The book itself is quite thick and imposing; but upon reading it I found it could be condensed into a few salient points.  The majority of the first couple of chapters are the rationale behind the technique, and background of Dr Romanov.  It makes similar points to ‘Born to Run’ (the barefoot running manifesto), namely:

• virtually everyone is not taught *how* to run; it is assumed to be something you are good at, or will improve at with training – ie not a skill to learn,
• cushioned heel shoes are counterproductive and lead to more injuries through supporting poor technique,
• the best technique for running in terms of efficiency and minimising injury is the forefoot strike.

I have found this to be an interesting philosophy as my running has progressed – I was previously a heel-striker and had knee trouble; shifting to more of a barefoot (ie, ball-strike) running style has helped me immensely.

He finally gets into the technique of Pose Running – so named after the ‘poses’ that you have to learn.  This is a reference to learning running technique in the same was as learning the skills of martial arts/ballet/dance – that is you start by learning poses, and gradually build them up into a flowing action.

The key points I took away regarding the technique itself are:

• ball strike
• impact point directly below centre of mass (not out in front)
• foot is lifted in a straight line up along centre of mass line
• focus on simply lifting foot rather than striding
• using hamstrings rather than calves
• lean forward for acceleration

The recommended initial progression is to start by doing heel raises (to get the sense of balance on the ball of your foot); then progress to practicing the pose in the drawing above for each leg; then to hop on the spot practicing the above.

Once you are comfortable with this, then it is simply (!) a matter of leaning where you want to go.   The next progression is in terms of extending the length of time that you can hold the pose for – from short sprints to longer runs, all the while focussing on the technique above.  Note that you should never feel like you’re pushing forward – it is up to gravity to do the work; feet should be lifted straight up your centreline.

I found the following drills on youtube which were of great help.

To be continued…

I just discovered a nifty (but obvious!) helpful trick for learning languages, so I thought I’d share. Background:

1. I am trying to learn Danish (to a conversational level) but don’t live there, so find it hard to immerse myself in the language.
2. I am very time poor currently.
3. I have a basic level of understanding, but am trying to get to conversational, and would like to be able to fluently read it.

I have tried the usual language learning tapes/cds/programs (Rosetta Stone is fantastic, but requires significant time input) but it is quite difficult and boring to start with.

So, what I would like, is some way to integrate my practice as a part of my daily routine – that way I am more likely to continue with it and get to fluent with minimal effort.

Google to the rescue!

The excellent google translate tool works really well to give you a close-to-native understanding of a webpage, however it doesn’t really help for learning as it totally replaces the original text.  However, there is an option (view original) in the top right corner, that then will leave the page unmolested, but translate on ‘hover’.

This way, you can start reading the news (daily routine!) in a foreign language – at the level you are comfortable with. If you get stuck, you can instantly ‘hover’ over the sentence, and google will provide you with enough of a translation to get the gist.

I’m going to try this out, and report back. Hopefully it is painless enough to become a part of my routine…

UPDATE: 5th December 2010

I’ve been using this for a while now, so I have some feedback.  It does work quite well, however there is the temptation (if your language skills aren’t good enough) to simply just hover over every sentence in the article, which is counterproductive.

The other criticism I have, is that the learning curve is far too steep for beginners – ie, the vocabulary implicitly required is very large.  I am now starting to find this useful, but only because I have gotten my Danish vocabulary to the point where I can almost read the news unaided.

SO, with that in mind, I have found two other plugins that enable similar learning-through-osmosis: polyglot and ming.

polyglot uses google translate to look up words on the site that you are currently surfing, and replaces them with the translation in the language you are trying to learn.  It picks the words at random, although there are some very nice features to translate entire phrases, add the translation in brackets etc.

get polyglot for chrome here – https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/plpjkjplknknmhfhkjgcfgofclmlnine

ming is a similar idea (although much simpler in implementation); but rather than picking words/phrases at random, it allows you to pre load a dictionary of the words you’re trying to learn.

Out of the two, I like ming’s approach best; because you can focus on the words that you really want to learn that day/week/month.  This fits with my style of learning better – I want to learn a set of words, then move on to the next set.  polyglot suffers from the same drawback that google translate does (although to a lesser extent) – that you need to have a reasonably good vocabulary to begin with.  However, polyglot is a much nicer implementation.

ming is available for firefox here – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-Us/firefox/addon/ming-a-ling/

Update 28th April 2011

Ok, so some more hopefully useful thoughts and links.  I have found an interesting technique that a Latvian friend of mine pointed me at – Ilya Frank’s learning method.  Link here http://english.franklang.ru/

It is very similar to the above – ie an immersive method for learning to read the target language.  What he does is produce translated (physical) books which have the translation inline with the text – initially every word is translated, but as the book progresses, the translation lessens; so by the end you should hopefully be reading (mostly) in the target language.

