Olina Qian

I first heard Tim Ferriss’s name from my friend Jun Loayza, he is a big fan of ‘Four Hour Work Week’. He always throws out lots of great ideas during our team meeting and seems the source is from ‘Four Hour Work Week’. Which aroused my interest to read that book.

I got to know Tim Ferriss from Yu-kai Chou’s blogpost: Tim Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchurk: Extreme Opposites. From that blog post, Yu-kai describes Tim Ferris as an extremely smart, highly productive person with ‘Double Standard’. It is interesting to know that Tim even outsource date schedule to his oversea workers.

Finally I got chance to read the famous ‘Four Hour Work Week’ while I took my vacation in China. Only finished half of it so far, but I feel that I really like Tim’s life style. Basically he doesn’t believe in work hard and defer happiness after retirement. He suggests living in the current moment and work smart. He is a big fan of 20-80 rule—Use 20% of your time to gain 80% of the money. And enjoy the rest 80% of the time.

He also suggested a location free life style, which means no matter he is in Thailand, China or whatever, his business can still run smoothly. This sounds really amazing to me. I wish I can build a business like that.

I’ve never expected to meet Tim Ferriss in person someday. But I was invited to be photographer for Biz Tech Day Event on Oct 22nd, and amazingly that Tim Ferriss was on the keynote. So I got really excited.

The first panel Tim attended was about Virtual office. It is interesting that Tim wears a black T-shirt and a red sports pants on the stage, looks like he is not attending a panel, instead he is ready for a Kick boxing champion. Instantly I know this guy is different.

During the panel, he talked about how he outsource his work, his email, even his dating schedule (not his date!). He suggested to everyone that, you need to first find out what you are really good at doing. You should only work on your strength point and outsource rest of them. It sounds little scare for me, since I’ve never think of outsource my email to someone else. But I like his talking. Since he looks extremely healthy and bright. Seems this guy really knows what he wants and he is moving himself towards it.

The next panel Tim attended was about how you use twitter to build up your online branding and boost up your company’s branding awareness(Ha, that’s so my topic!). Edith Young, the founder of Biz Tech Day is the moderator and Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com and Porter Gale, VP of Marketing from Virgin American are in the same panel.

It was interesting that after Edith introduced those three star panelists to the stage, as usual, the music starts when they step on the stage. So everyone applause. Then Kevin Rose started to laugh and say, you know what, I think this music is like a pop music.

Then I see Edith’s face suddenly turned to red, because she doesn’t know how to response it. Tim quickly took it over and say, you know, Kevin, what I learned from my dating experience is that girls are really likes to do something, but sometimes it is better not to talk about it. So people start to laugh and Edith quickly starts her moderating. I was amaze by his ‘crisis handling’ skill. What a smart guy he is.

After the panel, lots of people went to Tim talk to him. I also took this opportunity to take a picture with him. Since I forgot to bring my ‘Four Hour Work week’ book. Tim decided to write me something in paper. So he looked at me and wrote:

Remember that life is meant to be enjoyed?

Haha, I like it! It is so Tim Ferriss style! Yes, we all need to enjoy life, since it is so beautiful. It Is true that we should not defer our happiness because of any excuse: Money, Time, People. Be yourself and be happy. If you don’t know how, maybe it’s time to read ‘FOUR HOUR WORK WEEK’!