Sam Carpenter once worked 100 hours a week, struggling to support his family with his telephone answering service business. At one point, his two teenage children lived with him in the office because the family could not afford another place to live.

Now, he’s living well and working only a few hours a week through the life-management techniques he describes in Work the System- The Simple Mechanics of Working Less and Making More

In the same genre as Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Workweek (which Vagablogging has written about on more than one occasion), Work the System offers advice and anecdotes on how to manage one’s life effectively, only exerting energy on the details that a person can control about his or her own life (which admittedly isn’t that long of a list…).

A Vagabonder could gain some useful insight from this book, as Carpenter helps readers analyze the systems in their own lives in order to streamline and simplify. He also acknowledges the importance of making time for the good things in life.

He recounts an experience in Italy where he sitting in the hotel dining room at breakfast while finishing up some work on his laptop. The hotel manager approached him and, after making sure he was through eating his breakfast, said “Please. To work, take your computer to the lobby downstairs. This is a place of breakfast“.

This book is worth a look for anyone who wants to manage his or her life in order to make time for the important things in life, like savoring an Italian breakfast.