1500 Days to Freedom

Think different and escape the rat race.

Ask The Readers: Your Perfect Work

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If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. – Steve Jobs on work

I have a couple pieces of information that you may find interesting:

  1. Early Retirement is not a goal. It’s a tool that gets you time back. That’s it. It’s not the end, but a beginning. This brings me to point #2.
  2. Work is the key to a happy life. If you’re planning on quitting so you can sit on the couch all day eating Cheetos and watching TV, stay at your job. You should take some time in early retirement to relax, but a life lived on the couch is not a life. The point is to do meaningful work on your own terms.

Note that I said work and not job:

  • Work is performing a specific task like writing code, working in your garden or writing a blog post. My favorite work is building and creating.
  • A job is all of the side-business that goes with conventional work including meetings, co-workers, a boss, an office and a paycheck.

Many of us enjoy our work; but not our job. I enjoyed my work as a software developer, but I enjoyed my job less.

More on all of this in a moment. First, we must get to last week’s question when I asked you about your favorite quotes.

 

Pocket Wisdom

I love quotes because a good one can convey clever wisdom in just a few words. Last week, I asked you what your favorite quotes are and here is what you said:

Reader Brian provided ths gem:

One piece of advice that I have used from my grandpa. You should try to fix anything once. That way you know why you are willing to pay someone if you don’t want to do it in the future and you might be surprised and what you can fix on your own.

Joe from Retire By 40 said this:

 You just got to keep trying, no matter how hard it is. That’s life. Nowadays, my personal mantra is “keep at it.” Just keep going and it should turn out okay.

freddy smidlap:

“Get rich once.” goes along with “when you’ve won the game, stop playing.”

It’s hard to stop playing. I find myself moving my money goalposts every time I’ve reached my net worth goal.

Full Time Finance had this to say:

An object in possession seldom retains the charm it had in pursuit” –Pliny the Younger

I noticed this with my fancy car. It’s still fun and I enjoy it, but now that it’s out of my system, I’ll sell it someday and not look back.

And finally, reader Jacob reminded me of this great one from Fight Club:

We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.

 

Your Ideal Work

If you put the word retirement into google image search, the results are images of old people frolicking on the beach (and some really weird other stuff):

It’s OK to sit on the beach all day when you’re 85 and have lost your mobility. It’s not OK when you’re 45 or 35 and have many, many good years ahead of you.

MMM himself is a good example of someone who is living a successful life after conventional work ended. He has built a studio in his backyard, turned a dilapidated property on Main Street Longmont into a thriving retail store and co-working space, and built a tiny house. He does this work according to his own rules and whenever he wants to. He enjoys building stuff. This is meaningful and worthwhile work.

Good work if you can get it

What Would You Do?

Last week, Joe from Retire By 40 tweeted this:

With Joe’s permission, I ask you the same thing:

What is your ideal work? If you could do anything and do it completely on your own terms, what would you do?

It’s a fun, but difficult question. Be careful what you wish for! I’m so fortunate to have found work that I genuinely love twice in my life, but both times, it was by accident. I’ll save the stories for my Wednesday post.

Join the 10s who have signed up already!

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*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.

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Comments

  1. I have learned so much about myself since I checked out of traditional employment in 2016. For instance, I like to travel even more than I thought I would, or that I love 2-3 hours of meaningful time with the boys each day…….but 8-10 hours is excruciating. LOL

    I’m multifaceted, and really prefer a mix of mental and physical work. My ideal work is periodically consulting on interesting projects, like I have the past year, but I am trying to figure out a new real estate remodeling project. I miss working with my hands…..though the property we looked at yesterday would provide plenty of opportunity for that. Feel like coming down to help me do some custom cabinets and rip out an in ground vinyl pool? I’ll let you use the plate tamper?!
    -Bryan

  2. Before I answer, I found it hilarious that Mauricio Rua, a current UFC fighter, popped up on your google image search under the word retirement Haha!

    Anyway, you are right that this is a difficult question to answer as I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I enjoy doing what I currently do for full-time work now, but would prefer to do it in short-term bursts. I tend to notice that I do my best work only working 2-3 days per week. My side hustle is a perfect example of this as I don’t get burned out as easily, enjoy it a lot, and my customers seem to notice that. If I were to do it everyday, however, I think I would lose my mind.

  3. My ideal work would be managing money. I was an analyst in charge of helping pick stocks for a mutual fund during my career. The “job” part of it was aiding in fundraising, consultant ratings (think Morningstar ratings), white papers, and all of the corporate mumbo-jumbo like semi-annual reviews and trainings. I’d have no desire to raise money or get ratings. I’d want a team of 3-5 and our only goal would be to provide a good risk/reward to investors.

