle spokes through your eyes – remotely of course’.
How would you fill the void after removing work as your identity, after removing job-description as self-description?
That, is something you really want to avoid!

2 Is your lifestyle scalable?
Let’s say that you get what you want in the game that you’re playing.
Let’s say you get 10% more customers, 10% more e-mails. 10% more phone calls every month indefinitely.
Is your business scalable, is your career scalable and, most importantly, is your lifestyle scalable?
And if it isn’t, when are you going to become a bottleneck; and when are you going to face an eminent meltdown?’
We won’t spend much time on the problem(s) here; everyone knows what their problem is, whether that’s time famine, or worse yet, some sense of boredom doing something that is tolerably uninteresting.
A quote by Robert Frost encapsulates the biggest problem:

‘if you work faithfully 8 hours a day, one day you can become the boss and work 12 hours a day!’

Are you in a game worth playing; are you in a game worth winning; is it scalable?


Lifestyle Currencies
Tim has identified commonalities, or principles, among people who are able to really design an ideal lifestyle for them, and that entails controlling three currencies.
In order of importance the TIM model is:

1. TIME (non-renewable),
2. INCOME and
3. MOBILITY.

The strategy he has identified comprises four, ranked, intra-dependent steps that he names:

1. DEFINE,
   
2. ELIMINATE,
   
3. AUTOMATE, and then...
   
4. LIBERATE.

It’s TIM’s DEAL.

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 1

The Four Hour Jolt! Part 1
Derived from Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week
New and Expanded Edition now available.

The Book
The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, Vermillion, London, 2007.

The Author
Timothy Ferriss
Timothy's Blog: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Speed RAP
Our live-to-work culture is obsolete.
The Industrial Revolution’s 40 hour a week Deferred Lifestyle has reached retirement age.
For the first time in 200 years you can re-frame your work ethic into a personal DIY ethic.
The three currencies of this global, digital revolution are TIME, INCOME and MOBILITY.

The new DEAL is to:

• Define what you want
• Eliminate everything extraneous
• Automate your income streams and,
• Liberate yourself to live the way you say you want.

People best placed to truly pull off a mobile lifestyle will already have a lot of skills and knowledge in place.
However, EVERYONE can benefit from following Tim Ferriss’ repeatable process.
How much is up to you!

Your Challenge
Spin the diamond; face the mirror!
What do you see?
Now, step into our inspirational, yet risky, RAP and define who the ‘real’ you wants to see mirrored in your eyes each morning.
JOLT the way you think about work and metamorphose the way you live.

Best Books of the Decade

Best Books of the Decade
What better way to round out the decade than declare the best books I've read during this time.
So, how do you choose the best books you’ve read? I felt I had to go with the ones that have changed how I see the world and how I act in it. Here’s my ten best books of the decade. Plus, how they’ve changed the way I live. Note: Non-Affiliate links to Amazon.

Chris Anderson: The Long Tail
This book changed how I saw business. I’d been aware the digital world was changing business and this book pinpointed exactly how. Digital economics enables you to make a profit from things you previously couldn’t. It favours the niche. Plus, the tools of production are now in the hands of everyone. And, the internet is your pathway to worldwide distribution.
See Book Rapper issue: Make Money From Niches


James Surowiecki: The Wisdom of Crowds
This book changed how I saw my expertise. I’d always presumed that one smart person was better than a mob. Not so. With the help of digital technology and the internet, it's much easier to tap into the power of crowds. We can be right more often! This book also highlights the importance of community. And, the power of crowdsourcing.



Geoff Colvin: Talent is Overrated
This book changed how I work. Previously, to work on something I would just do it. Now, the concept of Deliberate Practice says ‘no’. Instead, I design specific challenges to work on. I no longer work, I'm now constantly practising. For instance, I’m training myself to write shorter, sharper sentences. They’re now precise and concise. And, I’m on the lookout for zingy, zany and zippy words. Let me know if it works for you!
See Book Rapper issue: Anti-Self-Help


Brafman and Beckstrom: The Spider and the Starfish
This book changed how I see the internet. It highlights how it’s reshaping how we organize people and ideas. The starfish model (decentralisation) is the new model of business. Think Ebay, Skype and Obama. And this has changed our entire model of leadership. Great metaphor and filled with enjoyable stories to illustrate their point.
See Book Rapper issue: Leaderful.


Stefan Klein: The Science of Happiness
This book changed how I think. I used to think that happiness was lame. It was about becoming a pollyanna. Now I get the value of being happy. And, how I train my brain to respond over my lifetime. Personally, it’s great for my mind and body. Socially, it’s better for everyone. And, now I take different action. I exercise more. I socialize more. And, I think about how I want to feel. I’m happier as a result!


Mark and Pearson: The Hero and the Outlaw
This book changed how I saw branding. I used to think it was all about sticking labels on products. Now, I see it as a way of living and being. This book gives a right-brained lens for branding through 12 major archetypes. You’ll find yourself in these pages. And, you’ll have a framework for creating your future.



Timothy Ferriss: The Four Hour Work Week
This book changed how I live and work. The 40 hour work never appealed to me. I've had a full-time job less than 2 years of my life. I wanted to work on my stuff in my time in my way. Ferriss makes it okay to do this. And, he shows you how to make money at the same time. A life-changer!
See Book Rapper issue: The Four Hour JOLT!



Boye Lafayette De Mente: The Japanese Samurai Code
This book reminds me of Groundhog Day. We think we’re living a brand new day with fresh new challenges and perhaps we’re not… The Samurai present a timeless tradition of being the best you can be. Every day! And, no matter what you're doing. This books highlights their values. And, why they’re still as important as ever. Read it to sharpen your compass.



Tom Peters: The Brand You
This book changed the way I relate to myself. Previously, I was content to do the things I do. Now, I’m more aware of what I’m building and who I’m becoming. I love the style of this book. It’s filled with Tom’s personality. It’s a rant, a boisterous chant and actions aplenty that’ll make you pant… My favourite: To build your network, don’t eat lunch alone!




Robin, Dominguez and Tilford: Your Money or Your Life
This book changed my attitude to money. I used to be a typical consumer buying stuff I often didn’t need. Now, I don’t. I don’t see the point. This has allowed me to live a comfortable lifestyle working on the things I love. Perhaps, you can too…



Which books of the past decade changed the way you see the world? Add a comments and share your thoughts.