The 4-Hour Work Week

Hey, guys! Making it a priority to read more business books this year, and figured I’d start posting key takeaways here! Basically, no matter what, when I wake up each morning, I’m just making myself sit down and read a business book for an hour. Definitely picking up tools from the books as I go along, but equally valuable is the sense of empowerment I’m feeling just from knowing I’m working on myself as a CEO - and that’s making me more decisive in running our business.

Book: The 4 Hour Work Week

Punchline of the Book Life is too short to work a job you hate. Become more efficient at your job in order to free up time. Use that time to automate a business, and then do what you really want in life

That's sort of the road map laid out, but the book acknowledges the tools provided are just as good for people doing stuff they love – but who want to cut out time consuming bullshit and be more efficient.

Those tools are

80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is a universal law, sort of like normal distributions (bell curves) in statistics. It dictates that 80% of your results are coming from 20% of your inputs. In your business? 20% of your daily tasks are bringing in 80% of your money - everything outside of that 20% should be outsourced, eliminated, or marginalized in your workflow.

Health? 80/20 applies too. Sleep well (the most important thing you can do for your health), eat non-processed, whole foods (meat, eggs, nuts, fruits, veggies) and work out. Everything other than those might make you feel good, but the above are the 20% bringing you 80% of your results.

Dating? I’d say an 80/20 approach to succeeding in dating is getting in shape, working on your career, and moving to a big mating market (New York, Miami, Dallas, etc). Don’t stress over each syllable and emoji you send in a text exchange - that’s not 80/20 shit.

And for my business, what this really means is: Making good videos for youtube is what moves the needle. However, a ton of shit goes into that, so what do I actually need to focus on?

Working on getting funnier. Not only does this make the videos better, but it’s a super motivating goal for me that makes work fun. It means doing stand up, watching diverse comedy from all sorts of eras, and keeping my writing muscle strong by writing for both stand up and main channel videos.

Working on getting smarter. In addition to my business deep dive, I’m also keeping abreast of the news and financial markets, trying to better understand the world around me. This provides subjects to make videos on, and also makes me feel more empowered and worth watching as a performer.

Patreon. An 80/20 dissection of our income streams shows that Patreon is BY FAR our biggest and most reliable source of funding. Being supported by an awesome and rabid group of fans like you is such an honor, and I know it’s because we’re putting out one of a kind content on Youtube. So that motivates me to continue the grind of getting better, and keep the content flowing on here.

Editing? Editing is a much more teachable/replicable skill versus going out and being me in a video, so I've done a ton of outsourcing of it to my team lately. I still put in hours and hours every week to help get the edit just right, but I’m increasingly trying to catch myself and remind myself to 80/20 that bitch. Did one of my team members cut something a little differently than I would have, and did they maybe chop out an amusing exchange that I personally would have left in? Maybe. But 80/20 wise, they’re making roughly the same choices I would make in the edit, and going back in and micromanaging everything would only take away time for my 20% activities (the ones listed above)

2. Parkinson's law: This was the second most important lesson from the book for me, and it’s as follows: Whatever time you’ve allotted to getting something done, you will stretch and fill that entire time with that job. Meaning, if I give a kid a week to do a book report, 10/10 chance it will be getting finished on the night before or morning of its due date. Same applies to our tasks in adulthood. How do we use Parkinson's law to our advantage? Shrink your time window to complete a task – especially a task that’s not high on your 80/20 list. For me, every other week, I’m going to experiment with cramming all editing and filming into Monday - Friday (my normal work week is Monday - Saturday). Doing this will allow me to enjoy a leisurely Saturday with only research and writing on my to-do list, making for a relaxing weekend.