Some bright spark took this idea, and realised that you could do this automagically with google translate – so they wrote the ‘franker‘ plugin for chrome.  Link here https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gilglhgnmdmjdagiehbokboocbgiddnh

I have been using this to produce parallel translations of freely available Danish books (eg, HC Andersen’s fairytales, Brothers Grimm).  I’ve copied an extract below:

Der var engang en rig mand, hvis kone blev syg, og da hun følte, at døden nærmede sig, kaldte hun på sin eneste datter og sagde: “Bliv ved at være from og god, min lille pige, så vil den gode Gud nok hjælpe dig. (There was once a rich man whose wife was ill, and when she felt that death was approaching, she called her only daughter and said: “Be always pious and good, my little girl, then the good Lord enough help you.) Og når jeg kommer i himlen, vil jeg se ned på dig, og mine tanker vil følge dig, hvor du går.” (And when I get to heaven, I look down at you and my thoughts will follow you wherever you go. “) Derpå lukkede hun sine øjne og døde. (Then she closed her eyes and died.) Pigen gik hver dag ud til sin mors grav og græd og blev ved at være from og god. (The girl went every day to her mother’s grave and wept, and was always pious and good.) Da det blev vinter, bredte sneen et hvidt dække over graven, og da foråret kom og solen tog det bort, tog manden sig en anden kone. (When the winter came the snow, a white cover over the grave, and when spring came and the sun took it away, the man took another wife.)

That is from Askepot (Cinderella) – and was basically 5 minutes work with the franker plugin.  Then I load it on to my ebook reader and away I go!  It has worked really well for me – the only limitation is finding enough free danish books online.

With a bit of cleverness and scripting it could be extended to reading the news each morning too.

I think this is a really clever idea.  The only improvement I can see is to add some sort of text to speech (which I can almost do on my phone), and then I would have a virtually limitless learning environment.

This is the final section of the book, and in some ways, the most boring. Possibly, because after reading the last 3 chapters you’re all revved up and wanting to get started on something; and this comes as a little bit of a downer.

Disappearing Act – How to Escape the Office

This chapter is useful if you’re still in a job, for inspiration. It has a number of tips and techniques for liberating yourself from the workplace so you’re free to do all the good stuff in Part 3. Fair enough, and some basic sales techniques are used to coerce your boss into letting you go for it.

Beyond Repair – Killing Your Job

What it says on the tin. How to quit, and motivation to do it, if things are really not working out.

Mini Retirements, Filling the Void, Top 13 NR Mistakes

Basically, summarised it is ‘Now you have all the time and money you need… what then?’. Tim thinks Travel, and Learning. Fair enough. In my humble opinion these chapters are boring (perhaps they’re supposed to be motivating?), simply because virtually none of the readers will be in the position to need this advice. However, there are more useful hints, tips, and links in here.

Summary of Part 4

Less useful than the previous Parts, in my opinion. More pontificating about philosophy. Presumably once you get to this point you don’t need the book anyway – so I’m not entirely sure what it is here for.

Outsourcing Life

In this section, Tim outlines his ideas for amplifying your output through using outsourcing. I think you can apply this to a ‘real’ business though – presumably that is what you do once you get past a certain point with outsourcing.

Tim attempts to say that employees can use similar techniques. While I don’t doubt that they can, in most of the stuff I do this would violate non-disclosure agreements pretty badly.

He then goes on to talk about that it is actually about learning to manage people effectively. This I agree with, and can actually justify using as an excuse to hire a virtual assistant (VA).

However, it comes with a warning from Bill Gates, no less:

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnifiy the inefficiency - Bill Gates

Some rules for delegation:

• Refine rules & processes before adding people
• Don’t automate something that can be eliminated
• Each delegated task should be time-consuming and well-defined
• Have fun!

The cost vs output is discussed, and then the major concern that occurs to anyone about this sort of thing: “Sweetheart, did you buy a Porsche in China?”. Some mitigations for this are listed:

• Never use new hire
• Prohibit small-operation VA’s from subcontracting the work
• Higher-end firms have their reputation at stake, so are likely to be more secure
• Don’t use debit cards; credit cards can be reversed in the event of fraud
• If they’re accessing websites, set them up a custom login rather than using your own (especially if you use the same login/password everywhere)

Basically just, “Be Sensible”, then.

