The Four Hundred Hour Work Week

Yes, folks, you read the title right. That is not a typo -- although we all know that we do not even have four hundred hours in a week. I finished reading Tim Ferris' best-selling book The Four Hour Work Week a couple of weeks ago and I have concluded that he can design his lifestyle that way simply because he is not a mother.

Don't get me wrong. I am glad that Tim Ferris is living the life that he wants to. His book was interesting enough too for me to even read from cover to cover. I just look at the way that the "regular world" works and have reached my conclusion that such a lifestyle will not work for everyone. It may work, if you dare try it, but it will most likely work only for a handful of people.

Mothers often feel that there are not enough hours in a week to do all the things that need to be done. Still, we make do with what we can accomplish and at times, feel like we've worked for four hundred hours a week even if it were not so. Tim Ferris talks about the New Rich or what he calls NR. These are the people who don't wait until the end to enjoy it all, take mini-retirements, and strive to do what they like here and now.

I belong to the MR or Mother Rich. These are the mothers who do what they need to and yet enjoy the life that they live. Unlike Tim Ferris' NR, we cannot outsource what we do; cannot train people who deal with us that we do not handle emergencies; and cannot just check on things once or twice a day. We also do realize though that we do not need to earn tons of money to have the experience of feeling rich. We just look at our kids' smiling faces and we just know that we have it all.

Still, reading Tim Ferris' book isn't really a waste of time. You will pick up a tip or two that you can apply to the way you run your work, your business, or your family. Do I believe that he just works four hours a week? Not too much. It would have been great if he could have an actual log of what fills up those four hours but I guess -- we'd doubt the log if he came up with that too. Anyway, it isn't the number of hours that you work a week that's important -- it's whether you are able to live the life that you would like to live.

Tim Ferris even maintains his own blog. I check it out from time to time and with the frequency with which he posts entries, does he really just work four hours a week? Or maybe he doesn't consider blogging as working? It doesn't feel like work, right?

So, is the four hour work week for you? Read it and find out. That's the nice thing about reading books or other people's ideas. You can take what you like and dump the rest. What works for him, may not work for me and that's perfectly fine.

My husband and I were talking about our calling cards and out of the blue, he said: "Tim Ferris doesn't believe in calling cards."

I then replied: "E, wala akong pakialam sa kanya..." (Oh, I don't care what he does or does not do...)

My husband then laughs and says: "A, ikaw si walang pakialam work week." (Oh, you're the I don't care about it work week...)

That reminded me that I have yet to write my brief review about the very popular book. From talking about calling cards to a blog post -- everything works out perfectly.

So, don't care too much about what works for Tim Ferris or for your neighbor. Focus on what works for you. And when you do, you would have found that the thing that you do doesn't feel very much like work at all.