My childhood was interesting. I felt like a middle-class family living in a low-income neighborhood. I believe this is mainly because my parents were on-again, off-again separated. Both worked and made decent money, but they were both separate single-income households due to not being together and living single through most of my childhood. They could not combine finances as is typically required for modern family households.
Because of this, the neighborhood I grew up in was not ideal. Gang violence and murders around my elementary school in my early years there. Teen relationship drama and more murders on my street in my late elementary school years. Watching fights constantly during and after school in middle school, where the loser ended up in the hospital. Entering high school and realized a lot of my best friends from elementary school were gone due to early-teen pregnancies, juvie, or being dead. Then, I experienced race wars and walkouts and guns and knives on the high school campus. Going to college and finding out other schools were so afraid to go to your hood for sporting events that they would prefer to forfeit games. Talking to my new colleague peers about how I wasn't sure I would make it through high school in a literal sense and being told they completely understood because high school was so embarrassing and anxiety-inducing that they figuratively didn't think they would survive. Then, going home during every college break to find out yet another old classmate was no longer with us, sometimes due to "stepping on the wrong shoes" at a house party or sometimes being part of a deal gone wrong. While texting my new friends from the porch at night, hearing gunshots pop off. To top it all off, going back a decade after high school graduation and seeing the cartels take over the old stomping grounds with open carry and public-space domestic abuse.
My saving grace was that my parents made decent money and provided stable households despite shifting ones, allowing me to be level-headed enough to pick my friends carefully and to stay off the radar while still succeeding.
I made it out. But nothing happens in a vacuum, and there were a lot of people throughout that helped. Many I wouldn't even remember anymore, some I remember vividly. I aim to pay it forward as often as I can.
This background has been a guiding force in my philanthropic desires. Immediately after graduating from college and having a steady income, I started donating to the local family shelter monthly for a decade. Immediately before the pandemic, I started volunteering at Junior Achievement. Helping other kids make it out has always been a big passion of mine.
However, that changed a few years ago when I was tired of my corporate job's endless meetings and political infighting. I was inches from quitting and using what I had learned and gained leadership skills to try to land a high-level position at a nonprofit. I was a weekend away from turning in my notice when my wife sat me down to talk through this significant life decision.
She brought reality to the decision. Nonprofits are bogged down with bureaucracy and sometimes have low effectiveness at translating donated dollars into truly effective altruism. While at work, the number of people within the domain I managed had nearly tripled to around 80 people. So my wife said if I wanted to pay it forward and help people, I had a large audience between my org and all of our counterparts and collaborators that I could help, especially in the technology industry where tech bro culture runs rampant and many people become overlooked.
That convo changed my course. I stayed at work and focused exclusively on helping my people. The funny side effect is that the more energy I put into empowering my people, the better they did. The better they did, the better I looked as a leader. The better I looked, the more influence I gained across areas outside my domain. The more influence I gained, the more I could focus on empowering a larger group of people. And the cycle continued.
I want to use that same energy and apply it to non-work endeavors, dusting off the PCB and rebuilding it in Confluence. I'm also figuring out how to increase my outreach with Discord, Patreon, and Substack. Helping kids make it out has stayed on the radar, but the radar just expanded to helping anyone achieve their goals, regardless of their age or background.
During this new era, I started talking with an artist friend who works in the entertainment industry. He has a budding YouTube channel and is trying to figure out how to expand it. He discussed his hectic life involving career, family, and personal projects. It seemed like burnout was real, and being overwhelmed was an understatement. He sounded like all of us, and I recalled the first few posts of this blog. I started giving him some insights I've discovered throughout the years and pointed him towards the blog, hoping it would hit close to him and help him. I also told him I was working with people at work to grow their careers. At one point, he asked me when I had decided I wanted to be a mentor.
That triggered some thoughts; something didn't sit quite right.
So I started to think about it. Why didn't it sit right?
Then it hit me. Some people I mentored at work started at the same level and at the same time as I did. And they are today at the same level as me. Some of the people I have mentored outside of work have been my seniors and accomplished more in life, but I happened to be more of a master at a specific aspect of their lives. Others were my juniors in the traditional sense, but while helping them grow as individuals, they gave me as much back as I gave them. They helped me refine my message. Through careful thought, I had to articulate my thoughts in a way that others could receive. It forced me to be introspective enough to pull out what worked and didn't work for me. Then forced me to be observant and empathetic enough to realize what worked for me won't work for everyone and to listen and understand other's perspectives to ensure what I was putting out was not tone deaf, was not from a position of privilege or lack of understanding, and would be heard.
I haven't been a mentor to anyone.
Instead, I have been a partner and collaborator with all these great people, young and old. They have given me as much as I have given them. Paying it forward, helping others out, and my philanthropic desires come full circle. Again, nothing happens in a vacuum, and we are all interconnected.
6.24.2024
6.16.2024
#40 | The Return
It's been a while since I last published a blog post, but I'm excited to announce that I'm back and ready to start writing again.
When I started this blog, I aimed to experiment with what it would take to maintain a regular publishing schedule. I set a goal of publishing a new blog entry every week for a year. I wanted to build a routine that would allow me to generate high-quality content regularly. Whether or not the content remained high-quality is up for debate, but I was able to establish a system that kept me on track for the most part, with only a minor break during that first year.
After a year of publishing weekly blog posts, I ran out of topics to discuss. Or, more accurately, I had put all my focus on generating the content and zero focus on promoting the blog, so the organic traffic needed more. Without any interaction from an audience, I was speaking into the void with no feedback cycle. Then the pandemic hit, and with it came a lot of craziness.
