Keith's Book Club #1

Move over Oprah, I've got a book club! Why do I always have to bring up Oprah?!? Anyway, I wrote the following over Christmas; it references a book that I (somewhat) jokingly said would change my life ...


On Sunday I made a trip to the bookstore, and quite by accident ended up with "The Four Hour Workweek". It's not exactly a secret that I am fond of counter-culture workplace books (i.e., "Fire Your Boss" from a couple of years ago), so my gravitation to this book was no surprise. The shocking bit was how this book took some of the ideas I've either believed in or read about and put them into a cohesive action plan for the future.

So here's the details. What's one of your dreams? Something that you would like to do over the next six months or so? I'm not talking about "playing golf every weekend" things to do, I'm talking about "touring rural Argentina" for six months kind of things to do. Whatever it is, let's say it would cost $40,000.

Now let's say the money tree outside your house started to bloom (they bloom after Christmas, just in time for the credit card bills) and gave you $40,000. Which of the following would be your response:

a) Awesome. I'll be able to buy even bigger toys now that I have this money.
b) Killer. I can probably retire a couple of years early if I invest this wisely.
c) Sweet. Time for me to quit my job and take that six month trip to Argentina.

In a nutshell, the book's thesis is that be it learning a new language in the native country, traveling to the your ancestors homeland, or volunteering for some cause, most people like adventure. Instead of pursuing that adventure, we work .... for about 30 or so years straight. We defer adventure and life activities for retirement when we may be unable to actually enjoy them. Why do we do that?

Instead, the book concludes, you should experience these adventures in the form of mini-retirements. You should take a couple of months, maybe six, maybe more if you can swing it, work very limited hours, and simultaneously enjoy your favorite adventures. Enjoy, and repeat.

To show you how to do this, the book covers several business/career angles. First, it states that if you quit to do something cool, you shouldn't fear, as you'll get another job once the cool activity is over. Second, the book spends a lot of time teaching you how to get your boss to let you work remotely, and to do said work very efficiently (thus, the four hour work-week title). Third, if you are willing, the author goes down the ultimate entrepreneurial path to adventure; create a cash flow that pays you money with minimal involvement from yourself. In this last case, you frolic in South America while your minions make you money.

Whether your current job would allow you to work remotely is a very individualistic thing. I, for one, certainly cannot do that with the XOM. Beyond that though, the other two linchpins seem very solid to me. If I quit my current job to teach English to the broken children of Botswana, then returned to Houston to work, I would certainly get a job and it would most likely not matter if that job didn't pay quite as much as the XOM. Perhaps most importantly, if you can find a way to pay for some/all of your frolic, why not just quit and do it?!? You may be forced to return to a more normal life but maybe not. Maybe the experience presents you with new opportunities that turn out to be both fulfilling and enabling.

The book says that working in utterly horrible conditions isn't very bad, as it will force change. It maintains that being comfortable but bored at work is the worst fate you can be forced to face. The comfort level will prevent you from leaving the job that is preventing you from living the adventures that would change your life.

I really tried to play devil's advocate while reading it, thinking up reasons to poo-poo on the authors ideas, examples, and so forth. At the conclusion of the read though, I failed to harpoon his ideas. The author was in a position of substantial riches when he had this "modified work-week epiphany", but he gave sufficient examples/ideas to back me away from saying "yeah, it's easy to feel that way when you're really rich."

Now, if I can just come up with some cash flows that would cover six months in Europe?