Chris Hardwick of Hard ‘n Phirm tries Getting Things Done, Never Check E-Mail in the Morning, and The Four Hour Work Week.
Allen, Morgenstern, and Ferriss are a nicely compatible family unit: David Allen is the practical dad who reminds you not to overcomplicate things; just get the job done. Julie Morgenstern is the encouraging mom who, while hugging you, says, “It’ll be all right; you just need to focus on what’s important here.” And Tim Ferriss is the upstart kid who cries, “Think outside the box, man!” So in retrospect, it makes sense that I found it easier to cherry-pick elements from each and stitch together my own wearable cloak of efficiency. Now, I know that David Allen is the head vampire of productivity, but if you only have the fortitude to read a single book, I’m gonna throw my lithe frame behind The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss lays out a series of nimble yet perfectly legal cons to help you break out of the corporate Bastille—and work from the actual Bastille, if you want. That sly creativity best fits the rogue nature of the freelancer.
I recently wrote up details of my modded GTD implementation at Klintron’s Brain.
I recently read Four Hour Work Week, expecting to write a scathing review of it. But I’m actually getting a lot of mileage out of it, applying it to The Swift Fox. But I’m still a long way from quitting my day job, and I haven’t hired a personal assistant yet.
January 2, 2009 at 5:10 pm
My late 2008/early 2009 model is to interpret self-employment income as number of hours not spent at regular job. That is, if I were to write an article that brought in X dollars, that equals Y hours not spent at regular job. This takes care of the time sink of regular job but not the insurance blessing of regular job. For that I’m relying on space aliens.
January 2, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Plus the 43 folders method of organizing very swiftly changed projects years out of date into projects either done or only a few days late.
January 3, 2009 at 10:44 am
I kind of doubt I will ever be able to justify “outsourcing” to Third World mammals who are smarter and more qualified than I am. I’ll stick with micro-loans and skip making them google shit for me…that’s just embarrassing all around.
I keep coming back to the business owners I grew up around — because they hired local kids just like and taught us valuable lessons I was far too arrogant to pay the slightest bit of attention to. Now I’m learning it again at 27 and vowing to repeat the cycle by forcing my super-evolved bullshit on the next generation of confused youth.
January 3, 2009 at 5:54 pm
@Justin IIRC, Freis ended up outsourcing to a Canadian company.