Background: This ESL podcast is about having a 4 hour work week. Imagine only working 4 hours a week while having the rest of your time to do what you want. Is this possible? Find out about this interesting topic while learning excellent vocabulary for daily and spoken English.
Discussion forum
4 Hour Work Week
English Learning Reading
| "The four hour work week" is a non-fiction New York Times bestseller written by Tim Ferris. In the book Tim challenges the conventional view that the goal of a business should be to maximize profits. He believes that earning as much money as possible shouldn’t be the ultimate goal in life. He argues that money is really only a means to achieve certain other goals. According to the book, people should always be looking for ways to improve their work efficiency by focusing on what is really important, and delegating the work that isn’t worth their time to do. After you increase your work efficiency you will have more free time. Tim encourages people to spend that free time pursuing their interests in life, such as traveling or learning a new sport, rather than using that time to make more money. The reason for this is that since the amount of money someone has is subject to the law of diminishing returns, at some point people should stop trying to earn more money and instead look for ways to work less and enjoy the other things life has to offer. When he thinks of new potential business models, he tries to set them up in a way that makes him have to work as little as possible. Even if he thought of a business that could potentially make him millions of dollars, he wouldn’t do it if he had to spend too much time working on it.
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Phrases and Vocabulary used:
Non-fiction: Non-fiction books are books that give information or facts; (Novels and stories are Fiction)
New York Times Bestseller: The New York Times is a popular newspaper in the USA and they have a famous list of books that are very popular, (ie. high sales volume)
Conventional view: The common or most popular opinion on something.
Maximize: If you "maximize" something it means you try to increase it to the greatest amount possible. Many companies try to maximize their profits, even at the expense of the environment.
Ultimate goal: The "ultimate goal" is the real goal or the end goal you have. Someone could say, "I’m working as a waitress now to save some money, but my ultimate goal is go back to school to get my MBA"
Delegating: If you delegate work to someone else it means that you are letting them do the work for you. "Our boss doesn’t seem to do much work. He just delegates everything to all his employees and spends most of his time playing golf"
Law of diminishing returns: See Blog for explanation
May 11th, 2008 at 6:16 am
The link doesn’t work. Could you please fix it?