Today, my best friend’s dad passed away unexpectedly. By today, I mean a half an hour ago. I’ve been sitting, staring at my computer, trying to figure out what to do and how to help. The truth is… there is nothing to do but to make sure my phone is next to me at all times and just wait for her call. Helpless. The feeling that I hate the most. I’m crushed.
So where does a self-help book about outsourcing and productivity fit into this story? Well, big moments make you re-evaluate life, especially ones like these. Life is too short. Be Happy. Say I Love You more. We’ve all heard the cliches, but this book is different. The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss is all about re-evaluating your life, goals and pursuits on a daily level. It is about changing the way you view life so that you can live in the moment.
The common ideology is, “I’ll work hard now so that I can make a lot of money and retire on an island when I’m 65.” The 4 Hour Work Week questions this. Why do you want to make money? The answer is so that you can have the freedom – i.e. money and time- to do the things you want to do NOW. But instead of waiting for your life to end to start living, the book says, work hard enough to get to that goal, and enjoy a “mini-retirement” right away.
My friend’s dad was super healthy and barely into his 50’s, maybe even late 40’s. Young. Too young to retire. Too young to even see his eldest daughter married. We can try to plan. But you don’t plan for this. I wonder if he has regrets. Had regrets. I hope he’s somewhere to think like this…
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but we do know one day there will be no tomorrow. So we might as well live in the present. If you’re like me, your reaction to a statement like this is, “Great, ya, sure, whatever that means.” <Brush-off-and-continue-the-daily-grind> What I found especially helpful about the book is that The 4 Hour Work Week makes the theoretical into a tangible game plan. It gives you tools that you can use, like how to budget your bank account, how to increase productivity, how to outsource, how to afford the seemingly “unaffordable,” and the list goes on.
I was going to take a month vacation this year, or a “mini-retirement” as Tim Ferriss would say. And then I decided that I did not have the time or the money to do this. Or rather, that I didn’t “deserve” to be living the good life when I have so much to accomplish in my career and finances. That’s changed today. I can make sacrifices to afford this trip, because the other sacrifice, the sacrifice of my dreams and wants, is in the end much more costly. If we can’t enjoy life now, what the hell are we living for?
