I love producing educational material. When I write posts such as those from the Become an investor series, I get the rewards that the modern work-life balance deprives us from. Basically, it’s a really rewarding experience to help out a person who knows nothing about a field, especially after going through the process myself and knowing that it’s a complex and diverse topic with a steep learning curve.
I also love consuming educational material. It’s not a bad thing, inherently, but this is an addiction I’ve been battling with for some time. Basically, whenever someone I trust recommends a book or introduces me to a field, or whenever I find a reliable reference that might be of interest, I simply can’t resist. The procedure is usually like so: acknowledge the spark of interest, digest all the recommended material, read everything you can find online, watch videos on the topic before bed, and, if applicable, try, learn, and improve it whenever you have a chance (for things that involve doing, not just knowing).
Nevertheless, as the list of aspirations grew larger, it eventually had to be trimmed. It was the classic trade-off between being a jack of all trades versus being an expert in just one. I rarely struggled with the dilemma throughout my life, though. The only time I thought that I’m missing out on something by not being a specialist was when I was starting my career. Later I realized how incompatible that would be with my goals, as I witnessed people who were deeply involved in just a single field (usually PhDs) struggling with finding a job or keeping a tough one because of lack of opportunities.
Back to the point, I was mostly able to be on top of the growing lists of ambitions, but as time went by, the digesting curve grew with a slower rate than the rising interests. That left me being more casual and inconsistent with my knowledge, learning rate, and performance. I felt that something is not right, but it wasn’t obvious what until my last end-of-year evaluation.
Basically, in 2017 I was busy.
And that’s all I remember. I started tons of things (projects, books, skills, income streams) and I remember being busy, working hard to achieve them, and struggling to balance everything out while still maintaining a somewhat healthy work-life balance. And although it was a hectic year in which I always felt like I’m rushing somewhere and that I always needed to be doing something, at the end I figured that I didn’t make much of it… It was not a catastrophe (made some money, read a handful of books, got a better and higher paying job), but the TODO list was still ambiguous. In other words: I still didn’t have a plan, and I was torn away by my ideas.
Something had to be done. The road to figuring out what was filled with confusion, inherently, as these topics don’t usually come down to hard science or a formula. And I also experienced continuous anxiety and two burnouts. 2017 sucked, basically.
After a while I figured that I mustn’t push myself to the edge all the time. It was simply not healthy. While still trying to manage the self-inflicted psychosomatic wounds, I knew that I had to make some changes. Blankly going through the lists of lists of TODO lists scattered over my PC, notebooks, brain, e-mail, and mobile phone didn’t help the situation. Actually it felt like a recursion without a base case and, logically, I experienced a stack overflow.
And that was it.
I killed all the ideas that lacked structure, every goal for which I didn’t have a specific plan of action, and left my past behind me. Yes, I felt that I was becoming a slave to my passions and they had to go. No regrets. As I said, this was not healthy. I decided to start over and see where 2018 will take me.
So I picked a few things I knew I could juggle with and started actively using the art of letting go.
The art of letting go
It worked like a charm. Deliberately stopping an action lifted so much weight off my shoulders, that I could focus again on the things that are important. Some sacrifices were made, but the measurable benefits outweighed the costs from several perspectives. And it wasn’t that hard, to be honest. Basically, looking at it, the reason I was burnt out was because I overwhelmed myself with goals incompatible with my lifestyle. So regardless of how much something meant to me, I started mercilessly trimming and letting go.
And it turned out fine. With sharper focus, within the first half of the year I got a raise, a promotion, learned about investing, and started taking time-off regularly – all of which had a compound contribution to my well-being. And my day to day life became much easier. It wasn’t obvious immediately, but within 3 months it felt like I just left behind all the burden that was slowing me down and finally started running.
It also had the added benefit of not regretting missing out on something, as you’re not doing it anyway.
I highly recommend taking a step back if you’re struggling with anxiety or just feel overwhelmed. It works. And throughout the year, whenever new ideas would pop into my mind or I felt an urge to do something, I went through the process of asking myself: “will this bring me results on the long run?” and disqualified everything to which the answer was no.
Now, the question I want to ask is: why?
You might remember that I started this post by saying that I love producing and consuming educational material, but classified the consumption as an addiction I’m battling with. How did it end up in that bucket?
