The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich

by Timothy Ferriss

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. —MARK TWAIN

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. —OSCAR WILDE,

I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time. —HERBERT BAYARD SWOPE,

Everything popular is wrong. —OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest

1. Retirement Is Worst-Case-Scenario Insurance. Retirement planning is like life insurance. It should be viewed as nothing more than a hedge against the absolute worst-case scenario: in this case, becoming physically incapable of working and needing a reservoir of capital to survive.

“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.

The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre. Focus on better use of your best weapons instead of constant repair.

People who avoid all criticism fail. It’s destructive criticism we need to avoid, not criticism in all forms. Similarly, there is no progress without eustress, and the more eustress we can create or apply to our lives, the sooner we can actualize our dreams. The trick is telling the two apart.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. —BENJAMIN DISRAELI,

am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. —MARK TWAIN

I’ve trained myself to propose solutions instead of ask for them, to elicit desired responses instead of react, and to be assertive without burning bridges.

Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away. —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY,

1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness? 2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?

How is it possible that all the people in the world need exactly 8 hours to accomplish their work? It isn’t. 9–5 is arbitrary.

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. —ROBERT J. SAWYER,

Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. —RALPH CHARELL

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate. —DAVE BARRY, Pulitzer Prize–winning American humorist