Life hit hard, shattering my routine and my motivation.
My personal life has changed since I last wrote a blog post. My role at my day job has continued to expand, and I've had more and more opportunities to take on leadership positions. My last entry was January 2020 at which point I was a Senior Manager managing around 20 or so Engineers. Four years later, my employer has stayed the same, but I've received two promotions to Executive Director and manage anywhere from 60-80 people depending on the re-org of the week. The growth rate has forced a high level of increase in professional maturity, leadership techniques and skills, and even personal maturity.
In my personal life, things have also been in flux, with a mix of successes and failures. My wife's oldest has both gone to university and graduated. My oldest has moved with her mother a state away. Our youngest is now eight years old but has been diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum along with having ADHD (highly functional, but it explains all of his quirks). We obtained passports for our kids (which are about to expire as underaged passports only last five years!) and have made three international trips as a family, two being to my wife's home country in Latin America.
To round things out, I have become more proactive in this blog and the PCB. I have rebuilt the old Trello tracking system into a Confluence system. I have worked with a few others to establish their unique system based on the PCB concepts and then watched them achieve amazing results.
As a result, I have a new set of topics to discuss. So here we go.
I'm excited to see where this blog can go in the future. I want to continue to share my knowledge with others, but I'd also like to find ways to incorporate more community and critical thinking into the blog.
Stay tuned for future updates and new blog posts. I look forward to reconnecting with my audience and continuing this experimental journey.
When I started this blog, I aimed to experiment with what it would take to maintain a regular publishing schedule. I set a goal of publishing a new blog entry every week for a year. I wanted to build a routine that would allow me to generate high-quality content regularly. Whether or not the content remained high-quality is up for debate, but I was able to establish a system that kept me on track for the most part, with only a minor break during that first year.
After a year of publishing weekly blog posts, I ran out of topics to discuss. Or, more accurately, I had put all my focus on generating the content and zero focus on promoting the blog, so the organic traffic needed more. Without any interaction from an audience, I was speaking into the void with no feedback cycle. Then the pandemic hit, and with it came a lot of craziness.
Life hit hard, shattering my routine and my motivation.
My personal life has changed since I last wrote a blog post. My role at my day job has continued to expand, and I've had more and more opportunities to take on leadership positions. My last entry was January 2020 at which point I was a Senior Manager managing around 20 or so Engineers. Four years later, my employer has stayed the same, but I've received two promotions to Executive Director and manage anywhere from 60-80 people depending on the re-org of the week. The growth rate has forced a high level of increase in professional maturity, leadership techniques and skills, and even personal maturity.
In my personal life, things have also been in flux, with a mix of successes and failures. My wife's oldest has both gone to university and graduated. My oldest has moved with her mother a state away. Our youngest is now eight years old but has been diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum along with having ADHD (highly functional, but it explains all of his quirks). We obtained passports for our kids (which are about to expire as underaged passports only last five years!) and have made three international trips as a family, two being to my wife's home country in Latin America.
To round things out, I have become more proactive in this blog and the PCB. I have rebuilt the old Trello tracking system into a Confluence system. I have worked with a few others to establish their unique system based on the PCB concepts and then watched them achieve amazing results.
As a result, I have a new set of topics to discuss. So here we go.
I'm excited to see where this blog can go in the future. I want to continue to share my knowledge with others, but I'd also like to find ways to incorporate more community and critical thinking into the blog.
Stay tuned for future updates and new blog posts. I look forward to reconnecting with my audience and continuing this experimental journey.
1.09.2020
#39 | 2020 Goals
This week I want to lay out some goals for 2020. I mulled it over all week. My original intention was to follow the same format as my 2019 recap from last week. I would discuss the goals for the blog and the Personal Control Book, then consider the 3 Life Focuses: Financial Independence, Health, and Philanthropy.
The more I thought about this approach, the worse it felt. I couldn't quite place why, but I finally realized I was over-emphasizing Financial Independence. If I boil down the blog and PCB, potential monetizing goals relate to improving my financial independence. These goals would overload Financial Independence and place greater importance on that Life Focus than the other two. Therefore, I stripped them out.
That leaves my original 3 Life Focuses:
So here they are:
Financial Independence
From reviewing my On-The-Horizon Beacons, this Life Focus has two aspects. The first is the FI portion of FIRE; the second is having livecations. My 2020 goals will continue traveling towards these Beacons since I'm not looking to reverse direction.
In terms of being FI, my goal is to improve my non-9-5 income stream to expense ratio. This year my wife and I put an increased focus on generating new income streams. I feel we currently have four legit non-9-5 in various forms of reliability and size. These income streams come close to covering our core expenses; mortgage, car expenses, etc. My goal is to have our alternative income fully cover our core expenses in addition to also covering our monthly lifestyle, ex: going out, recurring entertainment. To achieve this, I plan on applying pressure to increase our alternative incomes while also aggressively tackling expenses, especially monthly recurring bills.
To advance our livecations, we're already tentatively planning a month-long summer trip to Bolivia. Unfortunately, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome, with some of them being out of our control. My reach goal is to complete that trip, but my attainable goal would be to get all of our ducks in a row this year so that even if we are unable to have a livecation this year, the road will be ready for next year. This goal involves obtaining passports, ensuring there would be no snags with not only my 9-5 but also in maintaining any of our alternative income streams, determining who will house-sit, and allocating enough capital to fund an extended trip.
Health
For health, I want to stop the yo-yo-ing cycle. I've found that I can typically maintain a particular habit for a couple of months, but then I fall off the wagon. I'll manage a healthy and (supposedly) sustainable eating plan and, in the process, lose a dozen pounds. But then the stress hits and the junk food tempts, and the pounds come back. Or I'll start running again and will get into a nice rhythm, and then the unpredictability of life happens, and I lose my routine and can't start again.
