raffy chan

living the 4-hour workweek

You may be clocking-in more than 40 hours a week at the office. Your life may be one filled with hours and hours of dedicated brainstorming, tedious paperwork and overtime. Or maybe you’re an entrepreneur that can’t seem to get your business off the ground because of a mountain of administrative duties that don’t seem to go away. But there is a solution to all these.

Renowned internet marketer John Jonas knows what it’s like to log 40 hours per week and realized that it was not amounting to what he thought it could produce. This is why he has successfully gotten out of that tedious routine and created a system that would ensure that a person works fewer hours and yet produces more income. He does this through his program of outsourcing.

John Jonas says he’s all about working as little as possible on the tedious details to allow you time to focus more on important things like being the CEO of your own business; and more time for your family, hobbies, and helping others achieve the lifestyle he enjoys. He calls it a 17-hour workweek.

This concept of working only a few hours a week was actually pioneered by Timothy Ferris and described in detail in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. In the Jonas Blog site you’ll see it under a heading of “Books That Changed My Life.”

The 4-Hour Workweek discusses what Ferris calls a “lifestyle design” or the creation of a lifestyle that is both fulfilling and self-sustaining. One that balances work and play and maximizing the positives of both. The book is divided into four sections, each exploring one of the components to lifestyle design. He calls these components DEAL-- an acronym for the process of becoming a member of the New Rich, who he defines as those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present--using time and mobility.

In the acronym, D stands for Definition, which refers to figuring out what a person wants, getting over fears and society’s rules, and understanding what it would really cost to get where a person wants to go. E is for Elimination and this is where Ferris defines his concept of time management and effectiveness. A stands for Automation or how to build a sustainable, automatic source of income. And L, Liberation, is dedicated to the successful automation of one’s lifestyle and the liberation from a geographical location and job.

The book, The 4-Hour Workweek is mainly about pointing out that time really is the most valuable asset we have in our lives. Time allows you to follow your dreams and the book teaches you how to move more and more of it into your own personal life so you can achieve your goals.

All the concepts presented are things that John Jonas says and lives by too, albeit he doesn’t term it in the way Ferris does. You’ll see this with the way he lives his life. In many of the interviews he gives and also on the information posted on his site, he always mentions how much he enjoys to play golf and travel and how because of the system he created and follows, he is able to reap the joys of being able to spend a lot of time doing all the things he enjoys, while at the same time still making a lot of money.

But John Jonas does not just focus on the perks, he also provides a step-by-step process on how to achieve that. Like Ferris, he stresses the importance of managing your time wisely and expanding your mobility in business by replacing yourself with virtual assistants and even software. He realizes that while undoubtedly there is much work to be done, you don’t need to shoulder all that responsibility by hiring others to do them for you. He understands that oftentimes the challenge of passing on the responsibility of the workload lies on not knowing where, how, and the specifics of hiring someone; not being able to keep them highly productive, or really understanding the benefits of outsourcing. But he addresses all these concerns and more through his ReplaceMyself.com You Work Too Much program.

While Jonas may no longer adhere to the 4-hour workweek as he has replaced it with 17 hours instead, for the reasons that it gets boring at times and that more can still be achieved by adding just a few hours of work, the principle behind it is still the same--we don’t need to slave over our jobs as there are more important things that should be given focus in our lives.

Basically what John Jonas says is that you work too much, but you shouldn’t. Even better, he gives you the solutions on how to free yourself from the unnecessary workload and in turn, improve the way you live your life.