Today I began a new adventure. I started reading Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week. This floated a new term I hadn’t heard before, “The New Rich”. What does this mean?
So far my understanding of it is that in order to be “New Rich”, you have to balance time and money, as opposed to the traditional 9-5 slog of money-focussed obsession that so many seem to be condemned to.
I’ve long held the view that there is a work/life balance that should be always at the top of your list. There is no point in working yourself into the ground for your entire life just so you have money at the end which you can’t make the most of. I’ve witnessed many people do just that and what’s left at the end really? Often a fairly negative, depressed shell of the person you once knew, that’s what.
Many people tell me they think I have the work/life balance cracked, because I don’t work every hour of every day and I generally seem to be pretty happy. Well, I tend to agree with some of that, but the New Rich also have substantially higher incomes that I do and work even shorter hours. So this is the focus for me now. To find that balance which I have perhaps tilted too far in the other direction.
I’ve decided to record as much of my journey as I can hear in an effort to prove, as so many have already, that Tim’s concepts are reality.
There are some difficult roads ahead I think but hopefully some of what I discover along the way will help others too.
To really demonstrate this I will try to keep a diary of changes in income and time spent working to help show the benefit, if any, from following Tim’s advice and guidance.
Currently I earn roughly £1,800/month from existing work and spend approximately 70 hours working for that.
The first task I have taken from the book is to immediately turn off all email notifications on my devices and set alarms to remind me to check in twice a day and read all those emails. Even this is a tricky step for someone so attached to a gadget all the time. Further to that, I have also set time limits using Screen Time on my iPhone/iPad to limit my use of social media each day to 2 hours. To some of you that will sound like a huge amount, others will be horrified. I think this will be a difficult task for me as I do spend a lot of time scrolling news feeds etc. but that time needs to be refocussed on important tasks.
The concept of batching is really interesting to me. The email and social media are the first to go into that pot but I can already pick out clients that give me tasks in dribs and drabs and how that creates inefficiencies so this is something I want to really crack down on too, instead making sure that there are clear goals each time I sit down to do some work for a client rather than a string of endless mini tasks here and there.
Anyway, that’s enough for now, time to write some to-do lists and give what I’ve absorbed from Tim’s book some further thought.
I hope you enjoy reading this and that you will follow along with my progress or failure. Words of encouragement are always much appreciated.
If you’re interested in reading more about this topic then obviously going straight to the source is always a good start, so check out Tim’s blog here – https://tim.blog/
