Photo: Pedro Moura Pinheiro / Flickr

Frank Wilczek won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2004. He had this to say about mistakes ‑ or not making them: ‘If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.’ Tim Ferriss is comfortable with mistakes, saying in his book The 4-Hour Work Week that mistakes are the name of the game in lifestyle design. ‘It requires fighting impulse after impulse from the old world of retirement-based deferral.’

Getting into the 4-hour work week: predictable slip-ups

Ferriss explains that the following slip-ups are bound to happen as they’re part of the process of getting into a new 4-hour week lifestyle. The first slip-up is losing sight of dreams and falling into work for work’s sake.

The second is micromanaging and emailing in order to fill up your time. Why answer emails that don’t lead to sales when you can organise a FAQ or an auto-responder? You can solve the problem of helping others with the same problem more than once by giving your co-workers and outsourcers if-then rules.

If-then rules solve most day to day problems. Give the people around you the freedom to act without your input. Another problem is ‘chasing customers, particularly unqualified or international prospects, when you have sufficient cash flow to finance your nonfinanical pursuits.’

More common mistakes

Ferriss recommends separating your work and home environments as working where you live is another mistake. ‘Designate a single space for work and solely work or you will never be able to escape it.’

Another mistake is striving for endless perfection when good enough is good enough. This applies to your professional and personal life. ‘Focus on great for a few things and good enough for the rest,’ advises Ferriss who views perfection as an impossible destination.

Other problems to be aware of are making small problems larger than life so that you have an excuse to work as well as making ‘non-time-sensitive issues urgent in order to justify work.’ And since life is too short to waste, no thing should be seen as the be-all-and-end-all of life. That said, remember your social life.

Tags: lifestyle