So for this Life Focus, I want to focus on sustainable habits around eating, exercising, and overall weight. To achieve this goal, I'm planning on pacing myself. For example, I've done Weight Watchers in the past and find it a convenient way to track eating. The problem I've had in the past is once I start to get closer to my target weight, my weight loss naturally slows down, which mentally feels like I'm failing even though this is an expected outcome and weight loss wasn't my goal. However, weight is an easily tracked metric, and it's tough to switch from a weight-loss mentality to a weight-maintain mindset. Therefore this time, I'm not going to track my weight at all. Instead, I'll configure Weight Watchers to aim to maintain my weight, put in a guesstimate for how much I weigh today, and then use my Shapa scale to track progress. At that point, my success criteria will be to step on my Shapa daily receiving a green-to-blue Shapa color, and to record my food intake consistently.
That's just an example of a starting point. I intend to add in an exercise element to the goal too, and then once I have an all-encompassing system built around my current level of health, I can execute minor tweaks to the system to achieve any small gains I might have.
Philanthropy
I feel like I struggled the most with this Life Focus, which has lead to struggling to lay out a solid goal for 2020. This Life Focus also has probably the longest and most ambitious On-The-Horizon Beacon. Therefore, I will keep my 2020 focus simple and easy to help jump-start progress.
In 2020, I want to find one or more non-profit organizations that I can volunteer at semi-regularly throughout the year. The organization and its mission and who or what it serves will not matter. How frequently I volunteer does not matter. My only goal is to find an organization that I feel I could volunteer at for years to come.
(Written 2019.01.05)
The more I thought about this approach, the worse it felt. I couldn't quite place why, but I finally realized I was over-emphasizing Financial Independence. If I boil down the blog and PCB, potential monetizing goals relate to improving my financial independence. These goals would overload Financial Independence and place greater importance on that Life Focus than the other two. Therefore, I stripped them out.
That leaves my original 3 Life Focuses:
- Financial Independence
- Health
- Philanthropy
So here they are:
Financial Independence
From reviewing my On-The-Horizon Beacons, this Life Focus has two aspects. The first is the FI portion of FIRE; the second is having livecations. My 2020 goals will continue traveling towards these Beacons since I'm not looking to reverse direction.
In terms of being FI, my goal is to improve my non-9-5 income stream to expense ratio. This year my wife and I put an increased focus on generating new income streams. I feel we currently have four legit non-9-5 in various forms of reliability and size. These income streams come close to covering our core expenses; mortgage, car expenses, etc. My goal is to have our alternative income fully cover our core expenses in addition to also covering our monthly lifestyle, ex: going out, recurring entertainment. To achieve this, I plan on applying pressure to increase our alternative incomes while also aggressively tackling expenses, especially monthly recurring bills.
To advance our livecations, we're already tentatively planning a month-long summer trip to Bolivia. Unfortunately, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome, with some of them being out of our control. My reach goal is to complete that trip, but my attainable goal would be to get all of our ducks in a row this year so that even if we are unable to have a livecation this year, the road will be ready for next year. This goal involves obtaining passports, ensuring there would be no snags with not only my 9-5 but also in maintaining any of our alternative income streams, determining who will house-sit, and allocating enough capital to fund an extended trip.
Health
For health, I want to stop the yo-yo-ing cycle. I've found that I can typically maintain a particular habit for a couple of months, but then I fall off the wagon. I'll manage a healthy and (supposedly) sustainable eating plan and, in the process, lose a dozen pounds. But then the stress hits and the junk food tempts, and the pounds come back. Or I'll start running again and will get into a nice rhythm, and then the unpredictability of life happens, and I lose my routine and can't start again.
So for this Life Focus, I want to focus on sustainable habits around eating, exercising, and overall weight. To achieve this goal, I'm planning on pacing myself. For example, I've done Weight Watchers in the past and find it a convenient way to track eating. The problem I've had in the past is once I start to get closer to my target weight, my weight loss naturally slows down, which mentally feels like I'm failing even though this is an expected outcome and weight loss wasn't my goal. However, weight is an easily tracked metric, and it's tough to switch from a weight-loss mentality to a weight-maintain mindset. Therefore this time, I'm not going to track my weight at all. Instead, I'll configure Weight Watchers to aim to maintain my weight, put in a guesstimate for how much I weigh today, and then use my Shapa scale to track progress. At that point, my success criteria will be to step on my Shapa daily receiving a green-to-blue Shapa color, and to record my food intake consistently.
That's just an example of a starting point. I intend to add in an exercise element to the goal too, and then once I have an all-encompassing system built around my current level of health, I can execute minor tweaks to the system to achieve any small gains I might have.
Philanthropy
I feel like I struggled the most with this Life Focus, which has lead to struggling to lay out a solid goal for 2020. This Life Focus also has probably the longest and most ambitious On-The-Horizon Beacon. Therefore, I will keep my 2020 focus simple and easy to help jump-start progress.
In 2020, I want to find one or more non-profit organizations that I can volunteer at semi-regularly throughout the year. The organization and its mission and who or what it serves will not matter. How frequently I volunteer does not matter. My only goal is to find an organization that I feel I could volunteer at for years to come.
(Written 2019.01.05)
1.02.2020
#38 | 2019 Recap
On January 3rd, 2019, I posted my first Boredom is my Goal blog entry. This post will go out on January 2nd, 2020. I felt it was a good time to do a recap of how far things have come. In terms of the blog growth, the Personal Control Book progression, and the progress of my three core Life Focuses on Financial Independence, Health, and Philanthropy.