Income Autopilot 1

This chapter is packed full of useful advice for starting an outsourced business. He points out that this business is identical in structure to how most of the worlds corporations are now run (eg, Microsoft doesn’t actually produce XBoxes, Nike doesn’t actually produce shoes).

The following criteria are given for a company (termed ‘muse’ by Tim – because the outcome is maximum cashflow for minimum time input):

• Product based (service involves too much contact)
• Affordably reachable niche market that you understand
• Preferably groups that have magazines with decent circulation

Brainstorm products that:

• the benefit can be encapsulated in a single sentence
• cost $50-200 (well, price high, with good profit margin)
• take no longer than 3-4 weeks to manufacture
• explainable in a good online FAQ

Tim then launches into a discussion about how the ideal product is INFORMATION – high markups, hard to copy. I think he is sailing pretty close to the wind here, because the reader suddenly realises that s/he has just bought information off Tim.

However the chapter is packed with plenty of useful links (may get less useful as time goes on) to look into for inspiration/business.

Income Autopilot 2

This chapter goes into more detail on the ‘muse’, specifically, how to test your market easily and quickly. I think this is fantastic advice for people starting businesses – but obviously it has its limitations. Essentially, the advice is to whip up a website, and start a google/yahoo advertising campaign for a week. Then measure your results and see which product is most profitable to sell.

Income Autopilot 3

The final chapter in this section is about once you have your product & proven demand, how to build a company structure as efficiently as possible to fulfill it, while minimising your time input. Again, packed with useful information and links to read.

Part 3 Summary

Tim starts this section off by saying “Forget all about time management”. What he is proposing, however, is meta-time management – continually appraising whether what you are doing is productive, or is there some way you can reduce the time that you are putting into tasks.

It is similar to the 4-Quadrant method that Covey proposes in 7 Habits, however subtly different. For one, Tim’s focus is on optimising for money/profit (his assumption seems to be that it is only work time you’re managing) whereas Covey’s is on doing what is consistent with your values (important to you). However Covey’s does not have the continual (lean? BUZZWORD ALERT) improvement process.

What Tim really means when he says “Forget all about time management”, is forget keeping busy, and focus on productivity. This is fair enough.

Efficiency vs Effectiveness

In some sense, Tim’s description of this is similar to Management vs Leadership. Management is the art of optimising delivery (efficiency) whereas Leadership is the art of making sure what you’re delivering meets the target (effectiveness). If you define the words this way, his paragraph makes sense. He makes a good couple of points here and it is worth quoting them:

Here are two truisms to keep in mind:

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

From this moment forward, remember this: What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

4 Hour Work Week, p 53

Pareto’s Law:

Tim then goes on to discuss “Pareto’s Law”, that is, 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. Through several examples, he then applies this to time management – doing away with the 80% of effort that is relatively unrewarding.

He then discusses how he has applied this to all areas of his business (and life?). In some respects, this is the core of the 4 Hour Work Week.

Parkinson’s Law:

A complementary “law” that he discusses is Parkinson’s Law – that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

He then has a suggestion for increasing productivity through using these two laws:

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20).
2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace it, leaving you at the end of the day with nothing accomplished. How else could dropping off a package at UPS, setting a few appointments, and checking e-mail consume an entire 9–5 day? Don’t feel bad. I spent months jumping from one interruption to the next, feeling run by my business instead of the other way around.

4 Hour Work Week, p 58

The Low Information Diet

Tim goes after distractions in this chapter. He makes the case to practice selective ignorance – to ignore that which does not get you closer to your goals. This includes:

• Newspapers/Magazines/Audiobooks/non-music radio
• News websites
• Television (except 1 hour of viewing in evenings for relaxation?)
• Books (again, except for 1 hour reading fiction in the evenings to put you to sleep)
• No web surfing unless totally necessary; you should have objectives for the day set out before powering on your computer

Entertainingly, he proposes that you can use this to your advantage in social situations; rather than making small talk, you can be catching up on the worlds events.

I can see where Tim is coming from here, definitely. I definitely have far too much in the way of information-distraction going on in my life; however clearly some of it is useful. So there is a balance that needs to be struck – being aware of the problem is a big help – and I will be implementing some of the recommendations here after considering them.

