Working from Home and the Four-Hour Work Week Principle

While many people take on additional part-time jobs in today’s economy in order to pay their bills, it will pay great dividends to learn from Timothy Feriss’ 4-Hour Work Week book.

Ferris is an entrepreneur who wrote the book based upon his experience in making the most effective use of his time – creating a structure in which he accomplished just as much with a fraction of the time investment that he once put in. The key to the plan is not just to work less, but rather to make sure you get the absolute most effective use of your time.

These principles certainly apply to anyone who is looking to start a home-based business, especially for those with plans to turn their work into a successful, full-time venture. The author broadly defines his strategy as DEAL – Definition, Elimination, Automation then Liberation. We will review each of the principles that Feriss presents, in turn, to see how they can help you start a successful home work venture.

As a first step, Ferris suggests that we come to Define what our goals really are and what is will take to get there – what are the startup costs, what is our ideal income (and our acceptable income) and what is our plan to obtain those goals over time?

If you’re starting your first work from home business, it’s important to take time and do the background research on your market to start to answer these questions – realize that it will take time to build up to where you want to be, but give your self a realistic time table to achieve those goals (you may want to slowly transition from your existing full time job in certain cases.)

The next step is Elimination, which is about maximize your focus to get the most out of your time – the author rightly suggests that business owners should focus their time on the decisions and efforts that will produce the most. While it’s okay to spend time working on new ideas, make sure you are disciplined by the return on your efforts; every time you start a new project, constantly ask yourself, “is this worth my time?”

For those who are just starting out, it may take time to realize your ultimate monetary returns. The important point is that you work more quickly to improve your projects to get to that point. For example, suppose you are selling hand made jewelry on eBay – rather than just creating a whole slew of colors to see what works, produce just a few of each, then make more of those that sell most quickly.

In the plan, the final two steps are automation and liberation – by focusing your time and energy on those essential parts of the business, you can work with others who can effectively manage other parts of the project, so long as it is profitable for you. Rather than getting caught up in technology, use it only to simplify tasks – email should only be used as effective communication, not as a hobby as it is commonly used.

By following these principles, you can work toward you goal of creating a successful home based business.