First up, there is my Boredom is my Goal blog. My content creation was strong. I was able to post a new entry every Thursday of the year, minus a 3-month hiatus when life got too busy. I would have preferred not to have that break, but I'm happy with that outcome nonetheless. In terms of readership, that had some highlights but has been somewhat lackluster. One entry received several hundred views; a few reached a couple of dozen views. One thing I find interesting is that before the hiatus, I had consistent views on each post. After the pause, it's been crickets. That's a bit discouraging, but it feels like it's indicating that content and consistency are kings, even though my takeaway from when I stopped writing is that I should be more comfortable on myself when it came to expectations of having a release schedule. The conflict!
Next up is the development of the Personal Control Book. The progress of the PCB is my surprise story of the year. Creating a PCB wasn't on my radar at all. Still, I ended up completely revamping a system I developed to manage the projects of dozens of engineers and technology professionals and tweaked things for personal use. After many iterations and experimenting on tools, layouts, and structures, I feel like I have boiled things down to something that works, at least for me. I've found that it's provided a lot of focus in my life and has helped me to channel my energies. I also worked with three individuals in setting up their PCBs, two of which finished the exercise, with one of them providing semi-frequent updates on how their progression.
For my life focuses, this is where I felt like I had the most significant wins but also the biggest let downs. Let's start with the least positive and move towards the most exciting.
First up is Philanthropy. By the end of the year, I was hoping to have a quarterly-recurring self-organized donation drive started. I made the first donation but never initiated the second. I felt like the initial round had a ton of lessons learned on how I could have done things better. I was somewhat excited to improve on things, but I tied the donations to having enough cashflow from side projects. Unfortunately, cashflow became tight, so the motivation to donate became minimal. I wasn't interested in external fundraising sources, so that fizzled out. In addition to the donation drive, I also started the year out volunteering monthly at a local food drive. That was going well, but I noticed a disenchanting trend with the other volunteers, so I felt it was best to move on and haven't found an alternative yet.
Overall, I was able to apply more focus on Philanthropy in 2019 than in other recent years, but it felt like excuses were abundant, let downs were frequent, and I didn't achieve as much as I wanted. But it's a good foundation for me to build on in 2020.
Health had a bit more consistent success. I put a lot of attention to diet and healthy lifestyle changes. As a result, my typical consumption averages more on the healthy side with a more substantial assortment of fruits, vegetables, and overall diversity of color on my plate. This lifestyle focus laid the groundwork for managing my weight. I followed some meal plans and purchased a Shapa scale. Exercising was a bit under-performing, but there were hints of launching a consistent workout plan. These things take time, and I'm confident I'll build in a good routine. In terms of relationships, I put a heavy focus on building stability and closeness with each member of the family, and I'm continually re-evaluating where I can do better to see continuous improvements. There have been speedbumps throughout the year. I've found this to be the hardest thing to maintain. Relationships are incredibly dynamic and have to adjust based on the growth of all sides.
A healthy lifestyle seems like it should always be the very top priority, but I love to eat, and laziness always strikes hard, so at the first sign of increased stress and decreased time, a healthy lifestyle tends to suffer first. I was going strong this year until the holiday season started, and a lot of my good habits began to crumble. The good news is that every holiday season is always a struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and the New Year is still a very motivating time to jump back on that bandwagon.
The last focus, Financial Independence, has seen the most progress. I started the year out with a focus on organizing and streamlining my stock market investments. Dealing with financial institutes is a massive pain in the ass. Notaries, mailing in forms, waiting months for some activity, then repeat. But together, my wife and I were able to consolidate and automate this portion of our portfolio. For non-market investments, this year's most substantial investment was a commercial real estate project that we had been discussing for years. This investment adds nicely to our real estate portfolio. We've also started a standalone side hustle of online selling, We're about four months in, but the growth in sales has been very encouraging.
But Financial Independence is not all work and no fun. My main goal for being FI is not to retire early but to be able to have the financial security to spend as much time with my family as possible, especially in the summers when everyone is off from school. During the school year, I've been able to make myself extremely available, attending as many events, and picking up any responsibilities around all three of the kids' schedules. For the summer, I've started the family on the path of getting passports, and I've started all the discussions and planning required to make our (hopefully) first month-long family trip to South America.
At the end of the year, I've done the groundwork for full investing automation. I've run the numbers, and I could consider myself Barista FIREd. I'm ready to start embarking on some extended livecations.
At the end of 2019, I feel like I can look back and feel a sense of accomplishment. My renewed focus is working, and the majority of my life indicators are trending in the desired direction. I'm excited to see what 2020 has in store for myself and my family.
(Written 2019.12.28)
First up, there is my Boredom is my Goal blog. My content creation was strong. I was able to post a new entry every Thursday of the year, minus a 3-month hiatus when life got too busy. I would have preferred not to have that break, but I'm happy with that outcome nonetheless. In terms of readership, that had some highlights but has been somewhat lackluster. One entry received several hundred views; a few reached a couple of dozen views. One thing I find interesting is that before the hiatus, I had consistent views on each post. After the pause, it's been crickets. That's a bit discouraging, but it feels like it's indicating that content and consistency are kings, even though my takeaway from when I stopped writing is that I should be more comfortable on myself when it came to expectations of having a release schedule. The conflict!
