One Year Outside The Maze

This morning while headed up to meet a friend, my GPS directed me down a country road past some Aspens.  It occurred to me that this was the route of my previous commute.  It was one year ago with similar changing Aspens that I drove down this road after leaving my job.  I had been working hard as we sought to close a round of funding and then at creating my transition plan and pushing to make sure that I got through everything. 

As I drove that road, I remember the entire change of emotion.  All of the concerns and worries of the job were lifting away.  There was no value in fretting over the changes that we needed to make as a company over time to be successful or how to align our partners to hit our aggressive schedule any more.  It was no longer my concern to deal with.  It was appropriate to let these things drift away.  So What has happened in a year and what have I learned?

Adventures Help Me Relax

 Dedicating time to some don’t call it a bucket list adventures that I had always wanted to do has not only been fun and interesting it has helped me relax more.  This may sound crazy because adventures are by nature not relaxing.  However, when something is entirely missing in your life, there is not balance.  I worried that I would never make these things a reality.  What if I died tomorrow?  I would not regret missing many years of working, but I would definitely regret these things undone. 

When you have total time scarcity it can feel like maybe you will never be able to actually carve out what it takes to make some of these things happen.  Being able to include some more adventures over this first year has restored more balance to what I want to be doing in life.  I feel more relaxed to be living a life that I want to and more confident that I will continue.  

Adventure Is Not Leisure

While adventures have been awesome, one of the things that I have learned is how much time and planning these things take.  For example, if you want to tour Andalusia Spain like Don Quixote it is not just a matter of ordering it up off of a fast food menu.  I spent probably 20-50 hours working on this trip for example.  It takes research into what is out there.  What may you want to see and experience, etc.  While I do like to leave room for serendipity and bits of travel while on vacation, chance certainly favors the prepared mind. 

One can spend more money to make planning adventures easier. However, it is often of a very poor value to do so.  For example, I could buy a tour online to a remote winery for $300 or I could just call a few wineries and use my Spanish to ask if I can stop by for free.  Trying to solve this with money also leads to pre-packaged and less authentic adventures.  Hence, I am of the mind that it makes more sense to do my adventures slower and assemble them myself.  Some of my other favorite adventures of this first year:

• Discovering Dinosaurs
• Learning Muay Thai
• Introducing my kids to the American West
• February Rainforest Adventure
• A Surprise Canadian adventure
• A strange trip into the most rural place in the lower 48

First Year Habits

Most of my life, I have been sort of a work maniac who was always trying to get ahead.  When I started this year, I had an understanding that I would be leaving a traditional job that provides benefits of structure, routine, social interaction, a sense of achievement, etc.  Based on some of my previous experience, I came up with some guidelines and tools for myself such as a daily plan that I iterated upon, and an admittedly clumsy metaphor about my race car.  These guideposts together with some mindfulness and meditation practice, have worked pretty well for me.  I wake up each morning feeling like I have choices and a purpose. 

I also have found that doing some of the adventures that I mentioned above throws off my routine.  When this happens, I can feel crappy or generally lack motivation.  A hard dose of routine often cures this for me within a few days and has worked well to get me back on track.  One of the questions I asked myself at the beginning of this year was whether I would feel a pull back toward taking on something like starting a business.  While I love startups and business in general, I am not feeling this pull yet.  My days still feel productive on my current course and I have more to explore on this current path over this coming year.

A Redefinition of Work

One of the mantras on this site has been that once I reached financial independence I no longer have to work for the agenda of others to get money and can now work for myself to achieve happiness.  This has become very real and tangible for me in the way that I make decisions today a year from where I started out.  Another way to say this is that you don’t have to work forever, you get to work forever. 

Striving and applying myself continues to be rewarding.  Through applying design thinking to life design, I created some concepts of what a great life might look like and am prototyping one of these by teaching a University class.  Teaching has been really fun for me.  It is not all constant joy but I have not once yet woken up dreading lecture that day.  I plan to continue this in a very part time way through winter term.          

Finances Over a First Year Outside The Maze

Over the course of our careers, my wife and I pursued career advancement and side hustles as well to maximize our income. We also saved over half of our income and invested the difference. When I left my job at the beginning of this last year, we had amassed over 25X our annual expenses* through this endeavor. This to me made work optional going forward based on the 4% rule.

However, I did not account for the fact that I still hold rental properties that are producing above average returns. I did not factor in that I would decide to teach a University class and make some income from this. I also did not account for the fact that my wife has chosen to continue working in her role for many reasons beyond financial ones. All of these things have produced income beyond our model.

At the same time, expenses have dropped as we pay thousands less on childcare with my flexibility to pick the boys up after school. I also spend less than I did while at my previous job on driving and eating out for lunch. In short, one of my first year learnings is that, for me, the same skills that I practiced to reach financial independence and a tendency to be conservative on the journey has resulted in some surplus after reaching my FI number. After all, if one plans conservatively, the most likely case scenario is nowhere near the worst case scenario.

Relationships Over the First Year

Without working a full time job over the last year, more time has opened up for me. This has meant more bandwidth to be there for kids recitals, plays, games, etc. It has also meant that I had some time to take on a few projects with my sons and even complete a fun 2 week sort of road trip adventure. The upshot of it is that I have had more time to know my kids in a deeper way and I am grateful for the experiences.

An extraordinary Harvard study suggests that good relationships more than anything else in our lives keeps us happy and healthy. I have had more bandwidth to be there for my wife than when we were both working startups. At the same time, I have now lived a year of a very different day to day lifestyle than hers as she continues to work in a full time role. At times this creates challenges to stay connected and aligned. I plan to continue to make communication and shared support a priority as year 2 unfolds.

Watch Out For Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s law simply states that a task will expand to fill the time allotted for it. If I have all week to write an article, I can take a whole week. However, if I box it to 4 hours it gets done in that time as well. Over the last year I have found that if I start the day with a small to do list it can be easy to get side tracked and waste a lot of time on unplanned things such as internet news or youtube for example.

It is easy to see that to do list and think “no problem I still have over half a day to complete those easy tasks. Then suddenly the day has been wasted. I have found it very important to complete planned lists first and then celebrate with some leisure as a reward. This feels like winning rather than waste and also seems to beget more productivity for me.

I have learned to place a large amount of value on my time. When friends and loved ones see you not working a traditional job, it is easy to assume that maybe you could take on some of their to do list or solve their problem of the moment. You must have time to chat on the phone for an hour. After all you do not work. This can easily mean losing control over your own time. I have found it important to use my time for personal goals rather than unconsciously give it away or waste it because of a small to do list that day.

Looking Forward To Year 2

These are some of my learnings over this first year. I hope that they provide value to others on the road. As I drove that country road looking at the Aspens this morning, I internalized an even bigger change over the past year. It is one that is hard to put into words but it involves a change of how I feel each day, how I make decisions in my life, and how I view myself. I no longer feel just a little behind and out of control as I did when working. I feel like I am living my life the best that I can today. Even if I still have a long way to go to improve and iterate in my life, this feels like a well spent year. I am looking forward to the next as it stretches out in front of me.

*It is important to note that 4% rule budgets must include taxes on investment income and management fees for the funds you hold. See article on the 4% rule for more detail.