Happy Last Monday of 2019!
I hope you had an amazing year and wish that you have even better 2020.
Allow me to give a brief about Tim Ferriss before I share 1 interesting story, 2 quotes to think about and 3 short lessons from him for you to read this week.
Timothy Ferriss has done a lot of things - he is an entrepreneur, investor (Uber, Facebook, Shopify among others) and is most famous for his podcast — focused on deconstructing world-class performers (Kind of like what I am trying to do with these newsletters) He is also known as the “Oprah of Audio” because of his influence of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, which has now crossed 400 million downloads.
1 STORY FOR YOU
Outsource dating.
Tim argues that, unless the task at hand is a passion of yours, you should pay someone else to do it for you if your time is worth more than what the tasks costs to outsource.
So, if you make $80,000 per year and are working 40 hours a week (or about 2000 hours/year), then your current hourly worth is about $40/hour. That means if it costs less than $40 an hour get someone to do it for you then you probably should. Doing this will allow you to free up time to pursue your true passions (or figure out how to make even more money by focusing on what you do best)…
In order to drive the point home, Tim decided to prove that outsourcing would work with anything — even the most unlikely task…
…And so he chose to outsource his dating.
So he hired 4-5 teams of people around the world to attract women and set up coffee dates on his behalf using the dating sites
As they began finding dates for him, Tim got worried that he would get tangled in a logistical nightmare meeting up with one girl after another, so he arranged to book all of his dates back-to-back in 20-minute blocks, alternating between 3 different cafes on the same street.
Tim’s dating experiment was supposedly so successful that he ended up going on close to 30 dates, having great second dates with a number of them, and then dating one for a good period of time.
In Tim’s own words, this experiment is “an absurd and amusing example of just how effective personal outsourcing can be. If you can imagine it, you can delegate it.”
2 QUOTES FROM HIM
For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn't conspire against you, but it doesn't go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. "Someday" is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it "eventually," just do it and correct course along the way.
- The 4 hour workweek
To enjoy life, you don't need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren't as serious as you make them out to be.
- The 4 hour workweek
3 LEARNINGS FOR YOU
Focus on building personal assets
“Failure isn’t a failure if you can gain new skills and develop relationships for future advancement,” Ferriss says. Acquiring ‘assets’ as I like to call them– whether it’s a new skill or professional relationship– is an invaluable perspective because it makes sure that nothing you ever do is a waste of time.
Every venture contributes to your long-term progress, whether that’s in acquiring a new skill, developing an existing one, or acquiring new relationships. Focus on this and you’ll ensure consistent growth.
There are 2 parts to self-improvement
Oftentimes we see self-improvement merely as goal achievement. However, Tim realized that achievement is only 50% of it. He says, "The other 50% is gratitude and appreciating what you already have, not focusing solely on future accomplishments." There are so many highly successful people who are never satisfied with what they’ve accomplished and it's unfortunate.
As Tim mentioned, "They've conquered every mountain, slayed every dragon and they're still not happy". Don't be one of those people! If you want to have any sense of well-being, you have to show appreciation for what you already have.
One of the best ways to bring awareness to what you’re grateful for is to journal. Tim recommends The Five Minute Journal — it fills you up with appreciation and it changes how you feel to create more happiness.When you lack motivation, use incentives
When you’re working on big projects for long periods of time, for example writing a book, creating a program, or launching a new product, you can experience a decline in motivation. Since Tim doesn’t have much motivation or intrinsic willpower to get things done, he uses incentives to do what he says he’s going to do.
Tim mentioned that "Some people are naturally more motivated while others respond better to pleasure or punishment." I’m one of those people who love using rewards to make deadlines. Tim also recommends creating deadlines that are hard to push back and using contracts or agreements to get things done. If you don’t have external pressures to stay on track, he suggests using a website like stickk.com to help you reach your goals.
That’s it from me, until next Decade! ( I shouldn’t have done this!
Would love to know if you have any feedback or want me to write about someone who you think is amazing at what they do! Please share it if you liked the post!