Next up is the development of the Personal Control Book. The progress of the PCB is my surprise story of the year. Creating a PCB wasn't on my radar at all. Still, I ended up completely revamping a system I developed to manage the projects of dozens of engineers and technology professionals and tweaked things for personal use. After many iterations and experimenting on tools, layouts, and structures, I feel like I have boiled things down to something that works, at least for me. I've found that it's provided a lot of focus in my life and has helped me to channel my energies. I also worked with three individuals in setting up their PCBs, two of which finished the exercise, with one of them providing semi-frequent updates on how their progression.
For my life focuses, this is where I felt like I had the most significant wins but also the biggest let downs. Let's start with the least positive and move towards the most exciting.
First up is Philanthropy. By the end of the year, I was hoping to have a quarterly-recurring self-organized donation drive started. I made the first donation but never initiated the second. I felt like the initial round had a ton of lessons learned on how I could have done things better. I was somewhat excited to improve on things, but I tied the donations to having enough cashflow from side projects. Unfortunately, cashflow became tight, so the motivation to donate became minimal. I wasn't interested in external fundraising sources, so that fizzled out. In addition to the donation drive, I also started the year out volunteering monthly at a local food drive. That was going well, but I noticed a disenchanting trend with the other volunteers, so I felt it was best to move on and haven't found an alternative yet.
Overall, I was able to apply more focus on Philanthropy in 2019 than in other recent years, but it felt like excuses were abundant, let downs were frequent, and I didn't achieve as much as I wanted. But it's a good foundation for me to build on in 2020.
Health had a bit more consistent success. I put a lot of attention to diet and healthy lifestyle changes. As a result, my typical consumption averages more on the healthy side with a more substantial assortment of fruits, vegetables, and overall diversity of color on my plate. This lifestyle focus laid the groundwork for managing my weight. I followed some meal plans and purchased a Shapa scale. Exercising was a bit under-performing, but there were hints of launching a consistent workout plan. These things take time, and I'm confident I'll build in a good routine. In terms of relationships, I put a heavy focus on building stability and closeness with each member of the family, and I'm continually re-evaluating where I can do better to see continuous improvements. There have been speedbumps throughout the year. I've found this to be the hardest thing to maintain. Relationships are incredibly dynamic and have to adjust based on the growth of all sides.
A healthy lifestyle seems like it should always be the very top priority, but I love to eat, and laziness always strikes hard, so at the first sign of increased stress and decreased time, a healthy lifestyle tends to suffer first. I was going strong this year until the holiday season started, and a lot of my good habits began to crumble. The good news is that every holiday season is always a struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and the New Year is still a very motivating time to jump back on that bandwagon.
The last focus, Financial Independence, has seen the most progress. I started the year out with a focus on organizing and streamlining my stock market investments. Dealing with financial institutes is a massive pain in the ass. Notaries, mailing in forms, waiting months for some activity, then repeat. But together, my wife and I were able to consolidate and automate this portion of our portfolio. For non-market investments, this year's most substantial investment was a commercial real estate project that we had been discussing for years. This investment adds nicely to our real estate portfolio. We've also started a standalone side hustle of online selling, We're about four months in, but the growth in sales has been very encouraging.
But Financial Independence is not all work and no fun. My main goal for being FI is not to retire early but to be able to have the financial security to spend as much time with my family as possible, especially in the summers when everyone is off from school. During the school year, I've been able to make myself extremely available, attending as many events, and picking up any responsibilities around all three of the kids' schedules. For the summer, I've started the family on the path of getting passports, and I've started all the discussions and planning required to make our (hopefully) first month-long family trip to South America.
At the end of the year, I've done the groundwork for full investing automation. I've run the numbers, and I could consider myself Barista FIREd. I'm ready to start embarking on some extended livecations.
At the end of 2019, I feel like I can look back and feel a sense of accomplishment. My renewed focus is working, and the majority of my life indicators are trending in the desired direction. I'm excited to see what 2020 has in store for myself and my family.
(Written 2019.12.28)
12.26.2019
#37 | Minimalism For High Performers
As I continue writing for this blog, I am continually nailing down precisely what the theme of my writing is and the purpose of my philosophy of Boredom. I recently found greater clarity in what it's all about.
I used to tell people it was a combination of minimalizing your life while focusing on productivity, mixed in with some leadership insights. That's a mouthful and is saying everything without being anything. After mentally replaying this mouthful multiple times, I realized the philosophy of Boredom is about minimalism for high performers. Short and simple.
Before creating the blog, I remember talking to a coworker about how overloaded we were with projects and that my focus in life was to be Bored so that I could do more. He laughed, saying that's not how being bored works. My response was, "it is for me." I couldn't vocalize what I meant, but after exploring this blog, I understand what I was saying is that for high performers, that's precisely how it works.
A lot of people might be frequently bored. When they get this way, they might end up doing nothing, thus increasing their boredom. Or worse, they get into trouble or focus on time-wasters. Idle hands are the devil's playground. However, that's not what happens when high performers get bored.
When bored, we go out seeking a new project to do, which is why we get ourselves into burnout trouble so quickly. We're always eager to say yes to a new project. Which is why aiming for Boredom works. It helps us say no to some of these less ideal projects because seeking Boredom is more important than saying yes to one more random project.
But a philosophy of Boredom isn't enough. Once we free up our time from distractions, we must assert project discipline. That's where the Personal Control Book comes into play. The PCB helps channel our focus into what will make the most significant impact on our lives. It's the guard rails that ensure we don't get back into the trap of randomly accepting new projects with no rhyme or reason.
Boredom is my Goal is the philosophy to apply minimalism for high performers. The Personal Control Book is then the system that funnels this newly created available energy into the best possible applications.
