I recently listened to an incredible podcast episode where Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek, serial entrepreneur, all around badass) interviewed Peter Adeney (AKA Mr. Money Mustache).

Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss is one of the most productive humans I’ve ever heard of. I would put him right up there with Elon Musk. The 4-Hour Workweek isn’t about laziness. Quite the opposite. In a nutshell, it’s a book about productivity. The book teaches you how to do a typical week’s worth of work in 4 hours. It’s certainly inspiring, but halfway through the book you start to realize that Tim Ferriss is a freak of nature that can and will accomplish anything he wants. He’s not doing 4-Hour workweeks to lounge around, he’s doing it so he can do it with 9 other 4-Hour workweeks on other projects, whether its kickboxing, cooking, angel investing, podcasting, you name it.

Mr. Money Mustache

Mr. Money Mustache (MMM) is a household name for people who are interested in financial independence, early retirement, and/or frugality. He’s famous for blogging about living frugally and “retiring” at 30. I put “retiring” in quotes because his definition does not mean you don’t work. It means that you don’t HAVE to work. In his case, he quit his software job and began blogging and investing. MMM and his family (wife and son) spend about $25K a year and live a perfectly happy and comfortable life. Its inspiring in a completely different way.

Who is Right?

While it might not seem like it on the surface, these two guys have a really similar message, and they touch on it in the podcast. The message: You should optimize your life. But what does that mean?

The 4-Hour Workweek can be summarized by the phrase: “Work smarter, not harder”. A lot of people work jobs that say, “Work for 40 hours a week”. But according to Tim Ferriss, you should focus on the extremely productive work tasks for much less time. Think about it. If you worked 4 hours one week instead of 40, you’d get much more than 10% of the work done. Because you would prioritize and cut out things that don’t give you the most productivity for your time (like meetings, chit chat, or constant email checking).

MMM has a similar philosophy, but instead of time spent vs. productivity, it’s money spent vs. happiness. It’s not really about extreme frugality, but more about getting the most happiness from your buck. Instead of chasing diminishing returns by ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, you should spend money on the most important things to you that bring you the most happiness. For example, I’ll should rethink buying the new Nintendo knowing that I could instead pay for basketball leagues for the next 5 years, which will bring me much more happiness. It’s a no-brainer.

Click the image above for a fantastic article on Money and Happiness from 8000 Hours.

There is something with this philosophy of optimizing your life, whether it’s for money, time, working out, or eating. I’m sure there are countless ways to do this, and I’m curious for more.

If any of this sounds interesting, click below to listen to the podcast!

I’ll leave you with a quote from MMM in an interview in the New Yorker, after his bicycle was stolen. I think it really ties in the two philosophies quite well.

This was the first theft in many, many years of very carefree living. The Craigslist replacement value of that bike was probably about $500. What value do I place on a decade of the fearless freedom of leaving shit happily unlocked and not worrying about it? How about the value of my time saved in not spending my life fumbling with an enormous keychain? 90 seconds a day for ten years is 91 hours, or at least $4500 of my time at $50 an hour. I was still coming out way ahead.