4-Hour Workweek and Travel: Interview with Tim Ferriss
May 20th, 2007 Posted in International living/working, Long-term travel, Travel books, Work/Life/Travel Balance
A few months back a guy contacted me about a book he had coming out called The 4-Hour Workweek. I get stacks of books from reviewers, but this one sounded different. Boy was it. I devoured it in a few days and made me think long and hard about future directions in my life. Apparently I’m not the only one: it’s a runaway bestseller out of the box.
Since Ferriss doesn’t work very much though, he found some time to talk to me on the phone after I got back in touch. Here’s an excerpt of our interview. Follow the link at the bottom to read the whole thing on the Cheapest Destinations site.
You coined a great phrase I haven’t seen anywhere else-the “too weak vacation.” In an environment where some people say they can’t even manage to get away for a week, what do people need to do to find more time to travel?
Timothy Ferriss: There are a few steps The first is realizing that you have more leverage as an employee or entrepreneur than you assume. If a productive person can get a key project done in less time, can streamline the company, or streamline a process, it’s easy to find 3-4 weeks of travel time. Your ability to negotiate that is often overlooked.
Also, if you can also propose concrete business reasons for travel, you can combine business and personal travel. Millions of people do this every month, tacking a personal trip onto the end of a business one. Work out an overseas conference or a visiting apprenticeship. I have seen many teachers doing that effectively, even though people assume teaching is one of those careers that is tied to the physical classroom. Some teachers find a way to take students overseas. Others say “I want to look at how this teacher over there is doing curriculum development. They will teach me what they know for two weeks.” Set that up on your own, working out how it would take place and what the benefits are, then propose it. Frame it in a way that’s good for both you and your boss or organization: “This is an opportunity for us to learn x, y, and z.”
For office workers or business owners, it is incredibly easy to conduct business from somewhere else. A software tool like GotoMyPC even allows you to work remotely from your regular computer, so you can use all the software you would sitting at your desk. You can also use a USB drive to bring many applications with you as an executable file. You can fit a load of data onto a USB thumb drive-they even make ones that fit in your wallet!
If you are an entrepreneur, one of the first steps is to apply an 80/20 filter to your time and your business. Take a good look at what actions are really producing the bulk of your results and develop a “not to do list.”
I’m always amazed at how many people get laid off from a job, with a nice severance package, but don’t take advantage of the golden opportunity to have some real travel time.
That’s a perfect opportunity-what are you sitting at home for?! I wouldn’t necessarily advise this, but I have a friend who makes it a point to get fired from or laid off from his job every year. He mostly works for start-ups and ends up changing jobs each year, taking 6-12 months in between, where he travels really well on what would only last him a few months at home. He’s in Vietnam now. The money that would last him three months here will let him live like a king for close to a year there.
Read the whole interview with Tim Ferris here: 4-hour Workweek Interview
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going into the jungles of Costa Rica for a few days and will not be logging on…
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