(Written 2019.12.07)
I used to tell people it was a combination of minimalizing your life while focusing on productivity, mixed in with some leadership insights. That's a mouthful and is saying everything without being anything. After mentally replaying this mouthful multiple times, I realized the philosophy of Boredom is about minimalism for high performers. Short and simple.
Before creating the blog, I remember talking to a coworker about how overloaded we were with projects and that my focus in life was to be Bored so that I could do more. He laughed, saying that's not how being bored works. My response was, "it is for me." I couldn't vocalize what I meant, but after exploring this blog, I understand what I was saying is that for high performers, that's precisely how it works.
A lot of people might be frequently bored. When they get this way, they might end up doing nothing, thus increasing their boredom. Or worse, they get into trouble or focus on time-wasters. Idle hands are the devil's playground. However, that's not what happens when high performers get bored.
When bored, we go out seeking a new project to do, which is why we get ourselves into burnout trouble so quickly. We're always eager to say yes to a new project. Which is why aiming for Boredom works. It helps us say no to some of these less ideal projects because seeking Boredom is more important than saying yes to one more random project.
But a philosophy of Boredom isn't enough. Once we free up our time from distractions, we must assert project discipline. That's where the Personal Control Book comes into play. The PCB helps channel our focus into what will make the most significant impact on our lives. It's the guard rails that ensure we don't get back into the trap of randomly accepting new projects with no rhyme or reason.
Boredom is my Goal is the philosophy to apply minimalism for high performers. The Personal Control Book is then the system that funnels this newly created available energy into the best possible applications.
(Written 2019.12.07)
12.19.2019
#36 | FU Income
Life had become crazy busy for a while, but it's starting to calm down again. As things calm down, I've been able to evaluate the past few months. One of the insights I've discovered is a deeper understanding of FU Money.
JL Collins didn't coin the term, but he's where I first heard it. Just like his article, linked above, I hadn't known what FU Money was, but once he described it, it made perfect sense. It was something I was aiming for too. Or at least I thought I was.
The more I think about it though, the more I think FU Money itself is kind of bulls--t. Although I thought FU Money was my goal, I've never been able to incorporate it into my financial strategy appropriately. The first issue I have is that retirements accounts have typically been my first avenue of investing. But as the balance of my retirement accounts increased, I never felt like that would be considered part of my FU Money bucket.
If I wanted to say FU to my job and go on a self-funded sabbatical adventure to discover myself, what I want to live off of my would my retirement accounts? Not really. I wouldn't want to cash them out and take the penalty hit for withdrawing from them before retirement. Instead of funding retirement accounts, let's say I funded a non-retirement brokerage account. Would that make a difference? Doubtful. I wouldn't want to sell my wealth-generating assets to cover my monthly expenses. I wouldn't be comfortable missing out on the opportunity cost of not benefiting from compounding interest or returns. The milestone I would have to reach to feel secure is the 4% rule threshold.
But if I waited until I reached the 4% rule threshold, then I would call that retirement money, not FU Money. I imagine FU Money is when you have enough in assets and cash that for any reason, you can quit your job without worrying about the scramble of immediately finding a new income stream. Retirement could be a side effect of this short-notice quitting, but retirement is an all-or-nothing scenario. When you retire, you retire for good. If you come back out of retirement, then that means you drained your investment accounts before you were ready to retire.
Plus, retiring early is extremely hard. There are quite a few people in the FIRE community who have retired early, but to retire in your 20s or 30s usually seems to be a direct result of penny-pinching to the point of depression. Or at least a significantly decreased life satisfaction.
What's the answer then if FU Money seems like a reasonable goal but doesn't' actually fit my model? Figuring that out has inadvertently become my current focus.
Over the past three months, I've been focusing on several different side projects. The first was a commercial real estate project that I had been watching for years, but the time had finally come to execute. This particular project will kick off a healthy but not retirement-worthy monthly cashflow. The second project was starting a side business doing online selling with my wife. This project doesn't produce passive income, yet, but creates an alternative revenue stream. And the goal is to grow the revenue stream enough that we can hire employees and helpers and start working on converting it to either a leveraged income or a completely passive income. The last project(s) was a few individuals in my technology network who reached out to me for freelancing. Freelancing is something that I've always done since college graduation, but I had a year-long drought in projects. The income generated from these projects tends to be very short-lived but usually significant in size than other side-gigs. At this point in my career, I also manage other resources with these gigs and charge a markup for my resources time instead of direct billing for my time. So I consider this leveraged income.
For the past year or so, my focus was on adding to my investment account balances. However, for these projects, the entire focus has been on created alternative income streams. Income streams that pull the monthly burden away from the 9-5 income stream. These income streams started making me think about FU Income. They didn't increase my investment account balances one bit; there has been no impact on my net worth. But yet I still feel more secure now than I did just a few months ago.
So I dug deeper. My net worth is already large enough that I feel like I have preliminary FU Money. But even with that net worth, I'm not interested in cashing out any of my existing portfolios to cover my monthly expenses. So it's FU Money that is untouchable if I want to say FU.
I was trying to sort out all of this, and it finally hit me. I had discovered FU Income. Between these three new income streams, I can cover the majority of our monthly expenses. That means if I quit my job overnight, to be entirely income-to-expense neutral, I could get a minimum wage job and still maintain my current lifestyle without decreasing my assets.
Another angle I started thinking about was the golden egg-laying goose. The moral of that story was to have patience in receiving a golden egg every day. The protagonist loses patience and kills the goose hoping to extract all of the golden eggs hiding inside, only to discover there are no golden eggs inside, thus destroying their future golden egg income. In my opinion, prematurely tapping into your FU Money is equivalent to killing your goose. Except instead of impatience being the motivation, needing to eat the goose for daily sustenance is the motivation. Although it's not a selfish motivation, the outcome is the same. With the purpose of FU Income instead of FU Money, I equate that to pursuing more geese instead of pursuing more golden eggs.
