After finishing all my books I had 3 minutes at the library to find some more so I went to the business section and grabbed the first three audio books I saw. They turned out to be this one, Rain: What a paperboy learned about business and Buyology. I decided to read this one first mainly because the other two had boring covers typed up presumably by the library and this one had the normal book cover.
My first thought was that this was going to be a get rich quick scheme filled with hype and stories of one in a million stories that "could be you". I recently read some reviews that stated that this is what it is, I don't completely agree.
Ferris throws in a neat little acronym to help his point stick: DEAL.
This is my concise summary of his points:
Definition
Answer this question - What do you want in life? Don't just go with the flow of life
Elimination
Get rid of the time wasters
Automation
Outsource everything, business and personal.
Liberation
Free yourself from your location, take mini-retirements
Obviously he goes into a lot more detail for each point and even gets into things that you wouldn't necessarily expect, his experiments with getting a virtual assistant, tips on speed reading and how to minimalize your home furnishings.
One thing I thought promoted his theories well was his personal stories, especially his National Chinese kick boxing title achievement. He won by reading the rule book and exploiting a couple of loopholes. Firstly weigh-ins were one or two days before the fight so he could drop three weight classes by dehydrating himself and secondly if you leave the ring three times in a match you forfeit. So all he did throughout the whole tournament was push these tiny kickboxing experts out of the ring until he won the whole championship. I love it when reading works to your advantage ;).
Some of his advice on workplace practice, though practical, might not reach people ethical threshold. The 'getting out of meetings' advice was probably ok but I'm not sure about slacking off while at work so that when you are working away from home you look more productive.
This book was practical but probably more inspirational. It makes you think about what you really want in life. Do you just want to be working for retirement or your annual vacation or even for the weekend?
It made me think, is there a product I can easily sell. I'm sure it would take a lot of work up front but then you can implement things to cut this work load down eventually.
Like most self help kind of books or entrepreneurship books it doesn't have all the answers and most of the ideas are going to have to come out of your own head but I think this book has as many general pointers as a book like this can have. I might even buy it.
Comment if you get the last picture ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment