Review: The 4 hour workweek

The first few chapters of the book can be summed to be the importance of relative income. Money has to be coupled with time (the freedom to do things that you want) for one to be the New Rich.

So what do I want, what excites me? 

I want to run a social enterprise organising projects to raise awareness about certain issues. 

With the convenience of the Internet, I think outsourcing some of your job would be a huge time saver. Imagine you are a HR associate who needs to check out the background of your candidates, you can simply outsource the Googling and Facebook-ing to your helper in India for a low fee. The time saved would be worth the money.

I agree with some other reviewers who said that the first 60 odd pages are already well worth the money.

Quotes from the book:

• Money gives empty bragging rights
• So what separates the New Rich characterized by options, from the Deferrers, whose who save it all for the end only to find that life has passed them by? 
• The NR want others to work for them (vs to work for yourself). They want to prevent work for work's sake, and to do the minimum necessary for maximum effect (vs to work when you want to). 
• Retirement is not the goal!
• Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. Society should stop rewarding personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity. 
• Let's define "laziness" anew—to endure a non-ideal existence to let circumstance or others decide life for you, or to amass a fortune while passing through life like a spectator from an office window. Don't save retirement for the end! 
• The size of your bank account doesn't change this, nor does the number of hours you log in handling unimportant e-mail or minutiae.
• Focus on being productive instead of busy.
• If the potential damage is moderate or in any way reversible, dont give people the change to say no. Most people are fast to stop but hesitant to get in the way if you're already moving. 
• Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase
• what would excite me? 
• No more passing days as the living dead, no more dinners where his colleagues compared cars, riding on the sugar high of a new BMW purchase until someone bought a more expensive Mercedes.
• There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh, it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything," and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyway." Either way, nothing happens.The level of competition is fiercest for "realistic" goals, paradoxically making them the most time-and energy-consuming 
• Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre.
• I need to Liberate myself from the office environment before they can work ten hours a week to escape from the expectation of long hours.

What you can do to become the NR. 

• Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important. 
• Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
• Focus on the important few and ignore the rest. Lack of time is actually lack of priorities!
  More customers is not automatically more income. More customers is not the goal and often translates into 90% more housekeeping and a paltry 1-3% increase in income 
• Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines (80/20 + Parkinson's Law).

• Allocate the bare minimum so time is not wasted on work which only gives 20% of result. 
• 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.
• Define a short to-do list and a not-to-do list
• "If this is the only thing I accomplish today,will I be satisfied with my day?"
• Are you inventing things to do to avoid the important?
  If you prioritize properly, there is no need to multitask
• Stop asking for opinions and start proposing solutions 
• I suggest that... What do you think? / Let's try... and then try something else if that doesnt work. 
• My contacts now know that I don't respond to emergencies, so the emergencies somehow don't exist or don't come to me. Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.
• Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading e-mail as a postponement excuse.
• Structure emails with "If... Then..."
• Meetings should come with a agenda
• That sounds doable. So I can best prepare, can you please send me an e-mail with an agenda? That is, the topics and questions we'll need to address? That would be great. Thanks in advance.
• Force invaders to give a 30s summary by not letting them"get back to me". Insist on "What can i do for you". If it is still not clear, get them to send a email to "remind me"
• Develop a number of rules to work autonomously with less approval seeking and talk it over with Boss. 
• "hate to interrupt you so much and pull you away from more important things that I know are on your plate.. Would that be reasonable? "
• Automate your life with a PA from Brickwork 
• if you spend your time, worth $20-25 
• Per hour, doing something that someone else will do for $10 per hour, it's simply a poor use of resources.
• When giving constructive advice, avoid calling a problem a problem. call it a thing. 

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Review: Rich Dad Poor Dad

I was motivated by a friend to read more about Robert Kiyosaki. He posted a video about Kiyosaki. Kiyosaki was talking about the four different quadrants of people. I didn't finish watching the video. Instead, I read the book.

My friend asked for my opinion and to him, I responded in a poor dad way. I said that opening a business is too risky for me. I am obsessed with security. I believe that businesses are risky and not worth the risk.
Sure, you can get very rich but the time and the risk are too overwhelming. I want freedom but I value stability too!

Kiyosaki understood that being a business owner is one of the toughest thing a person can do. I agree. This is especially so for big businesses! Honestly, I think it is hard to be on the Rich Dad's column as a business owner; I would rather be a Investor.

When I graduate, I would be a specialist. Maybe open my own firm; but if I were to remain in my industry, it would most likely be a small one. However, I think that small businesses could generate enough passive income to fund my doodads too! I just need to hire people who are smarter than me!

Actually even before I realised it, I was exercising some of the lessons of financial intelligence that kiyosaki advocated.
I am a geek and I wanted a iPhone 4. DOODADS are bad but irresistible! I know that my Mama would not buy it for me because it was simply too pricey.
To afford my iPhone 4, I started doing a small business. I realized that Singapore was one of the first few countries to get the iPhone. So what I did was to buy from apple store and sell it to people online. Through that, I earned my iPhone without much effort.
The phone cost $888 but I was able to sell it for >$1000, sometimes even $1100. The ROI was pretty good for the effort and time.

Now, my primary aim is to get enough positive-assets (a house is not a positive-asset if it doesn't generate a positive income! Kiyosaki does not even recognise houses that are not income-producing as assets!). I WANT FREEDOM! I do not have the $ to buy real estate. All I can do now is to put my money in stock indexes or a few good stocks. Diversity is only for idiots who do not know what they are doing. There is no risk if you are financially literate.

I realise that the Finance courses in school do not teach you about such stuff. All I remember from my Finance course was a hell lot of graphs and risk being measured by beta. Thats all.

I am still in the midst of reading Adam Khoo's Secrets of a self-made millionaire. Will update once I am done! :)

Quotes/Ideas from the book

• One of the wonders of the world is the power of compound interest 
• Show me a happy loser, and I'll show you a loser. 
• Most people dream of being rich, but are terrified of losing money.
• so it is the fear of the government or other people you owe money to that motivates you?
• Use the fear of the bully to make myslef stronger 
• Their friends who have no money have never come to them to ask how they did it. But they do come asking for one of two things, or both: 1. a loan, or 2. a job.
• Being an Indian giver -what and when can I get my money back. 
• Tying up cash is okay if I can get the asset for free. ( If the ROI is good enough, the passive income collected from the Asset exceeds the initial investment and the Asset becomes 'free' )
• Put money in a stock which the company is about to make a move that will add value to the stock (announcing a new product) (maybe IPO?) and taking out the initial money after a week to a month while the stock moves up. This way, dont have to worry about fluctuations.
• seems like it will only work if the increase is huge. 
• Money is a powerful force; unfortunately, people use the power of money against them
• make an offer with the words, subject to approval of business partner

If you just google, you can find a lot of analysis into the book. Most aren't too nice about it tho. 

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