So now, I know what my focus moving forward should be. I have surpassed having FU Money. I must now focus on creating FU Income so that I can genuinely gain the financial independence that I seek.
(Written 2019.12.07)
JL Collins didn't coin the term, but he's where I first heard it. Just like his article, linked above, I hadn't known what FU Money was, but once he described it, it made perfect sense. It was something I was aiming for too. Or at least I thought I was.
The more I think about it though, the more I think FU Money itself is kind of bulls--t. Although I thought FU Money was my goal, I've never been able to incorporate it into my financial strategy appropriately. The first issue I have is that retirements accounts have typically been my first avenue of investing. But as the balance of my retirement accounts increased, I never felt like that would be considered part of my FU Money bucket.
If I wanted to say FU to my job and go on a self-funded sabbatical adventure to discover myself, what I want to live off of my would my retirement accounts? Not really. I wouldn't want to cash them out and take the penalty hit for withdrawing from them before retirement. Instead of funding retirement accounts, let's say I funded a non-retirement brokerage account. Would that make a difference? Doubtful. I wouldn't want to sell my wealth-generating assets to cover my monthly expenses. I wouldn't be comfortable missing out on the opportunity cost of not benefiting from compounding interest or returns. The milestone I would have to reach to feel secure is the 4% rule threshold.
But if I waited until I reached the 4% rule threshold, then I would call that retirement money, not FU Money. I imagine FU Money is when you have enough in assets and cash that for any reason, you can quit your job without worrying about the scramble of immediately finding a new income stream. Retirement could be a side effect of this short-notice quitting, but retirement is an all-or-nothing scenario. When you retire, you retire for good. If you come back out of retirement, then that means you drained your investment accounts before you were ready to retire.
Plus, retiring early is extremely hard. There are quite a few people in the FIRE community who have retired early, but to retire in your 20s or 30s usually seems to be a direct result of penny-pinching to the point of depression. Or at least a significantly decreased life satisfaction.
What's the answer then if FU Money seems like a reasonable goal but doesn't' actually fit my model? Figuring that out has inadvertently become my current focus.
Over the past three months, I've been focusing on several different side projects. The first was a commercial real estate project that I had been watching for years, but the time had finally come to execute. This particular project will kick off a healthy but not retirement-worthy monthly cashflow. The second project was starting a side business doing online selling with my wife. This project doesn't produce passive income, yet, but creates an alternative revenue stream. And the goal is to grow the revenue stream enough that we can hire employees and helpers and start working on converting it to either a leveraged income or a completely passive income. The last project(s) was a few individuals in my technology network who reached out to me for freelancing. Freelancing is something that I've always done since college graduation, but I had a year-long drought in projects. The income generated from these projects tends to be very short-lived but usually significant in size than other side-gigs. At this point in my career, I also manage other resources with these gigs and charge a markup for my resources time instead of direct billing for my time. So I consider this leveraged income.
For the past year or so, my focus was on adding to my investment account balances. However, for these projects, the entire focus has been on created alternative income streams. Income streams that pull the monthly burden away from the 9-5 income stream. These income streams started making me think about FU Income. They didn't increase my investment account balances one bit; there has been no impact on my net worth. But yet I still feel more secure now than I did just a few months ago.
So I dug deeper. My net worth is already large enough that I feel like I have preliminary FU Money. But even with that net worth, I'm not interested in cashing out any of my existing portfolios to cover my monthly expenses. So it's FU Money that is untouchable if I want to say FU.
I was trying to sort out all of this, and it finally hit me. I had discovered FU Income. Between these three new income streams, I can cover the majority of our monthly expenses. That means if I quit my job overnight, to be entirely income-to-expense neutral, I could get a minimum wage job and still maintain my current lifestyle without decreasing my assets.
Another angle I started thinking about was the golden egg-laying goose. The moral of that story was to have patience in receiving a golden egg every day. The protagonist loses patience and kills the goose hoping to extract all of the golden eggs hiding inside, only to discover there are no golden eggs inside, thus destroying their future golden egg income. In my opinion, prematurely tapping into your FU Money is equivalent to killing your goose. Except instead of impatience being the motivation, needing to eat the goose for daily sustenance is the motivation. Although it's not a selfish motivation, the outcome is the same. With the purpose of FU Income instead of FU Money, I equate that to pursuing more geese instead of pursuing more golden eggs.
So now, I know what my focus moving forward should be. I have surpassed having FU Money. I must now focus on creating FU Income so that I can genuinely gain the financial independence that I seek.
(Written 2019.12.07)
12.12.2019
#35 | Heroes & Soldiers
Recently I was talking to someone at work, and we started discussing the topic of heroes and soldiers in regards to performance reviews and who gets recognized. I hadn't heard this metaphor before, but it made perfect sense. I wanted to explore the concept a bit more.
The breakdown is that at work, you have heroes, and you have soldiers. Your heroes are the ones who come in to save the day. If your production system is down, they figure out how to bring it back up. If a customer is angry and demands immediate attention and resolution, the hero calms them down and satisfy their expectations. Whenever things are in trouble, the hero enters. The problem is solved, congratulations emails are sent out, and praise showers start. The celebrations begin.
Soldiers, on the other hand, are the ones in the trenches every day. They keep the world going round. They handle hundreds of customers without letting things escalate to the point of needing a hero. They create feature after feature, with constant in-depth analysis, and deliver every time. Frequently, these folks might not enjoy the spotlight of being a hero. They might even crumble when the spotlight finds them. But they don't need the spotlight to become essential members of the team.
