The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Update - Timothy Ferriss [60]
Mara: Uhh … I’ll see what I can do.
You: That means a lot to me. Thanks. Before I forget,20 last week’s presentation was excellent.
Mara: Did you think so? Blah, blah, blah …
LIFESTYLE DESIGN IN ACTION
THE BEST TIMES TO SEND E-MAIL
You’ve suggested people check e-mail only a few times a day. Here’s a twist: I reply to e-mails when it’s convenient, but I time it to arrive when it’s also convenient for me. In Outlook you can delay e-mail delivery to any time of day. For example, when I return e-mails at 3 p.m., I don’t want my staff instantly zinging me responses or clarifying questions. (This also prevents e-mail chats.) So I hit send, but it’s delayed to arrive later in the evening or at 8 A.M. when my employees arrive the next day. This is how e-mail was meant to be! It’s mail, not a chat service.
—JIM LARRANAGA
14. To leverage global pricing and currency differences for profit or lifestyle purposes.
15. Information technology.
16. Don’t call it a problem if you can avoid it.
17. No one can argue with your feelings, so use this to avoid a debate about external circumstances.
18. Notice how I take “you” out of the sentence to avoid finger-pointing, even though it’s implicit. “Normally, you make priorities clear” sounds like a backhanded insult. If this is a significant other, you can skip this formality, but never use “you always do X,” which is just a fight starter.
19. Take a little bit of the heat off with this. The point has already been made.
20. “Before I forget” is a great segue to the closing compliment, which is also a topic shifter and gets you off the sensitive topic without awkwardness.
Income Autopilot I
FINDING THE MUSE
Just set it and forget it!
—RON POPEIL, founder of RONCO; responsible for more than $1 billion in sales of rotisserie chicken roasters
As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Renaissance Minimalist
Douglas Price was waking up to another beautiful summer morning in his Brooklyn brownstone. First things first: coffee. The jet lag was minor, considering he had just returned from a two-week jaunt through the islands of Croatia. It was just one of six countries he had visited in the last 12 months. Japan was next on the agenda.
Buzzing with a smile and his coffee mug in hand, he ambled over to his Mac to check on personal e-mail first. There were 32 messages and all brought good news.
One of his friends and business partners, also a cofounder of Limewire, had an update: Last Bamboo, their start-up poised to reinvent peer-to-peer technology, was rounding the final corners of development. It could be their billion-dollar baby, but Doug was letting the engineers run wild first.
Samson Projects, one of the hottest contemporary art galleries in Boston, had compliments for Doug’s latest work and requests for expanded involvement with new exhibits as their sound curator.
The last e-mail in his inbox was a fan letter addressed to “Demon Doc” and praise for his latest instrumental hip-hop album, onliness VI.O.I. Doug had released his album as what he termed “open source music”—anyone could download the album for free and use sounds from any track in his or her own compositions.
He smiled again, polished off his dark roast, and opened a window to deal with business e-mail next. It would take much less time. In fact, less than 30 minutes for the day and 2 hours for the week.
How much things change.
Two years earlier, in June of 2004, I was in Doug’s apartment checking e-mail for what I hoped would be the last time for a long time. I was headed to JFK Airport in New York in a matter of hours and was preparing for an indefinite quest around the world. Doug looked on with amusement. He had similar plans for himself and was finally extricating himself from a venture-funded Internet startup that had once been a cover story and his passion