Why fight the urge to do it? I’m not overdoing it, anyway…
Why do I call it an addiction in the first place?
Why battle the addiction?
I recently started asking this question. It has been around a year since I learned how to let go of things, but I realized I never answered why I’m doing it in the first place.
Okay, I have sort of an answer: because I was burnt out. Yes, I was. Not anymore though. Anyway, how can the things we supposedly love burn us out?
Let’s try another answer: to focus on the important things.
Interesting, but how did we define what’s important? Aren’t the important things those that drive you and you have a burning desire doing? Something is missing here…
Schedule and work-life balance
Back to 2017…
So, one day as I was complaining that there is simply so much to do and not enough time, I decided to make a schedule. What I’m about to share hit me harder than most of the things I’ve experienced. And I didn’t have the easiest life. Contemplate this for a second… I came to the realization that I’m taking the risk my life to look just like this, from 22 to 72 years of age:
Let me explain the table before elaborating further.
Red = bad
This is all the time that I either lose or have no control over. Some of the entries, such as sleep, work, and commute, are self explanatory, but I’d like to give a word or two about the others.
Chores – changing, washing, drying, and preparing clothes, doing groceries, washing dishes, cooking, showering & self care, cleaning up the home, administration & bureaucracy (phone calls, letters, mails, taxes), etc. Basically, all the things that require not that much mental effort, but still eat up a significant amount of time.
And I understand that some of what I consider chores “should” be positive experiences, such as showering or cooking. However, having to rush to accomplish them in order to have some time left for other things makes them really unpleasant. For example, all the supermarkets in the neighborhood I lived in at that time were closed at 19:30… Nothing gave me a feeling that working is the way to go. So yeah, you need to rush to the supermarket to quickly grab something, wash the dishes as fast as possible, start preparing a meal so you don’t starve, and still leave some time for basic hygiene, shower, or having unproductive calls with an incompetent tax adviser, whose job I later overtook and didn’t regret a single minute of doing my own tax returns.
Eat – self explanatory. Often there was an overlap between the Chores and Eat entries… I’d consider eating as a subset of chores under these conditions, but anyway.
Worry – things that do require mental effort and take eat up a significant amount of time.
Most of this time was allocated to planning, discussing, and deciding the next steps for the day, week, month, or year. Being an expat trying to get his life in order leaves one with lots of these things to take into consideration. Especially making the monthly and yearly decisions – they really took a lot of the energy left after a working day and a long commute. These include tackling housing, work, and financial issues, but let me give you a more in-depth overview with a few specific examples:
- Planning your budget, taking into account that the rent is rising faster than the salaries.
- If your partner doesn’t find a job, will you consider sharing an apartment with other people?
- Should one learn the language or get into a more technical field? What are the job opportunities for both?
- Searching for a new apartment to rent, visiting, negotiating, researching the neighborhood, etc.
- Will your work contract be extended and what are the possible scenarios for each outcome?
- Should you look for a new job prematurely, as your visa and thus residence permit depend on it?
- Should you take the permanent contract or go for the higher paying job with a probation period?
- Research the tax consequences of doing X.
- Research the legal consequences of doing X.
And this is just to name a few, but it illustrates the point of how entangled everything is. They’re not really separate entities that you can easily tackle one by one, but most of them are so tightly coupled to each other, that the complexity might grow exponentially with each parameter. As a software engineer, I have the obligation to mention that this is a really bad design. Who created it?
However, the daily and weekly Worries were far easier to resolve and usually they came down to planning for the Chores. For example:
- When to invite the landlord to pick up her post?
- What will we eat for the next day or two (so we don’t plan on the spot in the supermarket – ain’t nobody got time for that)?
- Defining who to call, when, and what to ask (the gas and electricity provider about the wrong invoice, the railway operator to reimburse for the canceled / delayed trains, the tax adviser to understand if I’m obligated to pay VAT if I start small-scale drop-shipping without registering a company, etc.).
Basically, things that will affect our immediate future and making the following day easier. Still I’d have the burden of doing the same tomorrow for the following day, but it’s less chaotic than planning and executing at once.
