As I mentioned in my earlier post about buying “The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich“, I bought the book right before heading off to the Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester Virginia. It was a very intriguing read, and while I can’t say that I buy into all of Feriss’ belief, he has lots of interesting ideas.

His take on reading email only once a week is too extreme for me. I did however immediately modify my Thunderbird settings to check for emails every 2 hours instead of every 10 minutes. I did not notice any problems with my clients, but I did notice that I spent less time on emails almost immediately. Score 1 for the four hour work week!

The Feriss approach to outsourcing everything possible interests me immensely. I created an Elance buyer account right away. I had a provider account from a long time ago, but had never considered buying services. I had a grunt work job that I have been meaning to work on for one of my sites for quite a while, and it seemed perfect to outsource. I posted the job details (ie, content administration, 25 hours, needed excellent English skills, etc), and in the 5 day bid period that I set up I received many offshore bids for the minimum $50 bid. I ended up taking a $250 big primarily because the English skills were absolutely required – and the person I chose had an excellent knowledge of the particular content type (she is working out awesome). You would not believe the sense of relief that I felt once the provider started working on my content! I have started looking at all of the mundane work I do on my sites to find work that I can offshore now. I believe I can easily justify 10 hours a week without thinking too hard — with a goal of ousourcing all work that just eats up time with very little benefit.

I plan on dropping in more thoughts on the book as I have a chance to try out his techniques.

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