Learning Spanish

A decade ago, I decided to learn Spanish. In the summer of 2011, I sought out a Spanish tutor in the Portland area and chanced to meet a Peruvian woman named Aly. For the next eighteen months or so, Aly and I met three times a week for 90 minute sessions. It was a ton of fun.

My progress was slow at first, of course. There was so much to learn! But gradually I discovered ways to make learning Spanish more fun for me.

I dove deep into Spanish-language pop music, for instance. At the time, Portland had a great radio station that played contemporary Spanish-language pop. (Most Portland Spanish-language stations are either religious or play traditional Mexican music. I had not — and still have not — acquired a taste for traditional Mexican music.) I’d listen to the songs while driving around, make a point to note my favorites.

I’d download these favorite songs to my phone and I’d print out the lyrics. Then, I’d take these lyrics to my sessions of Aly. She’d help me work through the process of translating them.

Again, at first this was difficult. It’s one thing to learn the “rules” of a language. It’s another thing to learn how the language is actually used (especially when usage varies from country to country). The start of many tutoring sessions was spent translating song lyrics. In time, Aly started bringing some of her favorite songs for me to learn.

On top of this, I began watching movies and TV shows with the Spanish audio track (and English subtitles). I was also reading Spanish-language books. I started with children’s books, but gradually worked my way up to full-fledged novels. By the time Aly and I stopped working together, we had worked through The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Spanish plus one or two other books that I don’t recall at the moment.

All of this study paid off.

After less than six months, I took my first trip to a Spanish-speaking country. I traveled to Peru and Bolivia to hike through the Andes. I was by no means fluent, but I knew enough Spanish to get by.

Three months later, I traveled to Argentina and Chile. My Spanish was even better by this time. I could read anything I encountered in daily life. I could engage in simple conversations. People complimented my accent.

And in 2013, I spent a couple of weeks in Ecuador. This time, I ended up being the de facto translator for the group I was traveling with. I couldn’t understand everything that was said to me, and I sometimes had trouble formulating thoughts, but I could speak well enough to do whatever I wanted. (One funny exception: In rural Ecuador, I had to help a companion purchase hair conditioner. I had no idea what the word was. The owner of the small shop couldn’t understand what I was trying to tell her. Everyone became frustrated. But, in the end, I learned the word acondicionador.)

As I traveled, I bought more books. And, especially, I bought Spanish-language graphic novels. I loved Spanish. I loved comic books. Naturally, Spanish comic books appealed to me. These too helped me learn.

At my Spanish peak, I was actually volunteering in a bilingual second-grade classroom, helping kids learn to read for a few hours per week. This was challenging but fun.

Aly and I stopped working together sometime in late 2012. At the time, she told me that I had learned enough that I could easily test into late intermediate (or early advanced) Spanish at a college level. This boggled my mind!

But once we stopped working together, my Spanish skills froze. Then, with time, they began to erode.

That said, my Spanish hasn’t faded completely. Not even close.

It helps that I’ve returned to Ecuador several times since. Plus, I exercise my Spanish when I travel to Italy or Portugal. (Italian and Portuguese are close enough to Spanish that my brain engages in the same way.) Every once in a while, I grab a Spanish children’s book from my shelf. (I like reading Harry Potter in Spanish.)

I’ve found that my ability to read Spanish seems to have remained. Yes, I’ve forgotten certain words, but words are easy to look up. I can parse a book fairly easily, pausing only to use a dictionary when needed.

That said, my ability to hear and speak Spanish is pretty low right now. I haven’t tried to write anything, but I think that would be rough too.

I bring all of this up because I’m currently on my second trip to Mexico in the past month. The first trip was spent in an English bubble. This trip, I’m with a Mexican friend and we’re doing Mexican things. I am surrounded by Spanish. Yes, most of the people we encounter can (and do) speak English, but much of the time, I’m afloat in a sea of Spanish.

We’ve been here nearly 48 hours now, and even in this short time, I’ve found my comprehension has made huge strides. When we landed, I could only pick out a few words of spoken Spanish here and there. I was especially flustered that whenever a person spoke, it pretty much sounded like a wall of noise. But as time goes on, I’ve gained the ability to delineate individual words when they’re spoken. That’s super helpful!

Last night at dinner, as the group of Mexican friends grew drunker and drunker (and I grew drunker and drunker), I was generally able to follow the flow of conversation. I could get the gist of what was being said most of the time. I couldn’t tell you what any given sentence was, but I understood many of the stories. On our way home, I told my friend that I felt like I might have been able to understand almost everything if the speed of the conversation could have been slowed by 50%.

I’ve noticed some things, though.