Interrupting Interruption and the Art of Refusal

Here Tim groups interruptions into 3 categories and proposes solutions for each one.

1. Time Wasters – Become an Ignoramus

Unimportant – so hopefully you can learn to ignore them. Examples include email/mobile phone calls/meetings that are never that important. For email & mobile phone interruptions a solution is to check your inbox/voicemail 2x per day maximum. For meetings, he points out it is important to have an agenda and that meetings should be about decisions, not definitions.

2. Time Consumers – Batch and do not falter

Group similar things together so you’re in the mindset when addressing them… pretty straightforward but easy to forget.

3. Empowerment Failures – where someone is waiting on your permission – Rules and Readjustment

If this becomes a problem (eg, in management) Tim proposes setting rules so people can get on with dealing with problems without your permission (eg, if it costs less that $50, just do it).

Summary of Part 2

Firstly, as hinted, I think this book is supposed to make you think. If you look past the Anthony Robbins/Robert Kiyosaki exterior, there are a couple of good points in amongst the salesmanship.

So here we go.

Preface: Obligatory ‘I’ve-written-a-NYT-bestseller-despite-all-odds’ paragraph. FILLER

FAQ: Allaying the reader’s doubts as to whether this book is really worthwhile. FILLER

My Story and Why You Need This Book:

Bit of background reading on Tim’s AMAZING life. And how you can do it, too! Really!

Sets out one of the interesting fundamental questions for entrepreneurs, that is:

In 2002, I was asked by Ed Zschau, übermentor and my former professor of High-tech Entrepreneurship at Princeton University, to come back and speak to the same class about my business adventures in the real world. I was stuck. There were already decamillionaires speaking to the same class, and even though I had built a highly profitable sports supplement company, I marched to a distinctly different drummer.

Over the ensuing days, however, I realized that everyone seemed to be discussing how to build large and successful companies, sell out, and live the good life. Fair enough. The question no one really seemed to be asking or answering was, Why do it all in the first place? What is the pot of gold that justifies spending the best years of your life hoping for happiness in the last?

4 Hour Work Week, p 13

Which is fair enough, and something I’ve discussed at length with friends. Usually the answer goes something like (well, at least, it does for me):

“So I can build enough of an asset base/perpetual income stream that I don’t have to worry about my living costs. But I want to do it doing something that I enjoy.”

So this seems to fit with what Mr. Ferriss is saying – he seems to be preaching to the converted here, and perhaps it is directed at those (mythical?) employees whose idea is to slave away for 10 years in the City and then retire.

He then goes on to define the “New Rich” as a group of people who are rejecting this social hypothesis and instead living a millionaires’ lifestyle already through (what appears to be) a combination of LBYM (living below your means – see fool.co.uk) and taking advantage of geoarbitrage. However he does make the assumption that a millionaires’ lifestyle is one of travel and focussing on experiences as opposed to goods. All good stuff, if a bit American-centric (“WOW, Europe! How exotic!”).

A four stage process is outlined for becoming one of the “New Rich”, which, reading between the lines, is a summary of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey:

1. Definition – Define the objective; have a plan for what you want. Some assumptions about what is possible are tossed aside.
2. Elimination – Time Management the Tim Ferriss way. Pareto Principle; ignore the unimportant.
3. Automation – Hints for outsourcing businesses; the above chapter applied to managing a business.
4. Liberation – Now what do you do with all your time and money? Travel, apparently.

Chronology of a Pathology: More self promotion about Tim’s awesome life. FILLER

Chapter 1 – DEFINITION: Cautions & Comparisons:

An example is given of a successful-but-unfulfilled millionaire. “Rich people can be sad too!”.

Tim then espouses his philosophy about life through the following statements. The “New Rich” don’t want:

1. “To work for themselves”, rather / “To have others work for you”
2. “To work when you want to”, / “To prevent work-for-works-sake, to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect”
3. “To retire early or young”, rather /”… To recognise that inactivity is not the goal. Doing what excites you is”
4. “To buy all the things you want”, rather /”To do all the things you want, and be all the things you want to…”
5. “To be the boss…; to be in charge” /”… to be the owner…”
6. “To make a ton of money” /”To make a ton of money with reasons and defined dreams/timelines/steps (a plan). What are you working for?”
7. “To have more” /”To have more quality and less clutter…”
8. “To reach the big pay off/IPO/acquisition/retirement” /”To think big, but ensure payday comes every day; cash flow first…”

Comments:

1. This seems semantics? I guess fair enough.
2. Not mutually exclusive; efficiently lazy is a good idea.
3. Fair enough, good point.
4. Tim’s anti-materialistic rant. Fair enough.
5. Fair enough, I took this from the Buffett book too.
6. Not mutually exclusive, fair enough.
7. Efficiency again, fair enough.
8. Interesting point to consider.

