The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris is a book about quitting your 9-to-5 to pursue the life you’ve always dreamed of. This isn’t about running your own business – it’s about owning a business that runs itself so you can stop living on a “deferred life plan” and start enjoying your golden years right now.

Is it unrealistic? In many regards, of course it is. But it’s not quite as far out as you might think. I recently read The 4-Hour Workweek and to my surprise, a book about quitting your job had a few things to teach people about talent management.

Empower, Escape and Get More Done

There are three major topics covered in the book that relate directly to talent management:

1. Empower others
2. The virtues of working remotely
3. Getting more done

We’ll be looking at each in a bit more detail.

Empower Others

The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so they can do a lot more than they’ve done in the past.
- Bill Gates, Founder of Microsoft

Say what you will about Windows (is it Mojave now, or still Vista?), but there’s no denying that Bill Gates and Microsoft have been phenomenally successful. I’m sure that success has been a combination of things: Great timing, smart business decisions, a lot of luck. But Bill’s quote about empowerment is something all managers should take to heart.

I would assume most organizations hire people because they think they can do the job. It amazes me, though, how often managers either don’t allow their employees to make decisions or don’t give them the resources to effectively do so. This creates a bottleneck in the flow of work.

This is most common in call-centers. How often have you encountered someone who “isn’t allowed” to make a decision on something, and needs to get their manager who, by the way, just went out on lunch and won’t be back for another hour. And you’re just trying to return a $5 pair of socks.

If you want to improve productivity and innovation in the workplace, one of the easiest ways is to empower your employees. In 4HWW, Tim discusses how he used to spend his entire day fielding questions about one-off situations from call-center employees in the business he owned. One day he made a decision to empower them to create their own solution for any problem that cost less than $200 to fix.

He audited the results after a month, and found that he was spending far less time fielding questions, and miraculously, business was still running smoothly. He wasn’t losing thousands of dollars and he didn’t have a long line of angry customers.

People will generally act how they are treated. If you assume people are incapable of making good decisions, they won’t. But if you empower them and trust their judgment, most of the time they’ll get it right. Sometimes they won’t, but that’s how people learn.

Work From Anywhere

Image by Giorgio Montersino

Another big aspect of 4HWW is “escaping” from the office so you can work from where you want, when you want. In the book, it’s for all the wrong reasons – to eliminate some of your work, outsource more of it, and cut way back on hours. But the concept itself isn’t without merit.

Best Buy has had incredible success at its corporate office with ROWE (Results Only Work Environment), a novel concept in which employees can work from anywhere, anytime they want, as long as they get their work done. This is outcome-based management taken to the extreme. Since standardizing the practice, Best Buy has seen their productivity, engagement and retention all go up astronomically.

Let’s be honest, for knowledge workers (people who are paid for their knowledge and not their time or service – i.e. exempt employees), there really is no reason why work needs to be done within the confines of the office between the hours of 8 am and 6 pm every day.

In my article on what Generation Y can teach you about managing a workforce, I explained why allowing employees to work when and where they want may actually improve the quality and quantity of their work. I even highlight some of the tools available to help facilitate a remote workforce. Be sure to check it out for more information.

Get More Done

Empowering others and working remotely are two concepts that can have a great impact on the workforce that you manage. The 4HWW also provides some great tips on how to get more done yourself – feel free to pass them along to your people!

Singletasking

Research backs Tim up on this one: Multitasking actually makes you get less done. Tim’s solution? Singletasking.

In the 4HWW, he recommends choosing one or two of the most important tasks or pojects you have and spending a majority of your time working on those. Schedule a couple of hours of uninterrupted time to just work on that project or task. Research suggests that every interruption (even just a few seconds), can take up to 15 minutes to recover from. Imagine how much productivity you lose just from having email notifications on Outlook!

Singletasking doesn’t mean that you can’t have more than one project on your plate. What it does mean is that when you’re working on something, you shouldn’t have several other projects of tasks going on at the same time.

On a phone conference? Don’t answer emails. You’re probably not doing either effectively.

Avoiding the Important Things

It’s important to understanding the difference between being productive and being active. Merlin Mann at 43 Folders often mentions that people have a tendency to focus more on doing things than on doing things that matter.

Periodically ask yourself, “Am I inventing things to do to avoid doing something important?” You may be surprised how often the answer is “yes.”

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

The book certainly isn’t without its faults. The chapter on outsourcing your life (I’m not making this up!) is mind-numbingly stupid. If you do decide to read this book, do so with a critical but open mind. Despite its flaws (and there are many), The 4-Hour Work Week is a fun, easy read with a lot to teach you about managing others and getting more out of yourself.

Links

• Buy The Four Hour Work Week
• 43 Folders: Time Attention & Creative Work
• “Smashing the Clock“: Best Buy and the Results Only Work Environment
• New York Times on the “Myth of Multitasking“
• Oh Great! Another Gen Y Article?