#33 | Go With The Flow

I've been obsessing about my release schedule recently.

I spent six months pre-writing my blog posts, sometimes having up to a month worth of posts written and scheduled. I had a rigid schedule of releasing a new post every Thursday. I like this schedule because it is a way to give the reader something on a relaxing Friday before starting their weekend.

I always had the intention that if I missed a Thursday, that would be fine. But I knew that wasn't true. I'm the kind of person that once I miss once, the drive will fade enough that I'll lose my momentum. Next thing I know, three months go by and nothing. I need the schedule to stay motivated; any will do.

When I picked up writing again, I considered a weekly release rate was burnt-out levels of output. I thought once a month would be better. That seems very doable. If I write a single post once a month, that would be easy. Sounds good!

Then I started thinking about the yearly article count. When releasing weekly, I would have 52 posts. That's a good number. When releasing monthly, that's only 12 posts. Sometimes I can write a dozen articles in a couple of weeks, so spreading the release of those out over a full year didn't fit.

My thoughts next went to a variable schedule. Something where if I have one or two posts queued up, I post monthly. If I have three to six posts queued up, I release every other week. And then if I have over six posts queued up, I would go back to weekly. That way, if I became inspired, I could release weekly and fade to monthly over time. It sounded genius.

Or not. I was getting my headache. This internal debate is how my brain works. I started spending more thought on HOW I would release my posts than WHAT would be in them (hence me taking an entire post on this topic). I'm going to try my hardest to let the obsession go and adhere to my original schedule: release on Thursday anytime I have something written AND to not fall off the wagon again for three months if I miss a week.

Forget the schedule. Just let the thoughts flow! Sometimes you just must let it go and see where things take you.

(Written 2019.10.19)

#32 | The Loss Of Focus

In the last post, I talked about my busy period and how it related to the philosophy of Boredom. This time I wanted to talk about how it impacted my Personal Control Book.

I've talked about how I organize my PCB. The guts of the PCB are within Trello. Life Focuses, Beacons, Areas of Focuses, and Projects are all kept within the Trello boards and cards. Then for my weekly updates, I keep them on a private Confluence page.

It's all very well set up, organized, and executed; until it's not.

I can admit that for a few months, I didn't touch Trello. I neglected all of those Projects with nicely laid out tasks. As new projects came in, I didn't consult Trello to see how they fit into my Life Focuses. I stopped all activity within Trello and stopped logging in. I still kept up my weekly updates, but Trello didn't exist to me.

This lapse is okay. I didn't abandon Trello or the PCB, and I still recommend them. I'm again using them today.

Overhead explains the lapse. Any system is overhead, even useful ones. Maintaining the system is energy that seldom is spent directly on whatever project you're trying to complete. So it needs to be viewed this way.

Let's imagine that your system is your car. To keep things running smoothly, you must maintain it. It needs oil changes, tuneups, and washes. Changing your oil does not get you to your destination faster. But not giving your car a tuneup will eventually cause you to be stranded away from your destination.

But life is not perfect, and we only have so many hours in the day. When we hit our most intense time crunches, that overhead involved in maintaining the system becomes a hindrance. If you need to get to your destination in an hour and it's an hour's drive away, you don't have time to take the car in for a tuneup. The tuneup can wait.

What I did was I kept the focus on the weekly updates, only because they helped me navigate my tasks and help prevent any from falling between the cracks. I shelved the rest of the PCB until I could breathe again.

As I'm writing this, I'm in the recovery phase. I've managed to include all new projects into my Weekly Update. Only about half of those have a Trello board, but any new projects will get one. I updated the boards that already existed. I even enhanced my Weekly Update now that I got to see how it performed under high stress.

I think it's critical that even when we get buried with life and start to feel like we're losing focus, we are prepared. It might seem chaotic, but we have the system. If we properly maintain our system before hitting chaos, it'll provide its value and serve its purpose during that chaos. It might start to break down, but a sound system will hold through until the turmoil dies down, and you can start maintaining it again.

(Written 2019.10.19)

#31 | When Life Happens

Recently my life has been seeing a flurry of projects. My life has been anything but Boring. I wanted to address that in direct correlation with my Boredom is my Goal philosophy.

Before this current explosion of activity, my life was getting pretty Boring. I had three ongoing projects according to my Personal Control Book, but making progress against those goals was not all-consuming. I was spending a significant amount of time every night reading graphic novels. I was staying on top of all household chores, and the house was impeccably clean and tidy. I was going to bed early every night and naturally early every morning.

It was amazing.

And then an opportunity blitz hit. I haven't touched a graphic novel in a long time, and a couple of new ones are piling up waiting for their turn to be consumed. I'm going to bed late, waking by my alarm, and sometimes slogging through my morning routine to get the day rolling. The house feels cluttered and chaotic and frequently doesn't get the much-needed attention it deserves until the weekend.

"But I thought your goal was to be Bored! Why would you take on these projects instead of saying 'NO'!"