Which then gets around to our conversation topic. How to recognize and reward everyone appropriately? Before my work conversation, I would frequently think about people in terms of being top performers, medium performers, and the occasional short-lived bottom performer. Everybody fit comfortably into these three buckets. But over time, I've noticed that some top performers struggle to get proper rewards. Their stats and KPIs would be consistently at the top of the charts. They always worked on essential tasks and were goto people for their areas. They had all of the indicators that should make them easy to reward, but the best rewards always seem to bypass them.
On the other hand, other top performers seemed to walk into their rewards. Their managers would make little effort and bam -- instant-reward. There always seemed like a disparity in contributions and ease of awards.
That's where the heroes versus soldiers metaphor clicked for me. Being a top performer helped to secure a promotion, but it wasn't the primary factor. The more critical trait is to be a visible hero. Even if you were a hero/soldier shining in the spotlight while digging into the daily trenches, the hero aspect of your output is what justifies the promotion.
Then I started thinking back at my previous jobs and evaluating myself. At my first job out of college, I was a complete soldier. I was the guy who sat in my office toiling away, avoiding any visible spotlight while carrying the burden of workload for the team. Everyone who knew the intricacies of the group realized I was a top performer for the team. No one outside of the group knew what contributions I was making. Because of that, I gained a lot of valuable experience, and it launched me as a professional engineer, but my career growth was very stagnant.
In comparison, I've now come to embrace the spotlight. I still bear down and toil away in the trenches when needed, but I'm also known to be the person who steps into the foreground to save the day when a crisis occurs. I've learned how to play both roles. I'm confident that the hero part of my deliverables has made the difference from my first job. My career growth has reflected this difference in approach.
I find it somewhat discouraging. If I would have known at my first job, maybe I could have done things differently. Even now, as a manager, I might be reaping the benefits, but that's not enough. I tend to hold my team to high expectations leading a lot of them to be top performers, but some are heroes, and some are soldiers, but all, in my opinion, are deserving of recognition.
But at least I've made this realization. With realization comes the ability to plan a countermeasure to this anti-pattern. Once I figure out that countermeasure, I'll be able to be an even better leader and make sure I keep all top performers engaged and happy so that everyone can keep us marching forward towards victory.
Project success isn't won by only the heroes performing great feats of strength, but also by the soldiers putting in the grind and showing up strong every day.
(Written 2019.12.06)
The breakdown is that at work, you have heroes, and you have soldiers. Your heroes are the ones who come in to save the day. If your production system is down, they figure out how to bring it back up. If a customer is angry and demands immediate attention and resolution, the hero calms them down and satisfy their expectations. Whenever things are in trouble, the hero enters. The problem is solved, congratulations emails are sent out, and praise showers start. The celebrations begin.
Soldiers, on the other hand, are the ones in the trenches every day. They keep the world going round. They handle hundreds of customers without letting things escalate to the point of needing a hero. They create feature after feature, with constant in-depth analysis, and deliver every time. Frequently, these folks might not enjoy the spotlight of being a hero. They might even crumble when the spotlight finds them. But they don't need the spotlight to become essential members of the team.
Which then gets around to our conversation topic. How to recognize and reward everyone appropriately? Before my work conversation, I would frequently think about people in terms of being top performers, medium performers, and the occasional short-lived bottom performer. Everybody fit comfortably into these three buckets. But over time, I've noticed that some top performers struggle to get proper rewards. Their stats and KPIs would be consistently at the top of the charts. They always worked on essential tasks and were goto people for their areas. They had all of the indicators that should make them easy to reward, but the best rewards always seem to bypass them.
On the other hand, other top performers seemed to walk into their rewards. Their managers would make little effort and bam -- instant-reward. There always seemed like a disparity in contributions and ease of awards.
That's where the heroes versus soldiers metaphor clicked for me. Being a top performer helped to secure a promotion, but it wasn't the primary factor. The more critical trait is to be a visible hero. Even if you were a hero/soldier shining in the spotlight while digging into the daily trenches, the hero aspect of your output is what justifies the promotion.
Then I started thinking back at my previous jobs and evaluating myself. At my first job out of college, I was a complete soldier. I was the guy who sat in my office toiling away, avoiding any visible spotlight while carrying the burden of workload for the team. Everyone who knew the intricacies of the group realized I was a top performer for the team. No one outside of the group knew what contributions I was making. Because of that, I gained a lot of valuable experience, and it launched me as a professional engineer, but my career growth was very stagnant.
In comparison, I've now come to embrace the spotlight. I still bear down and toil away in the trenches when needed, but I'm also known to be the person who steps into the foreground to save the day when a crisis occurs. I've learned how to play both roles. I'm confident that the hero part of my deliverables has made the difference from my first job. My career growth has reflected this difference in approach.
I find it somewhat discouraging. If I would have known at my first job, maybe I could have done things differently. Even now, as a manager, I might be reaping the benefits, but that's not enough. I tend to hold my team to high expectations leading a lot of them to be top performers, but some are heroes, and some are soldiers, but all, in my opinion, are deserving of recognition.
But at least I've made this realization. With realization comes the ability to plan a countermeasure to this anti-pattern. Once I figure out that countermeasure, I'll be able to be an even better leader and make sure I keep all top performers engaged and happy so that everyone can keep us marching forward towards victory.
Project success isn't won by only the heroes performing great feats of strength, but also by the soldiers putting in the grind and showing up strong every day.
(Written 2019.12.06)
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