First, it takes a lot of focus and mental energy to attend to a conversation. As a result, I get tired. And when I get tired, I tune out. The moment I tune out, I lose any thread of what’s being said. (If I tune out of an English conversation, I still subconsciously pick up the thread.)
Second, some speakers are much easier to understand than others.
Third, some of the rules I’ve learned and followed don’t seem to apply. I’m not sure if they’ve never applied or whether they simply don’t apply to this part of Mexico. (Example: I was taught that each letter in Spanish is always pronounced and always pronounced the same way. This isn’t true. “Muelle” isn’t pronounced the way it’s spelled, for instance.)
Fourth, I really struggle with the little “extra” bits in Spanish. This has always been true, but it’s especially true now. The personal a. The se in a phrase like se me olvidó. I understand them when I see them and/or hear them, but I never remember to include them when I speak. Never.
Fifth, the Spanish you learn in the classroom doesn’t overlap completely with the Spanish you see in the real world. I learned llanta (tire) when working with Aly, for example, but never had occasion to use the word. But you see llanta all over the place — more than you’d think! — when out and about in a city.

There’s lots of other stuff like this that makes actually spending time in a Spanish-speaking country (or area) wholly different than learning Spanish in a classroom. It’s fun.

My friend tells me that he thinks I could become fluent if I were to spend three months here. He recognizes that I’m struggling, especially when it comes to speech. But he says that I seem to understand more than he expected me to. (I understand more than I expected me to, also.)

We’ll be here another three days before flying home to Portland. I’m curious to see if my ability to parse speech (and to speak myself) continues to improve during this time. It almost has to.

On past trips like this, I’ve tended to bury my head in books, magazines, and newspapers. I’ve paid more attention to print Spanish. This time, I’m not doing any of that. None. Instead, it’s all conversational. It’s a different experience, but I think it’ll be more profitable in the long run.

And you know what? All of this is thinking that it might be smart for me to find a Spanish tutor again this year. I wouldn’t dive as deep as I did before, but it might be fun to meet somebody every week or two (even if it’s with Zoom and not in person). I would love to bring my Spanish skills back to where they once were.

Speaking another language changes the way you view the world. It’s fun!

Using ATracker to track and manage time

When Kim and I returned from our 15-month RV trip across the U.S. in 2016, I was overwhelmed — and for a lot of reasons. One problem was that I couldn’t seem to manage my time.

Time management has been a struggle for me all of my life. It’s something that most folks with ADHD wrestle with. It’s tough for us to prioritize. And even when we do manage to prioritize things, it’s tough for us to stay on task.

Related reading: Yesterday on the ADHD subreddit, one user asked a great question: Why the hell does my brain tell me this five-minute thing I need to do will consume my entire day, leading me to do the fun stuff first? Ah, this is my life. Instead of getting the requirements out of the way and playing later, I play first. I cannot defer gratification. Apparently, it’s an ADHD trait. I’m working on it.

In 2016, I spent a week performing Laura Vanderkam’s time makeover. For seven days, I logged everything I did in fifteen-minute increments. It was a useful exercise.

I’ve been wanting to do something similar again. But really, I want to track my time on an ongoing basis. One week doesn’t give enough data. Plus, although I tried not to do so, I know I alter my behavior slightly when I’m aware I’m conducting a short-term experiment. I want to see long-term patterns.

Yesterday morning, because it was the first day of the year, I went on the app store to search for time management apps. There are a lot of them (although most are targeted at business users). Each works in a slightly different way. Most seemed a bit clunky to me. But then I found ATracker, and I knew I’d hit the jackpot.

How ATracker Works

For me, ATracker is perfect. (I don’t mean to be hyperbolic in this case. I mean it. It’s a perfect app.)

Fundamentally, ATracker does only one thing: It logs the time you spend on various activities. Here’s how it works.

You create a “task” for each activity you want to track. Each person will want to track different things. In my case, I created tasks like Sleeping, Gaming, Hot Tub, Mindless Web, and Get Rich Slowly.
Whenever you start a task you’d like to track, you go into the app and touch the task name. This starts a timer.
Whenever you finish a task, you go into the app again and touch the task name. This stops the timer.

That’s it. That’s the basic functionality built into ATracker. That’s all it does. But you know what? I don’t need (or want) it to do anything else. And while this is its basic functionality, let’s talk about a few of the apps more important features.

First, you can track multiple tasks at once. So, for instance, yesterday while I was in the hot tub, I tracked that activity and I tracked the fact that I was reading. I’m not sure how many activities you can “nest” like this. Because I was reading a book about money, I might have also tried to log this as Get Rich Slowly time also…but I didn’t.

