TICK TOCK
For some Boomers time is winding down. For Author Timothy Ferriss, time is what counts
By Eric Gemelli
The beauty of being a Baby Boomer is by now you’ve either made it or figured out financial freedom is far enough off that you’re not going to bother chasing it. Both situations can be very liberating. For one, we’re old enough to stop pretending to be something we aren’t. We can make peace with our own status quo and tweak our life a bit to make small improvements to be our best self instead of pursuing a fantasy.
Timothy Ferriss deals with this dilemma in his book The 4-Hour Work Week, raising the question: do you even want to be the bald fat man driving a red convertible dying of terminal boredom?
The reality is, according to Ferriss, we want to experience what money can buy—“Ski chalets, butlers, exotic travel….perhaps rubbing cocoa butter on your belly in a hammock while you listen to waves rhythmically lapping against the deck of your thatched-roof bungalow.” The $1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy, but rather the fantasy is the complete freedom a lifestyle as a millionaire supposedly allows.
Ferriss should know. He’s spent years racing motorcycles in Europe, scuba diving off the coast of private islands and dancing Tango in Buenos Aires. He’s not a multi-millionaire, nor does he care to be. “I’ve seen the promised land [sic], and there is good news. You can have it all,” he claims.
The bigger question is: “How?”
First, he says, do less meaningless work, even if that means being fired. Why be effective at meaningless work? Ask yourself what the worst case scenario is to being let go. If that prospect, which is probably remote, is less terrifying than 30 more years of the life you have now, take a risk. Change it up.
Its accrual accounting in the broadest terms: If you make $1,000,000 per year and you hate your life, of what value is it to be one of the living dead. A friend of mine briefly dated a woman who had all the financial freedom anyone could want but spent her life drunk dialing at 3a.m. bitching about her maid’s incompetence.
Ferriss recommends efficiency over effectiveness. He discovered as a salesman that if he made his prospecting calls early in the morning he bypassed the gatekeepers, got more appointments and therefore more sales. He had twice the financial success with one-eighth the effort. As a business owner, he discovered he was the bottleneck, took himself out of the equation by automating every detail he could think of and watched his profits rise by 40%.
What matters, says Ferriss, is the number of W’s you master: what you do, when you do it, where you do it and with whom you do. Free up your time and location, and the money you do have is worth between 3 times and 10 times as much
Ferriss urges his disciples to change their business model—even if they’re an employee—in order to be set free. One quasi-plausible path to freedom is the doing your work from anywhere. He also warns that anything in excess becomes its opposite. Freedom in the extreme becomes a cell of its own.
Some people subscribe to the belief that you can ask the universe for whatever you want. A dear friend, Lisa Grammens, a devotee of dream-lining, did that and got everything she thought she wanted. She married a rock star, had a life of limos, prestige and champagne. She lived on a 100- acre mountain ranch and pursued her passion of creating art. She reflects about her life then, saying, “This was a life that many dream of…but inside I was lonely, lost and frozen with fear.”
Her story serves as a precautionary counterbalance to Ferriss’ Rx for freedom. If you don’t know what you should have for breakfast a week from now, how can you forecast what it is that will make you happy 10 years from now? The reality for many is that getting what they want is the worst possible thing that could happen.
The 4-Hour Work Week is an interesting compilation of Ferriss’ experiences and remedies for work malaise. If you want a little help considering what on earth do you do when you no longer have work as an excuse to be hyperactive and avoid the big questions, this book is it. Buy it, but only after reading the warning Ferriss issues: “Be terrified and hold on to your ass with both hands.” Good advice.
Author Eric Gemelli founded Cornerstone Financial Services LLC in 1997 and as the managing member has worked in mortgages, life and health insurance, raised venture capital, and trading commodities averaging 30% a month doing so. He offers market forecasting services, and is “sure enough of [his] ability that 80% of [his] fee is based on performance.”