  4. I’m two months into the RE side of FIRE and still going through decompression and detox. The question you pose comes up every morning while I have coffee reading some FI blogs. While I have a todo list to punch through the day, I find myself with about 2-3 hours each day that can be filled with something productive, social or some kind of side hustle. .While blogging is ok, it’s more of a broadcast in written form. It’s not the same as a real-time interaction.
    To answer your question: the perfect/ideal work involves helping and interacting with people directly, perhaps working at a gym, 2-3 hours a day and making a few bucks.

    • I’ve been retired for 3 years and do a little consulting, a little volunteering, a little fishing, a little hiking, a little travel, a little blogging, a lot of running and a lot of tennis. Most all of it with my extremely fit wife(except for the blogging and consulting side gigs) . So far it feels pretty ideal, I sometimes think there is probably something else exciting out there to add to the mix but so far I’m content. The consulting has been extremely profitable which is kind of fun because we can leave our investments untouched even though I rarely work more than a day or two a week.

      • Looks like you have a very good balance 3 years into it. Stepping up the physical activity and working out is awesome, especially now that we have the time to mix it up a bit instead of pure gym time.
        . I”m coming up on 3 months and still finding my legs and still get spooked once in a while seeing an empty calendar. I’ve switched from a calendar list of activities to a paper notebook list my to do items to keep an analog record.
        The slow travel plans are being developed and we have another two-week road trip in the Challenger in a couple of weeks.

  5. I’ve always wanted to build a small business of some kind, and being a writer always seemed like a great time….but may have read too much Hemingway as a kid.

    When I was working, I was never able to stay (happily) in a role for more than 2 years.

    Maybe the best thing about being FI is that you’ll be able to do many different types of work?

    • “Maybe the best thing about being FI is that you’ll be able to do many different types of work?”

      You’re on to something there. Part of the fun too is the journey of figuring it out.

  6. Thanks for the mention! MMM has got it figured out.
    It’s good to keep busy after retirement. You definitely don’t want to just sit around all day. You’ve got to mix it up with some work and some leisure time. I’d love to try being a marine biologist, but that ship has sailed. That job requires a lot of education and probably has a lot of BS that goes along with it. Blogging and being a SAHD is good enough for now. I’ll branch out more when I have more time.

  7. Work that I totally love is helping people set up their books for their small businesses (QuickBooks is my happy place). And then working with them to understand their numbers and financial statements. I do this at no charge for folks who ask and wish I had more takers!

  8. I’ll answer Joe’s question the same as I did on twitter — My ideal work is to be an inventor (besides being a SAHD and a blogger). I love creating solutions to problems and that’s really what I do now in my early retirement.

    There’s just a certain satisfaction that comes from solving a problem with a solution you built yourself.

  9. I literally spent all of this past weekend coding a new project.

    I love it, it’s fun. But when I’m forced to work on something I’m not interested in under a deadline it loses its luster.

    If I had my druthers, I’d cook and coach. I actually do both of those for free now, just need more time for them. Which is what I’m working toward.

  10. A very appropriate question for me at this moment as I left my 9 to 5 job at the beginning of the month. I’m officially ReFIREd! The first week I spent travelling to visit some friends. But today, I’ve spent most of the day working on my blog. It’s been neglected and needs some love. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do with my new found time, but I like writing and creating things with the written word. I also have an idea to create another website or two. Who knows if these will ever be “successful”….Regardless, I like the idea of creating my own thing for once, and not just working to develop something that someone else wants. If I get bored or it doesn’t work out, I figure I can always go back to work…
    Freedom 40 Plan recently posted…Monthly Net Worth Update – July 2018 – $1,783,146 [+55,092]My Profile

  11. I’m doing my perfect work.

    1. Bought an iMac Pro setup like those used at Pixar.
    2. Teaching myself digital animation/AR/VR.
    3. Not sleeping a lot because I love this stuff.

  12. PS

    Also bought an iPad Pro, iPencil and Procreate App.

    Absolutely amazing technology for drawing!

  13. I think I’ve probably been working in my perfect job all my life.
    I’m a secondary teacher, so as long as I stick to the curriculum I have total autonomy on HOW I teach. I don’t think I could stand to be micromanaged. I teach English and Drama – so there’s a huge fun factor right there.
    The kids make me laugh every single day, and every single day is different. No cubicle office for me!
    It’s not perfect- (meetings, yard duty, parents…) – but all in all there are FAR harder ways to earn a crust.

  14. Even though I am starting two online businesses right now and they are going okay so far, my ideal work would be something in the outdoors, preferably an outdoor sport like being a guide or something. I’m always cooking up plans in my head!

  15. I just recently found enjoyable work after 28 years! I was somewhat thrust into a situation but because we are FI I was able to make a choice that suited me! I still do my core accounting and operations work. It just happens to be for a non-profit agency dedicated to helping at-risk youth. Yeah, even here there is some BS, however, all I have to do is walk down the hall and talk and mentor kids and it all works out. Having purpose and choice is my key!

  17. Work is not only the main source of income, but it is also the ideal of my own life. I will pursue this passion until the end of my life