Second, there’s an Apple Watch version of the app. This is huge. I know it’s easy enough to go into my phone to start (or stop) a timer when I’m doing something, but having a watch app for this removes all barriers. Now it’s merely a matter of getting in the habit, which will take a few days. (Remembering to start/stop the timer when I’m sleeping will be the biggest challenge.)

Finally, ATracker offers amazing reports.

The main screen — the Today screen — is where you start and stop tasks. Here, you can see how much time you’ve spent on each activity today.

ATracker's default Today view

On the Calendar screen, you can see a timeline view of exactly what you did each day — including “nested” tasks. In this screenshot below, for instance, you can see when I was reading in the hot tub yesterday morning.

ATracker's Calendar view

The History view is somewhat similar to the Calendar view, but it shows you each activity in discrete chunks.

ATracker's History view

Lastly, the Report page gives you a pie chart that breaks out how you spent your time during a given period. You can opt to see the breakdown by day, by week, by month, or by a specified range.

ATracker's Report view

Based on the app’s iconography and dialog boxes, I’m certain that there are some subtle features that I haven’t discovered yet. There are different ways to view the data. It look as if you can set goals and/or targets. And so on. I don’t care about any of this stuff. What I want is an app that tracks how I’m spending my time, then shows me that data. ATracker does precisely this.

Final Thoughts about ATracker

Will I continue to use ATracker for more than a few days? That’s a great question.

I have a 51-year track record of starting stuff like this and then not following through. A couple of days ago, I mentioned my new five-year journal, for example, as something I worry about using for a little while and then forgetting.

But the thing with ATracker is that it’s so brain-dead simple. I mean it’s very very easy to use. There’s no barrier there. (The barrier is me forgetting to start a timer. When I started writing this post, I forgot to start my “Folded Space” activity in the app, for instance. I remembered after a couple of minutes. Fortunately, you can edit and/or manually enter data to fix issues like this.)

Plus, I’m highly motivated to use this. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and implemented in a way that I love.

So yes, it’s possible that this app will fall by the wayside. But I suspect there’s a high chance that I’ll continue to use it not just for days, but for weeks and months ahead.

If you want to change, change today — not tomorrow

Every year as December winds to a close, I think about all of the things I’d like to change in my life. I think about how I’d like to lose weight, stop wasting money on stupid stuff, and — especially — learn to use my time wisely.

Some years (and this is one of them), I make grand plans to change my habits.

Recently, for instance, I purchased a five-year journal. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a lovely little book that includes space to make entries for each day from 01 January 2021 until 31 December 2025.

In my mind, it’d be awesome to commit to keeping this journal for five years. And I really really want to do it.

But here’s the problem. Often, these grand plans aren’t rooted in reality. They’re based on some idealized picture of who I want to be, not who I am. As a result, I don’t follow through. (Fortunately, my intended journaling routine is aligned with who I am.)

Here’s a real-life example.

I’ve struggled with my weight all of my life. There have been periods where I’m fit and healthy, but there have also been periods during which I indulge myself indiscriminately. I gain weight. My blood pressure soars. My mental health suffers.

Eventually, I decided I need to get fit again. When this happens, I take one of two approaches.

The first approach is to adhere to some sort of regimented diet. Maybe I decide I’m only going to eat vegetarian. Or, usually, I aim to stick to a high-protein menu. Plus, I’ll exercise every day! As you can probably guess, this doesn’t usually work. (Sometimes it does but not usually.)/
The second approach is to allow myself to continue eating and doing the same things I’ve been eating and doing, but to do so at a reduced level. I don’t deny myself anything that I enjoy (hello, Hostess Sno-Balls!) but I eat the stuff less often.

This latter method is aligned with who I am. It doesn’t operate on the assumption that I will suddenly become a different person. It accepts my quirks and works with them.

Like I say, I have a much higher success rate when I opt to make changes that come from a place of intrinsic motivation.

There’s nothing revelatory here. Psychology shows that changes are more likely to stick if we’re intrinsically motivated rather than pursuing something because somebody is making us do it (or we think we ought to do it). We have to want the change for the change to occur.

I know this, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to adopt habits that are completely foreign to my mental make-up. I think we all do this.

There’s another problem with deciding, “Oh, I’m going to suddenly be a different person on January 1st.” When I decide to adopt resolutions on some meaningful date — the first of the year, my birthday, various anniversaries — they rarely stick. Maybe I adhere to the new behavior for a day or two, but then I forget (or fail) and it makes me feel shitty. I feel ashamed. I feel like a failure.

