The 4-Hour Work Week?

When I entered the title right up there I typo-ed “The 40Hour Work Week”. That’s a Freudian slip and a half if you ever saw one.

So I have decided to do away with all the whinging and whining I have included in this blog recently and have thereby resolved to get up off my butt and start doing something to fix it.

I have had this wishy-washy goal nestled in the back of my mind all year and the other day, when I took a mental health day, I plugged in my mobem and did a bit of research. I figured out exactly what it was that I wanted to do.  I crystallised the goal and I am actually able to start making steps to get there.  When it was just this vague idea I didn’t do anything about it because, frankly, I couldn’t.  Now I have little steps that I can do like items on a to-do list. Nice.

And then today I got a call from a friend who said she knows these people looking for a particular sort of person and I totally fit the bill and she recommended me would it be ok for her to give them my number. And these people are people I have really, really been interested in working for.

So… wow.

I bother to flap my butterfly wings and look what happens.

Also. I took a walk up to Borders and used their weekly Shortlist voucher to pick up The 4-Hour Work Week.

I have a confession to make (and Skink’s probably gonna leave an abusive — yet witty and amusing — comment about it).

I have a thing for self-help books.

I have only ever ACTUALLY read one, a long time ago, but it was good and helpful and I learned lots and I’ve bought like a couple over the last year or so.  I could say it was in the hope that one day I might read them and sort out my life, but more accurately, it was in the hope that they might impart wisdom on me via some sort of wireless-osmosis from my little Ikea bookshelf, because I thought I was better than them.

But yeah, I did think I needed them. (Actually I need and am using stuff that’s a lot stronger, but that’s another story for another post).

Anyway, I’d been hearing bits and bobs about that book around the blogosphere so I decided to give it a shot. Plus the Chicken Soup guy said this:

“It’s about time this book was written. It is a long-overdue manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and Tim Ferriss is the ideal ambassador. This will be huge.”
–- Jack Canfield

I love the Chicken Soup books! And I am all for the whole mobile working thing.

At completely cursory glance: I really don’t think I need all the internet marketing shit that’s mentioned in the sneaky readers-only page, and I have serious moral-dilemma issues with the whole “outsourcing your life” thing, but I’ll read the book and watch these videos and get back to you on that.

Anyway, I better get back to what feels like an 80-hour work week — I can’t even be all TGIF cause I know I have to come in on the weekend.

But maybe not for long 😛

[Un]Happiness And The [Start] Of The Working Week

Sitting at work during the 10-minute internet break I’m giving myself for working super hard for an hour and a half (despite the horror start to the day), and find this gem from Put Things Off in my Google Reader.

Despite all the obvious warnings, like the cubicle stress that ends in Godzilla-style office rampages, all of this is somehow considered normal. Commuting is a fact of life, isn’t it? Or perhaps, like me, you find a dark humour in wasting our lives by physically travelling to work in the Internet age. If it wasn’t so sad it might be funny.

It was pouring with rain this morning. After the thunderstorms last night, the clouds apparently had a few more dams-full to squeeze out. The traffic was horrendous. A 10-minute drive (which I would normally catch the bus for, since petrol is nearing $1.65/L this week) took over 3 times as long. On the walk from the car park to my office, my beautiful bespoke-tailored-for-super-cheap-in-Vietnam pants got so soaked that I probably don’t need to worry about finding time to get them to the dry-cleaners this week — they are ruined.

On days like this, if I was able to work from home, Monday-itis would be a LOT easier to deal with.

Great article, Nick.

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