The 4-Hour Workweek
One of the best reads of 2023 for me is ‘The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferris. The book is wonderful, and I highly recommend it anyone who at least occasionally thinks of living a better life without keeping everything to the retirement. The section I will write about in this piece is called “Dodging Bullets” which describes how we fail to take action because of fear. We don’t go to vacation places we’d like to, we don’t move a new country, and most related to this article, we don’t quit the job we hate.
The section begins with the quote attributed to the great Mark Twain: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” Most people choose not to act and always find excuses for not doing something. Uncertainty about your future if you do something dramatic and the fear of failure if you don’t succeed are too strong. Therefore, most individuals, as the author puts it, “will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.” But when you start defining your fears, you’ll find out most fears have no basis. You’ll most likely not starve, you won’t be jobless for years (even though the aim is to quit the job, but if you really need you can return to full-time employment temporarily), and you won’t become penniless when you quit your job. So, to conquer fears you should define them.
The section concludes with seven questions which the reader is expected to answer for themselves. They have been designed to find out your fears, to realize why you are “nervous about making the jump”. This article is my attempt to answer those questions. You can also try putting what is in your mind on paper. Who knows, maybe this one small action will be a giant step into your future?
1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. What doubt, fears, and “what-ifs” pop up as you consider the big change you can — or need — to make? Envision them in painstaking detail. Would it be the end of your life? What would be the permanent impact, if any, on a scale of 1–10? Are these things really permanent? How likely do you think it is that they would actually happen?
My worst nightmare is remaining without a decent income for months. One of the scariest scenarios that comes to my mind is that a new baby will be born in my family, and I won’t have enough money to provide her with the necessary things, such as cloth diapers, baby food, milk, and clothes. I myself can somehow survive with little money, but I don’t want my baby to suffer from poverty. If something in my mind is equal to hitting bottom as a parent, then this is (i.e., not being financially able to take care of your kids) that bottom.
But when I look at my “worst-case scenario” more deeply, I can see that I overestimate how bad things can go. I was unemployed in the past, and the experience was not fatal. You surely struggle but somehow you earn money however little it is. I couldn’t find a job for 7 months in my country even with a UK master’s diploma. It was not the best thing that happened to me, but it was not the worst experience either. It was definitely not the end of my life since I’m writing these words now. And even if I get courageous enough and quit my job tomorrow and I am not able to earn enough money to take of my family as I will, I can always return to full-time employment temporarily. I think with my skills and experience I can find a good job in a month at most. So, in the scale of permanent impact, this is equal to 1, or maximum 2. And this nightmare is the scenario that most likely will NOT happen. Risk is something that can happen but more likely it won’t.
2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily? Chances are, it’s easier than you imagine. How could you get things back under control?
As I already mentioned above, I can always find a temporary full- or part-time job to get enough money if things don’t go as I planned. It is not that hard to find a decent job with my experience and skills. The worst that can happen is that I will waste some months or years on my projects to no avail. But I’ll know that at least I tried.
3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probable scenarios? Now that you’ve defined the nightmare, what are the more probable or definite positive outcomes, whether internal (confidence, self-esteem, etc.) or external? What would the impact of these more-likely outcomes be on a scale of 1–10? How likely is it that you could produce at least a moderately good outcome? Have less intelligent people done this before and pulled it off?
Now let’s speak about the good part. The more probable scenario is that once I quit my job, I’ll start working on my projects, and at least one of them will be successful. My favorite project, the one I’m working hardest right now, is a trivia quiz. This will be the game where participants paying a small fee can win some money for answering questions correctly. I love quizzes and believe that the project will be interesting to prospective participants.
If I succeed at my project, this will increase my confidence and self-esteem beyond imagination. I always have had “an urge to create” (by the way, this is the reason I write), and seeing the result of my hard work on my own project will make me happier. I don’t think I’ll create the next “Jeopardy!”, but even the idea of a trivia game with tens or hundreds of participants excites me; and I really believe that it is not unreal. I can and will do it.
Answers to the remaining questions will be covered in the next article.
