The 4-Hour Workweek

I have been focusing on how to be more effective. I had read Getting Things Done by David Allen and thought it was a good book. GTD is quite the phenomenon. Listening to a GTD related podcast I came across a comparison to The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss.

The 4-Hour Workweek could not be more different. GTD is corporate and helps you become more efficient at what you do. 4-Hour Workweek is radically out of the box, question everything you have been told stuff. Basically, your parents will get GTD and 4-Hour Workweek will “make their head explode” if you try to explain it.

First, The 4-Hour Workweek is not about organization per se. It is about getting rich quick so that you can follow your dreams and travel the world. He is pretty obnoxious with all that stuff. If I had not been looking for the effectiveness stuff I might not have even read the whole book.

The key contrast and necessary effectiveness tool that is different than GTD is the 80/20 rule. He makes this a core. The 20% of work that gets you the 80% of results should be all you ever do. Everything else should be eliminated, delegated or automated. This is an “Ah-hah” for me. My problem with GTD is the “capture everything and prioritize” mantra. Trouble is after a few months I have a 100 actions which were added and immediately descended in priority to pretty much zero. Now, remember that each of these 100 actions were deemed important and, in David Allen’s words, could “blow up” at any time. It is pretty depressing to look at that list and realize all the things that could go wrong because you are not working 24/7 to nip them all in the bud.

Here are my takeaways from the book.
1) The 80/20 rule has caused me to look at the fires I get sucked into at work and look for ways to eliminate or delegate. After a week, I was spending twice as much time on my priorities that my boss is going to judge me on.
2) I plan to give actions an expiration date. If they don’t get worked in maybe 2 months, they are deleted. It may look like a mission critical task, but if in 2 months it has not bubbled up to the top then it is deleted along with the insignificant