I have much, much better success if I do not aim to adopt new habits on some meaningful date. I get better results when I decide to start now.

Again, let’s use my fitness as an example.

I frequently try to start fitness programs at the first of the year. Or on my birthday. But during my 51+ years on earth, this has never worked. Not once.

What has worked, however, is starting immediately.

If I want to lose weight and get fit (and I’m serious about doing so), then the most effective thing is to begin this very moment, not wait for some arbitrary date in the future. I have the motivation now. I have the desire now. If I start when I’m motivated, I’ll build momentum. If I wait until a future date, I may or may not have the desire at that time.

In 1997, for instance, I hit 200 pounds for the first time in my life on May 6th. After I stepped on the scale and saw that number, I decided then and there to lose weight. Over the next six months, I lost forty pounds. (And it was this weight-loss journey that led to my first blog. Neither Folded Space nor Get Rich Slowly would be here today if I hadn’t made that decision!)

In 2010, I resolved to lose weight starting January 1st. It didn’t happen. But I did get fit after a similar “come to Jesus” moment in early April. (That instance led to me losing forty pounds again and achieving the best fitness of my life.)

And this year? This year, I hit my limit on July 28th. I resolved to lose thirty pounds in six months. It now looks like I’ll miss my target by a week or two — but I’m still going to shed that thirty pounds. (And more.) Then, I’ll start working on exercise to boost my overall fitness.

In each of these three cases, I started when I was inspired to start. I didn’t wait for some date in the future.

I went alcohol-free from July 5th to October 29th of this year using the same method. I simply said, “Enough.” I made the decision to stop drinking, and I followed through. I’m ready to resume sobriety starting tomorrow, even though I know have a lousy track record of doing things when I pick a “magic” date. If I was serious, I’d start today. I’d let Kim enjoy champagne tonight and I’d celebrate sober.

Anyhow, none of this means that I shouldn’t try to make changes in the new year. It’s always good to pursue self improvement. But I need to be realistic about the likely results. And I need to recognize that my true successes come when I make changes immediately, when I’m motivated, instead of waiting for some magical time in the future.

Tracking My Time: How I Found More Hours in My Day

Since arriving home to Portland at the end of June, I’ve felt frustrated. There’s so much I want to do but never enough time to do it. At the same time, I feel like a total whiner. I mean, how lucky am I to be in this situation? I have tons of free time, no job, and I’m really able to do whatever I want. I’m damned lucky is what I am.

Yet it feels like I never do what I want. It feels like I’m always doing things I have to do or things for other people.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with my friend Paula Pant about this problem. “I wish I could figure out where all of the time is going,” I said.

“You should do a time inventory,” Paula said.

“What’s a time inventory?” I asked.

“Well, you know how the first step to losing weight is tracking calories? And you know how the first step to getting out of debt is logging how much you earn and spend? Well, a time inventory is sort of the same thing. For a certain length of time, you write down exactly how you’re spending your time. Here. I’ll send you a link.”

Paula pointed me to Laura Vanderkam’s website. Vanderkam offers free downloadable PDF forms and spreadsheets to help people track their time in fifteen-minute increments. As you go about your day, you jot down what you’re doing at various intervals.

Paula recently performed this time inventory exercise in her own life and found she was wasting almost eighteen hours a week on mindless stuff. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, last week I logged exactly where my time has been going. I’m afraid my results are worse than Paula’s…

The Good

First up, let’s look at what I’m doing right. The results of this experiment weren’t all bad, after all.

For instance, I’m getting an average of one hour per day of exercise. Last week I went to Crossfit three times, yoga once, and enjoyed a few bike rides. That doesn’t include all of the times I walked to do errands or took the dog for her exercise.

Note: I haven’t mentioned it here, but Kim and I got a dog. Near the end of our trip, we stopped to visit my cousins in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. They had a littler of seven puppies, and Kim fell in love with the runt. We adopted her, named her Tahlequah, and brought her along for the last three weeks in the motorhome. Since returning to Portland, Tally has probably been the dominant theme in our lives. Puppies need a lot of attention.

Speaking of the new dog, Kim and I also adopted two kittens recently. According to my time inventory, I’m spending a full 2-1/2 hours per day with the pets. The cats don’t require much effort, of course (although they’re happy to play with humans), but Tally takes 3-5 hours each day, which Kim and I split between us. She needs two daily walks and plenty of play around the house. So far, we’ve been great about engaging with her. We hope this produces a happy, healthy dog in the long run, one that needs less time. (Fingers crossed!)

Finally, I’ve been averaging one hour per day with family and friends. On paper, that doesn’t actually sound like a lot, but turns out it’s actually quite a bit compared to most people.

