The 4-Hour Workweek Read Free Page A

mini-retirements is introduced, as are the means for flawless remote control and escaping the boss. Liberation is not about cheap travel; it is about forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location. This section delivers the third and final ingredient for luxury lifestyle design: mobility.
      I should note that most bosses are less than pleased if you spend one hour in the office each day, and employees should therefore read the steps in the entrepreneurially minded DEAL order but implement them as DELA. If you decide to remain in your current job, it is necessary to create freedom of location before you cut your work hours by 80%. Even if you have never considered becoming an entrepreneur in the modern sense, the DEAL process will turn you into an entrepreneur in the purer sense as first coined by French economist J. B. Say in 1800—one who shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher yield.
    Last but not least, much of what I recommend will seem impossible and even offensive to basic common sense—I expect that. Resolve now to test the concepts as an exercise in lateral thinking. If you try it, you’ll see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, and you won’t ever go back.
    Take a deep breath and let me show you my world. And remember—tranquilo. It’s time to have fun and let the rest follow.
    TIM FERRISS
    Tokyo, Japan
    September 29, 2006
    1. Uncommon terms are defined throughout this book as concepts are introduced. If something is unclear or you need a quick reference, please visit www.fourhourblog.com for an extensive glossary and other resources.
CHRONOLOGY OF A PATHOLOGY
    An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
    —NIELS BOHR, Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner
    Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
    —HEINRICH HEINE, German critic and poet
    This book will teach you the precise principles I have used to become the following:
    Princeton University guest lecturer in high-tech entrepreneurship
    First American in history to hold a Guinness World Record in tango
    Advisor to more than 30 world-record holders in professional and Olympic sports
    Wired magazine’s “Greatest Self-Promoter of 2008”
    National Chinese kickboxing champion
    Horseback archer (yabusame) in Nikko, Japan
    Political asylum researcher and activist
    MTV breakdancer in Taiwan
    Hurling competitor in Ireland
    Actor on hit TV series in mainland China and Hong Kong (Human Cargo)
    How I got to this point is a tad less glamorous:
    1977 Born 6 weeks premature and given a 10% chance of living. I survive instead and grow so fat that I can’t roll onto my stomach. A muscular imbalance of the eyes makes me look in opposite directions, and my mother refers to me affectionately as “tuna fish.” So far so good.
    1983 Nearly fail kindergarten because I refuse to learn the alphabet. My teacher refuses to explain why I should learn it, opting instead for “I’m the teacher—that’s why.” I tell her that’s stupid and ask her to leave me alone so I can focus on drawing sharks. She sends me to the “bad table” instead and makes me eat a bar of soap. Disdain for authority begins.
    1991 My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, “Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.
    1993 I volunteer for a one-year exchange program in Japan, where people work themselves to death—a phenomenon called karooshi—and are said to want to be Shinto when born, Christian when married, and Buddhist when they die. I conclude that most people are really