That is a direct paraphrased quote.

It might appear that I lost my way, but I don't see it that way. Instead, I see things as life happening. Each opportunity that I said "yes" to somehow fit into my Life Focuses as defined by my PCB. They might have been all different, with different actions required, and different outcomes. But, with the help of my PCB, I could quickly evaluate each opportunity and figure out if they fit or not. If it didn't, I could reject it. And some things I did decline. If it did match my PCB, and that opportunity needed immediate action, I could accept it with confidence.

So I was prepared for the chaos. It was an organized and managed chaos.

It goes beyond that, though. Throughout the entire experience, my focus was always on figuring out how to make things Boring again. I keep my graphic novels in eyesight, teasing me to get back to them. I have held my morning alarm at the same time, to prevent myself from falling too far out of my routine. These actions, among others, have helped to make sure I defined a realistic scope for each project and pushed hard to close the project out as soon as possible. It helped motivate me to reevaluate a plan so that once immediate action was no longer needed, I could shelf it. It kept me sane, knowing that this wasn't my new norm and that every week, my goal was to close out more tasks than open new ones. I knew that as long as I kept my Boredom is my Goal philosophy close to my heart, this insanity was just temporary.

We can't control life, nor can we control what is presented to us: opportunities or otherwise. We can't control other people or the unfolding of events. We can't control time and magically create more. But we can control ourselves and how we react to the world. So when life happens, if you've mentally and philosophically prepared yourself, you can roll with it, embrace it, and thrive with it.

When life happens, go with the flow!

(Written 2019.10.19)

#30 | The Company We Keep

This topic isn't very original, but it's something that I started thinking about recently. It's essential to think about the people surrounding you.

The reason why I've started thinking about this is a trifecta of scenarios.

The first is one of the reasons why I ended up taking a 3-month hiatus from the blog. Some real estate opportunities presented themselves, and it was a chance to put some foundational components into my Financial Independence life goal. The opportunity involved engaging in a part of real estate investing I hadn't done before, so the process was very new and intensive. I can't recall how many times I was talking to someone more experienced would say: "When you did due diligence on XYZ, what did you find out?". And I would scramble to not sound like a complete newbie with a stalling response like "That's a good question, let me check with my wife to see what she's found out." Even though we were scouring the internet for advice, there was still much more to know, and we were consistently a few steps behind.

In our defense, most of our contacts knew we hadn't done a project like this before. We were typically upfront with it on the first introductions. But it was still not the most flattering place to find ourselves time and time again. Sometimes my wife or I would start to get self-conscious, but I would remind us that everyone starts at the beginning. Everyone knows that, and so it was vital for us to always present the most professional and capable versions of ourselves in these situations. Every person we talked to was a future long-term contact. I wanted them to view us as new but reliable up-comers, someone they would want to know for our potential. On the flip side, we wanted to recognize them for their experience and guidance. Within this particular investment and throughout the entire process, we wanted to surround ourselves with competent people, while proving that we were worthy of joining that network. Having that network will be invaluable for future endeavors.

The second scenario is the FI meetups I had mentioned a few posts back. At the time of writing this post, we have only gone to two of their monthly meetups, but I already feel good about the company we can keep there. Everyone is at a different stage in their FI journey. Some just heard about financial independence and are working on converting the management of their finances. Some have already retired early. And then the majority seem like they are like us, somewhere in the middle.

While going to these meetups, I've found a good portion of the conversation does not revolve around finances, investing, or anything directly related to FI. But that does not matter as I don't feel that's the purpose of the meetups. Instead, we can surround ourselves once a month with people who understand this niche mentality. They understand the financial motivation of skipping the fries and drink to save a few bucks. They appreciate finding free or cheap entertainment instead of looking for pay-to-entertain activities. Even when talking about our side hustles, they understand the motivation. I've hinted at some of my other friends about our side hustles, and I get the impression they feel we are crazy. The people at the FI meetups understand the potential in a side hustle. Those are the people I want to surround myself with, people who encourage me to achieve my highest potential instead of feeling crazy for trying to maximize my accomplishments.

And the last scenario is my Personal Control Book "coaching" (if it can be called that just yet). Essentially, helping people to perform their own PCB Setup.

Besides the motivation to continue developing this PCB concept, I'm finding a new group of people worthy of knowing. People who, although they may be at different phases, just like the FI-folks, have a desire to be more focused and productive in their lives. People who want to set goals and accomplish them. People that feel there is a lot to do in life and want to make something worthwhile. This coaching concept is very new, but it's exhilarating to start embarking on this journey. The real estate network is solely an investment group. The FI meetups involve joining an existing community. PCB coaching is a chance for me to help build a community of like-minded individuals. The honor of helping to bring together what I hope will be a fantastic group of people is very humbling.

Although I love meeting new people and I'm friends with individuals from at all different points in their lives and different cultures, ideologies, and mentalities, making sure we keep close the right company is an invaluable action.

(Written 2019.10.19)