4-Hour Workweek

Transformative power of catastrophic thinking

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These days, I’m reading a 50-year-old book called How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by a libertarian guy named Harry Browne.

In spite of Browne’s absolute trust in markets and the infallible human ability to rationally choose what we most want, the book gives a bunch of good and practical advice on how to live life more happily. Here’s one bit:

“If your lover is going to spend an evening with someone else, imagine the situation you’re afraid will happen. Imagine the worst. Picture them talking, laughing, kissing, making love – whatever it is you fear will happen. Keep doing it over and over again until it no longer affects you emotionally.”

I haven’t tried this with a wayward lover, but I have tried it when I was thinking to quit my office job, back in 2014, to start writing online.

On the one hand, I never wanted an office job. I didn’t particularly enjoy the one I had, even though it was as good as I could ever hope for. I wanted to control my own time and be productive rather than simply filling a seat.

But what if I quit my job to write online, and it didn’t work out? I would be leaving behind this sure thing for something unknown and unlikely to succeed… but I also didn’t want to stay at my job… but I also couldn’t commit to quitting… but the current job was unsupportable…. but the alternative could be even unsupportable!

I had read Tim Ferriss’s 440-Hour Workweek some time earlier, and Tim advocated pretty much the same thing that Browne suggests above — imagining the worst case scenario in detail, when faced with an uncertain and out-of-control life situation.

So I did what Tim Ferriss advocates for business, and what Harry Browne advocates for cheating, and I imagined the worst.

In my case, the worst meant I’d quit my job… try to make it online… fail… eventually burn through all my savings… have no money to even support myself while I looked for a job… have to move back to Croatia to live in my dad’s spare apartment… and look for a job there, without pressure.

When I faced up to the “worse than unsupportable” worst outcome, my anxiety and indecision vanished. Honestly, the worst really wasn’t that bad. And I could see now there was a fair chance it wouldn’t happen. I quit my job soon after, and I’ve been jobless ever since.

So that’s my bit of advice for you.

Here’s another bit of advice:

If you would like to take advantage of the above psychology to influence people — not by scaring them, but by getting them excited and encouraging them — then go ye and get my Copy Riddles program.

Because the same psychology that makes the unexamined “worst outcome” so scary also makes the unexamined “secret” or “blind opportunity” so exciting and tempting.

In both cases, we are standing outside the temple, with only a childish sense of all the wonders and terrors that must be hidden inside.

Copy Riddles guides you and imprints on you all the fine and delicate ways that A-list copywriters have discovered to play with this bit of human psychology. Owning these skills will be the most valuable skill, or thereabouts, you possess if you too write online.

For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The Son of 4-Hour Work Week

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“There is an inverse relationship between the value of knowledge and what people are willing to pay for it. The most important things in life you’ve probably heard a hundred times before, but you’re not paying attention. When you’re in the right place and you hear it, you have that ‘aha’ moment and everything changes.”
— Mark Ford

In 2007, Tim Ferris published The 4-Hour Work Week.

The book had great kairos. It hit the New York Times Best Seller list, stayed there for four years, and sold over 2 million copies.

And it wasn’t just 4HWW. Around the same time, lots of marketers were telling you how to make good money online by building lots of tiny niche websites… or publishing dozens of crappy ebooks… or in general making some hit-and-run cash grab.

I’m sure you can still find these kinds of offers floating around the Internet. But my feeling is — and I could be wrong — that the zeitgeist has changed.

For a while now, the pendulum has swung in the other direction.

That’s the direction of building a real business, a personal brand, of creating an asset. Like Rich Schefren said recently (I’m paraphrasing):

“Why would you want to have a job that you hate so much you only do it for four hours a week? Why not build a business that you love to work in every day?”

The thing is, markets get saturated. People get bored of hearing the same message, even if it is completely on-the-money.

And my suspicion is, right now, the pendulum of “Build a sustainable business” is at its peak.

I hallucinate the pendulum will come swinging down soon. People will again be ready to hear the message that you can make passive income, and that money-getting can be reduced to an occasional unpleasant chore, much like going to the dentist.

That’s just my prediction. I’m sharing with you for two reasons:

1. If you haven’t been able to buy into the “Build a business you love” mantra, and you feel guilty about it (as I do), then better times might be ahead.

2. Like I said, it’s been over 10 years since The 4-Hour Work Week was published. Since then, there hasn’t been any money-making book that’s hit the mainstream and had the same impact.

In other words, there might be an opportunity here. If you get going on writing something right now, you might have it ready just as the world starts to emerge from its current months-long delirium. ​​

​​You might even become the next Tim Ferriss. ​​Only trouble is, much like Tim Ferriss, you’ll have to work much more than four hours a week to get there.

In other news, I have an email newsletter where I write about marketing and copywriting. Topics like what you just read. So if you want a regular daily diet of such essays, here’s where to go.

The smart way to discover secret new opportunities

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I have a friend visiting from out of town, so last night I took him to a unique restaurant.

The entrance is hidden. You have to walk in off the street, through a dark and smokey hallway that doubles as a cafe, at the end of which, a door opens up into a series of large rooms.

The restaurant itself is bright and full of people, all eating large platters of veal and lamb… and then stuffing forkfuls of chocolate mousse down their throats and washing it down with red wine.

It’s one of the better places to eat in town. And yet it’s so easy to miss when you’re walking down the street. The only reason I know it is because my dad took me here many years ago.

Lots of things in life can be like this.

For example, I first read the 4-Hour Workweek some time in 2011. It got me intrigued about the idea of online businesses.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” I thought, “if there were more info like this?”

It took me years to discover that, yes, there is a ton of info out there about copywriting and marketing and making money online. I found it eventually by poking around the Internet and following clues and reading and exploring. But I wasted a lot of time.

That’s one way to discover restaurants, too.

You can go online, look over dozens or hundreds of restaurant listings on Yelp or Trip Advisor…

Read a bunch of reviews for the ones that look interesting…

Then try out the best candidates one by one.

It’s one way. But the more I go through life, the more I realize it’s a slow and wasteful way.

A much better way is to have somebody knowledgeable take you by the hand and say, “Here, there’s this incredible opportunity right behind this dark and smokey hallway.”

​​And just in case you’re wondering… it’s easier to have this happen than you might think. All you really have to do is to talk to people… be interested… and be open to new suggestions.