It was mentally exhausting, but on the positive side, it’s better to allocate an hour per day for these issues, than to keep them in the back of your mind all the time. Basically, after the Worry hour, I forbid myself of thinking about these things. I’d rather classify it as “worrying” than mistaking it for “time for myself” and regretting that I never lived. This way at least I know what I’m signing up for.
Training – it’s self-explanatory, for sure, but I owe an explanation regarding why it’s in the RED zone. It’s pretty similar to the entry Eat actually… Basically, they would be green if I did them on my own terms. The reason I was rushing to eat at 7PM and working out after 9PM is because it was impossible otherwise! Basically, I did both in the name of health, but they felt like errands – like everything else that was rushed, forced, or uncontrollable.
However, check the Saturday. The whole day is GREEN there, even Training. And I just explained why – that’s when I’m at my best! Often I would do another session around 4 or 5, just because I love it! And unfortunately, 5 out of 7 times I had to push my workouts to the end of the day because of priorities I couldn’t care less about…
The same goes for eating, by the way. You don’t see it in RED in the weekends. You don’t see it all, actually. I just ate when I was hungry, usually after my workouts. That’s a healthy schedule.
The entry Sleep is also RED for a similar reason – the working hours have total control over when a person goes to bed. And with the schedule for the picture, even after removing excessive worrying or chores, we see that that leaves an employee with a maximum of 2-3 hours for himself, usually used for recovery. And that brings us to:
Yellow = not good
Not bad either.
It’s just existing… Being there. For example, on Fridays, after the working week is done, what I call Recovery means chilling out. Includes things like watching videos, reading easy to digest things, doing nothing, etc.
This is how my life was before creating this schedule. It was always in the YELLOW – something was wrong, but I’ll think about it later. First let me take care of X… But I needed to answer the mail from Y. OK, let me just prepare some food, and I’ll do it while eating… (on the way to the supermarket) Oh, I should have brought the letter I needed to send! Never mind, I’ll do it tomorrow… What should I buy now?
You get the point.
The sad thing is that this color defines the way that many people spend their entire lives. Terms like “couch potato” or the act of excessive after-work reality TV consumption come to mind.
And although it’s a form of turning off the mind, it’s not GREEN because it’s not really time for oneself. It’s a literal recovery. Just take a look at the table and imagine how much trash was piled up throughout those five days without a single hour for myself.
Let’s end this with a positive tone. Today both my girlfriend and I are working, have a tighter grip on our housing and budget, so there is not much to Worry about. Also, the commute is used for reading the things I’d read on the weekends in the past. There is more GREEN nowadays, but still room for improvement.
Green = okay
The real time for myself. And it turns out it’s way less than 2 out of 7 days.
Better schedule?
I think that nothing proves the lie about the 40 hour workweek like putting it on paper. Not only that a lot of life is lost until the end of the workday, but it also propagates further throughout the day.
Needless to say, I experimented with working out less, preparing dinner to eat at the office, showering less, going to bed late, working from home, and not doing chores throughout the week. Although I could decrease the amount of RED, it usually went into YELLOW, not GREEN.
So, should we accept living 10-15% of our time and spend the rest on autopilot? I asked around.
I opened up to a few people about this issue, most of which seemed okay with their lives, although they had a similar schedule. Some said that they like their jobs so they don’t mind it and some said that I should “enjoy life more”. I tried both.
We must cultivate our garden
“Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”
I tried going to work and allowing myself to be completely immersed in my duty. I decided to put the extra mile in and feel the rewards of completing the most complex tasks. I tried voluntarily doing overtime, not to impress a supervisor, but to get the fulfillment from what I undertook and accomplished. I tried arriving home at 9, satisfied with my working day, not even feeling the burden of the commute. To be completely honest, it wasn’t that bad. It was good actually! Arrived home, ate, skipped workout, played a game or two of League of Legends, and went to sleep. Calm, peaceful, and rewarding day.
So, is that the answer?
Let me be really careful here, because this is walking on fragile ground… It’s so easy to immerse oneself while experiencing the rewards of accomplishment, but I couldn’t delude myself.
I may pollute the post with things like “accept your faith”, “enjoy the moment”, or “the present is all there is”, but I would lie to myself and you if I did.1 If I keep enjoying (or accepting) this kind of life, I’ll end up retiring at 72, a few years after I die by Karoshi while regretting all the time I didn’t spend with my family and myself. Yes, the retirement age is mercilessly tied to the life expectancy, trying to squeeze out every last drip of youth left in the overworked salaryman.
