What Does the Four-hour Workweek Look Like With AI?
Tim Ferriss says the four-hour workweek in a world of AI agents still follows the book's four-step process: definition, elimination, automation, and liberation. Definition and elimination are going to be more and more important.
The book's 20th anniversary is coming up in April of 2027. Definition means defining exactly where to go, pointing in the right direction, then calculating the total monthly income and other numbers necessary to design a particular life or lifestyle. Elimination means removing, using 80-20 analysis, the trivial many so the focus stays on the critical few. Automation uses processes and technology to automate as much as possible. When the book came out in 2007, automation was focused in some respects on virtual assistants, and virtual assistants get too much airplay. They are a means to an end. He still uses plenty of humans. The real work is defining the rules and policies that govern life and business, following them with pristine categories of what to do and what not to do, and optimizing only the things already identified and left with room to breathe as the critical few. Liberation means using the time and the void created in the most enjoyable and high-leverage ways possible. He is invested in a lot of the frontier labs and has a lot of exposure to behind-the-scenes conversations with smaller companies at the cutting edge.
