Does the 4-Hour Workweek Really Exist?

by Jason Hanson on October 8, 2008

  

Last week I was in North Carolina. I love the outdoors and did some awesome hiking in the Linville Falls Gorge. A buddy and I went in a huge swimming hole that had a nice 20 foot cliff you could jump off of (search the Babel Tower swimming hole). I also went swimming in Lake Lure (for you ladies, that’s the place where the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed).

Anyways, all last week I worked about an hour a day (to return phone calls and emails). I was able to do this because I have my real estate investing on auto-pilot and because my assistant runs things for me. Getting to this point in your real estate investing career takes a while. There are several stages in an investor’s career (one of these days I’ll write about the stages) and right now I’m in stage four (your systems are in place and things run like clockwork…….most of the time).

So, you still probably think that the four hour workweek is a bunch of B.S., and it is….but not for the reasons you think. Working only a couple hours a week is fun to do when you’re taking a vacation or when you want a break every couple of weeks. However, here are the two reasons the four hour workweek is garbage:

  1. As a true entrepreneur, you always want to improve your business. This means you want to find faster ways to sell your houses, you want to create better marketing materials that get higher response rates, and you want to do more deals every month and faster. Obviously, if you only worked four hours a week for 52 straight weeks, your business would stay stagnant and you wouldn’t close any more deals. So if you were averaging 10 deals a year, you would still only close 10 deals.
  2. The second reason is because life would be BORING. Most investors that I know love what they do (if you don’t love real estate investing, get out now). I love what I do and that’s why I often work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. You can only sit on the beach so long before you almost die of boredom.

So, even though it’s a catchy book title, we all know that the four hour workweek is basically called vacationing…..and once you put your business on autopilot, the beauty is that you can vacation as much as you want and where you want.

By the way, next week I ‘m going to show you the number one way that I can tell if someone is going to be a successful real estate investor!

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Chris October 8, 2008 at 11:47 am

The four hour workweek isn’t about not working. It’s about spending your time doing what you want. A lot of people love what they do. I know I love the challenge of running a business, but you also want that freedom to do other things.

I think it’s about making sure you’re doing what you want. If you want to run your business, than that’s cool. Just make sure your business isn’t running you.

Reply

2 limoeg October 10, 2008 at 2:13 am

It is great because you have time for other things.

Reply

3 John October 10, 2008 at 10:06 pm

Agreed. In life, work provides purpose. Without work, or at least a hobby, life would be boring.

Reply

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