Accepting your current state is not a bad approach while in the accumulation phase, though. But stay focused on the path. Being free and happy beats being exploited and happy every time.
Call to action: ask any retiree if it was worth it.
Spend money on things that make you happy
Usually recommended in the form of: “enjoy life more”, “spoil yourself”, “you can allow it”, etc.
First of all, saving makes me happier, but that’s not the point. This is the point: spend on what?
Even if you want to experience your hard-earned money, what will you do? What’s the magic item that frees your brain of the daily struggle? Wine? You’ll get wasted and have the time of your life this Tuesday? Or you’ll travel all year long not worrying about the expenses?
The last one is pretty good actually… Fair, let’s do it! Too bad we only have a few vacation days, so we’re forced to manage the budget paying expensive flights on weekends… Okay, maybe “few” is an underestimate for the ~20 vacation days we’re granted, but if you’re fine with having 5% of the year for yourself (unless emergencies happen and you’re called to work remotely), than I don’t have a counter argument.
There is simply too much work for us to experience our money. And if you think that owning things will make you happier, you’re deluding yourself. Buying the things is what your brain enjoys and once you realize that (now?), you may stop spending money on things you don’t and won’t need.
Beat monotony
In my last financial update I mentioned that I started thinking about taking a break from work every now and then. This idea came to mind as I was evaluating my daily life on a weekend trip while experiencing the beautiful view of the blue sky, mountains, and the Mediterranean from above. The people were not in a rush, the traffic was smooth. There were lots of places to go to, things to do, and at any moment you had the freedom to choose how to spend your time… I remember mentioning to my girlfriend: “this exists…“. The density of information was too high to convey what I want to say with it, but it helped me understand that there is more to life than a daily routine that is not even enjoyable.
Disclaimer: I’m not deluded by the beautiful sight. I was a tourist and I’m aware that people who run errands there might feel similarly bored as do in my environment. That’s not my point, though. Netherlands is also beautiful, I just happen to work here. So, what’s my point?
Maybe I’m not doing the best job of formulating what I’m trying to convey (similarly to “this exists” a few weeks ago), so I’ll be explicit: uniformity is what slaughters a soul. Exercising monotony on a tight schedule squeezes out all life that’s left in a person. Being a cog is self-alienation. Living for the sake of existing is a spiritual suicide. Being bored is a root of some evil… Okay… I need a break.
The first test drive
So, I decided not to get another fast paced, fabricated vacation for the sake of it, but to experience what would it feel like. And by it I mean the ultimate goal. Life without the imposed routine, experiencing it fully in the next few weeks. So instead of booking a vacation in the next tourist destination, I decided to take some time off to spend it in my home country.
Not an environment designed to overload the visitors with pleasure and entertainment, but a real world. The machine will continue working, the society will continue running it, but I’ll watch from outside, Matrix like. The key moment is: I won’t be a cog. So, yes, I’m taking a break to simply not work.
I’ll mindfully give my desired lifestyle a test drive.
Afterword
Maybe I used an atypical writing style – one that’s not really structured, as I just poured my thoughts out in this post. And I liked it! I know that it may lack a pattern, but it gives insight into who I am, what I’ve been through recently, and where I’m headed. I think that after a few posts it’s good to open up to my readers and get them to understand my personality and views in more depth.
So, let me compensate for the lack of structure by summarizing some things I’d take away from this post:
- Learn to let things go, but don’t overdo it after you got yourself together.
- Make a plan! Life is much easier when you have an idea about where you’re headed. Use JIRA-like tools to help you with it. Sticker notes on your cupboard is a great start. Helps me a lot up to this day.
- Enjoy the moment, but don’t lose yourself in another person’s dreams.
- Don’t look for happiness in material things. Become a Monk instead.
- Take a step back when your world starts crashing on your shoulders.
And one for myself: determine how do you want to live your life 10 years from now.
Will do. There was too much noise in the last couple of years, so I couldn’t really hear myself… But times are changing now, I can feel it. Still can’t answer it though, but I’m sure that the restart I’ll do will point me in the right direction. Let’s see how a FIRE life would looks like! 🙂
Until next week.
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