Goal Setting, Career Change and The Four Hour Work Week

What does Goal Setting and Tim Ferris's bestseller on Lifestyle design, "The Four Hour Work Week" have in common? Well, like most personal development books, it includes a nice 4-letter acronym ('DEAL') to map out the principles! Joking aside, 'DEAL' is actually a workable strategy. In this article I will highlight four key learning points from the book for anyone seeking to set and implement major career change goals such as escaping the corporate rat race. Starting with getting out of that sterile cubicle farm environment.

1- Self-Belief
Since many of Tim's readers are likely technology literate Gen X or Y folks who are looking down the barrels of an ongoing (US) housing price bubble and the social security time bomb of massive Boomer retirement, it is timely that he is 'preaching' to the converted when he implies that saving for the 'promised' good times of tomorrow-land is not the deal it once was.

He is not being cavalier about financial planning. Far from it! His driving force is that of self-belief, along the lines of: "You'll see it when you believe it". For example, it sounds almost nuts to hear him recommend taking a series of mini-retirements in your 20s and 30s, instead of waiting 40 years or more into an unknown future.

So the primary lesson here is one of changing your beliefs about what is possible. From the perspective of what he calls "The New Rich" this reframe is perfectly normal and in fact, highly desirable. To an employee in a cubicle for 50 plus hours each week it might sound plain unrealistic. But with some careful planning (and goal setting!) it is possible to move in that direction and have fun too!

2- Mis-Planning For Retirement
Tim reckons the current ideas about slaving away at a JOB for the best (physically and mentally) 40 plus years of your life and then retiring, is now antiquated. More likely is the reality that people will live long lives but not be able to afford "permanent retirement" and also maintain a decent standard of living i.e. they will still need to work anyway. If that's the case then it makes more sense to find meaningful work while we are in our prime years and break it up with extended "mini-retirements".

For corporate employees with 2 weeks annual vacation from a desk, this is again a tough one to accept. But there are structural forces at work in the global economy (e.g. the mobility provided by always-on Internet access) which are diluting the once restrictive nature of geographical barriers for many white collar roles. Tim's advice is to create a vision of what you'd like to do and then face the reality of getting managers and co-workers on-board with the increased productivity you are capable of delivering while out of the cube farm.

3- Leverage Your Strengths
This goes directly against advice to become the well-rounded person by filling in your weak points. But aside from it being a miserable thing to work on an area in which you have little ability and almost no interest, time is not on your side. There is a limited and unknown supply for each of us.

So why would you leverage your strengths and align your goals to help do this? One answer is that you are pursuing happiness in all that you do. Tim goes much further than this and suggests that the primary driver is "excitement". You are performing most effectively and enjoying it immensely when you really are doing all those exciting things you have been putting off and off - well, at least a subset of them to start with!

4- Build a Dreamline
Tim has a novel approach on how to create inspiring visions for the immediate and near future - he is not big into long range goal planning because he believes things change too much or are simply unknowable that far in advance.

His system for dreamlines is designed to get you into action as quickly as possible. NOT taking action is what, logically enough, kills most peoples' dreams stone dead.

Overall, the first half of this wonderful book is for those wanting to begin an active lifestyle design by loosening the corporate chains that bind. Yes, I know you always have the option of resigning but in the win-win language so beloved of corporate personal development programs, you now have an option to start tunneling out from within!

The second half of the book is for heavy hitters who have already crawled out the tunnel and are in free territory. The ins-and-outs of passive income streams and how to apply some of your well earned project management and technical skills to owning your own Internet business are covered in some depth. Notice, I said "owning" and not "running" your own business! That is probably the difference between a 4-Hour work week and a 4-Hour Work day!!

Discover How To Create Incredible Yet Reachable Goals - in this FREE 14-page report: Goal Setting Report

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Mark McClure is a leading Asia-Pacific 'change-the-game' career coach and Internet Business Owner.

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