Aditya Sheth

One of the first nonfiction books I read & keep coming back to even today after ~4 years because it’s so full of insights & hyper-specific advice for work or even non-work situations.

It’s hard to categorize this book into just 1 genre/category. For me, it’s a combination of Business, Productivity & Personal Development which is saying a lot. 

What’s even harder is condensing this book into just a few key takeaways you can digest while sipping on a cup of coffee which is what I aim to do with this piece. Too lazy/busy to read a book? Have some time to kill on your subway ride home? Want key lessons from an entire book in ~7 minutes? 

Read on…

I provide some context/information on some takeaways to ensure I get the point across without any fluff; I paraphrase where I can while simply leaving some sentences untouched straight from the book to retain their message & structure. 

So here are my takeaways from reading “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss:

On Doing More With Less ✅

1. How do you combat this law to be even more productive than you currently are? The solution:
2. • Limit the number of items on your to-do list, and
3. • Use impossibly short deadlines to force immediate action while ignoring minutiae. 
4. Simple right? Sit back and watch how a 2-hour report now takes you just 30 minutes instead.

Credits: https://www.rypeapp.com/how-to-learn-a-new-language-lesson-3/

1. I paraphrased the above law a tad bit, but the message is still crystal clear. Analyse your actions/efforts — Identify which of your efforts yield the most results? Then do more of that. Focus on the 20% that will get you 80% of the results. Most people do the opposite by aiming for perfection or a 100% which in essence leads to 80% of wasted energy/efforts. (For eg: This was initially a 3000-word mammoth piece, but that would in direct violation to Pareto’s Law. So I cut it down drastically to give you 80% of the knowledge in 20% of the time.
2. Why? Because perfection is an impossible destination. In most work-related endeavours & sometimes even in the personal domain: >80% of effort is wasted. Focus on great for a few things & good enough for everything else. 
3. Attention > Time. Why? Because time without focused attention is meaningless so optimize your life around saving attention rather than time. How? Start by taking decisions faster. (For eg: does it really matter what breakfast you eat or what clothes you wear?)
4. Fast decisions preserve usable attention for what matters. Need more perspective? Further Reading: The average CEO takes 50% of their decisions in 9 minutes or less by Professor of Business & Choice expert — Sheena Iyengar.
5. Multi-tasking is bad. Really bad. Why? Divided attention will result in more frequent interruptions, lapses in concentration & poorer results. The fix:
6. • Do not have more than 2 primary tasks/goals per day. (These are tasks like working on a project or assignment, not answering an email.)
7. • Do each task/goal separately from start to finish without any distraction. 
8. If you’ve been blabbering about how you’re a multitasking beast during your job interview, or litter the word across your resume until it loses it’s meaning  — this is your cue to stop. Further Reading: Multi-tasking is not a valuable skill.

On Cultivating Selective Ignorance☺️

1. One of the biggest stressors — impressing people you don’t like. Impressing people is important. But, only try to impress people you want to emulate —the right people.
2. Most of the information/news/update you consume is time-consuming, low quality, irrelevant to your goals & outside your influence *cough* Buzzfeed*cough* But, even more importantly — keeping up with every bit of news or update in the 21st Century is next to impossible. So, give in to your FOMO … almost nothing is ever that important/urgent.
3. Want to go on an enlightening journey to cultivating selective ignorance? Start with quitting Buzzfeed, the lowest hanging fruit. Want to go in the deep end? Further Reading: How to Use the Low Information Diet for Better Day-to-Day Productivity?
4. Stopping something is 10X better than finishing it. If you’re reading an article that sucks, watching a movie that’s terrible or listening to music that’s hurting your brain instead of stimulating it, do yourself a favor —STOP. Feel like exploring further? Further Reading: Stop doing S#!t you don’t like. Paul Jarvis explains this concept & goes in even greater depth than I could due to my length constraints.

Get this book for yourself on Amazon 👉🏻 here. What was your favourite takeaway? Comment below & let’s talk about it! 👋🏻