D is for Definition: Dodging Bullets
A chapter summary from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
The first letter in DEAL is the most-skipped: actually defining what you want before you optimize for getting it. Most career advice assumes the goals have already been clarified. Ferriss's experience with career-coaching clients suggests that the goals have rarely been clarified honestly — most people are pursuing inherited goals (parents' aspirations, social-peer comparisons, status markers) without recognizing the inheritance.
The Definition exercise the chapter walks through is concrete. Write down what your dream lifestyle would look like in six months and twelve months, with specific numbers attached to each component — where you would live, what you would do daily, what you would have access to, what you would learn. The exercise is harder than it sounds because most people have not allowed themselves to think specifically about the dream.
Once the dream is specified, the next step is calculating its actual cost. Most people overestimate the cost of the lifestyle they say they want — often dramatically. The dream of traveling extensively while writing, for example, is achievable at a fraction of the cost of maintaining a conventional life in a high-cost city. The dream of mastering a craft requires time and basic resources, not the conventional career income most aspirants assume.
The chapter closes with the calibrated number: the monthly income required to fund the specific dream lifestyle as you've defined it. The number is almost always smaller than what the conventional career path is providing. The gap between the calibrated number and the conventional path's number is the leverage the rest of the book is going to apply: redirecting the surplus toward the actual life you would prefer to live rather than continuing to defer it.
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