He then goes on to explain GEOARBITRAGE – that is, if you want to learn/experience/do something that is prohibitively expensive; find a country where it is cheap.

Explains the point that the amount you earn can be multiplied by the following factors (freedom):

• what you do
• when you do it
• where you do it
• whom you do it with

Comparison of the 80 hr/wk executive earning $500k as against the ‘poor’ man making $50k on 20 hr/wk – comparison of the freedoms. How much is that extra salary worth. Fair enough.

Several examples of readers who have magically changed their lives.

DEFINITION: Rules that Change the Rules:

“Everything popular is wrong” – well, we can now see who he aimed the book at, you rebel you.

He then leads into a controversial example – how he exploited a loophole in the rules to win the National Chinese Kickboxing Championships in 4 weeks. Basically, weigh in was the day before and he used dehydration techniques to drop his weight 28 pounds; then pushed all the wee competitors out of the ring for a TKO. Well done I guess; but the example doesn’t sit that well with me.

He then leads into a fundamental point about pushing the limits to overturn social conventions. Challenging the status quo – examples of which then argued:

1. Retirement is worst-case-scenario-insurance – I agree with the concept, but his argument for it is flawed. I don’t know why he tries to argue this? Perhaps to appeal to people that feel it is too far off to consider?
2. Interest & Energy are cyclical – fair enough. In essence this is ‘don’t feel bad about taking time off’ – I don’t know that it justifies 3 month holidays every 6 months though.
3. Less is not laziness – focus on productivity instead of busy, fair enough.
4. Timing is never right – fair enough.
5. Ask for forgiveness, not permission – fair enough.
6. Emphasise strengths, don’t fix weaknesses – I am not sure I agree here, and in any case he doesn’t point out what you should do about your weaknesses. IMHO you should know your weaknesses, and find people to complement them – but work on them yourself too.
7. Things in excess become their opposite – fair enough, I spose.
8. Money alone isn’t the solution – fair enough. Add this to the anti-materialist rant.
9. Relative income more important than Absolute – money/hour worked is a better metric than absolute cash. Fair enough.
10. Di-stress bad, Eu-stress good – fair enough, minimise harmful stimuli (distress), maximise beneficial stimuli (eustress): role models, physical training, ‘good’ risk taking, expanding your comfort zone.

DEFINITION: Dodging bullets:

Escaping paralysis by analysis – this will be interesting as I definitely fall into this category. This is about when you’re putting off a decision for fear of the consequences.

Tim’s suggestion/strategy is to imagine the absolute worst – if everything did go completely wrong – then hopefully realise this isn’t the end of the world. Then he compares this to what would happen if it went best case, and use this as motivation.

Fear disguised as optimism. Valid point, that people staying in a bad situation and being optimistic about it improving (if it is within their control to do something about it) are perhaps living in fear. What is the cost of not making the decision?

DEFINITION: System Reset:

Being Unreasonable and Unambigious. Great quotes from Lewis Carroll & GBS (incidentally, straight out of ‘Introduction to NLP’):

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where …” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
—LEWIS CARROLL, Alice in Wonderland
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Maxims for Revolutionists

Doing the unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic. Excellent section about how this is true.

The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.

4 Hour Work Week, p 41

What do you want? Tim proposes that, rather than happiness, what we should be after is Excitement. Boredom is the enemy. Then he discusses how unreasonable goals are beaten out of us by the world once we get our first job; and that we accept the social norms. This is something that needs to be discussed…

The fat man in the red BMW convertible story.

Dreamlining: Ferriss coins this word to describe the act of planning out to get to your dreams.

It is much like goal-setting but differs in several fundamental respects:

1. The goals shift from ambiguous wants to defined steps.
2. The goals have to be unrealistic to be effective.
3. It focuses on activities that will fill the vacuum created when work is removed. Living like a millionaire requires doing interesting things and not just owning enviable things.

4 Hour Work Week, p 43

He then goes onto discuss how to do it, with examples. Worth working through and doing.

Comfort Challenge: Learn to get comfortable looking into someones eyes – similar to the stuff in ‘The Game’.

Summary of Introduction & Part 1
- Summary todo