The Bad

I wouldn’t be writing this post if I were doing a good job with time management. I’m not. I’m wasting more than thirty hours each week on non-productive activities. Like what?

Like, I spent an average of 2-1/2 hours each day watching TV and movies. Yikes! For a guy who says he doesn’t watch much TV, that’s an awful lot of TV. All told, that’s 17-1/2 hours I could have used for something more rewarding. To be fair, seven of those hours came when Kim and I decided to have a movie night. And two more were devoted to watching my Portland Timbers defeat the Seattle Sounders. But still…

But that’s not all.

I also frittered away thirteen hours and fifteen minutes on what I consider computer-based time-wasters: browsing Reddit, playing Hearthstone, and so on. That’s nearly two hours per day of time lost. Not good.

Aside from thirty hours of total wasted time, I lost hours in other ways.

For example, I spent a total of four hours in the car last week, which is just over half an hour per day. That might not sound like much, but it’s a lot for me. That’s time I’ll never get back.

It took me over eight hours to do chores and errands last week. That seems like a lot. Now part of that was because I did a deep clean of the house on Thursday, it’s true. And another part is because I tend to walk for my errands, which means they take a bit longer. All the same, this seems like a lot of time to have used for menial tasks. Maybe I can find ways to be more efficient?

Finally, I averaged nine hours and twenty minutes of sleep per night. WTF? When did I start hibernating? In the olden days, I was perfectly content with 7-1/2 hours per night. And often I could get by with six hours per night. I’ll bet that I could still get by with less sleep, but I got into the habit of sleeping tons during our roadtrip.

The Ugly

So, that’s where my time is going. And it’s not pretty. But perhaps even worse is where I’m not devoting my energy. My stated number-one goal is to build and promote Money Boss, my new financial blog. But am I doing that? No, I am not.

Last week, I only spent 7-1/2 hours writing material for Money Boss — and most of that came on Sunday morning. I consider this my top priority, yet I’m not treating it as such. This needs to change.

I spent another 7-1/2 hours working on Money Boss business matters last week: answering email, preparing talks, tinkering with the website. That’s a total of fifteen hours devoted to my business. I want to double that. I want to spend 30-40 hours each week on Money Boss and related projects.

Meanwhile, I’m not taking care of me. Over the past seven days, I allocated a mere four hours to personal care and self-improvement — and most of that was stuff like showering and shaving! I did take an hour to practice Spanish mid-week, and I took my usual hour to work on my personal finances on the weekend. But that’s it. This too needs to change.

Time to Change

In order for an exercise like this to be useful, you’ve got to be completely honest about your habits. And you can’t try to make changes during the assessment period. When you initially log your spending, your eating, or your time, your goal is to document what you’re doing in normal day-to-day life. If you try to make changes during the assessment period, you’re defeating the purpose.

Now that the assessment period is over for me, it’s clear what I need to do.

First up, I’d like to find at least two hours more per day to devote to Money Boss. And I’d like that time to be structured so that I know it’s there and I can use it productively. Those are two separate problems.

I feel like there are several ways I can approach the first part of the problem. Just as you should tackle the big things in your household budget before trying to pinch pennies on the smaller line-items, I’m going to start by trying to trim the biggest timesinks.

I can create more time in my day by:

Sleeping less. I should be able to easily move to 7-1/2 hours of sleep per night, which would free up nearly two hours per day. Boom! There’s fourteen hours per week — almost the amount I want to find for working on business.

I don’t want to eliminate TV, movies, websurfing, and videogames from my life. I like spending a bit of time on those hobbies. But do I need to spend four hours and twenty minutes per day on these things combined? Hell no! If I budget two hours per day for time-wasters, I think that’s plenty.

With these two changes alone, I’d free four hours and fifteen minutes each day to spend on more important things, such as business and personal growth. For instance, if I take three of those hours for Money Boss, that’ll give me 36 hours per week of work. Perfect. And if I use the other hour and a quarter I’ve freed up to work on becoming a better person, that’ll give me nearly two hours a day for self-improvement. Nice.

The second part of the problem is more difficult. Where do I put this time in my schedule? The ideal situation would be to wake early or go to bed late. I like going to bed with Kim, so that means my only option is to wake early. I’ve done well with rising early in the past, but by that I mean 5:30 or 6:00. To do what I want to do, I’m going to have to wake even earlier. I’m going to need to get up at 4:00 or 4:30, make coffee, and get directly to work.

Another option is to wake at 4:30, go to the 5:00 Crossfit class, come home and walk the dog, then sit down to work from eight until noon. Actually, thinking out loud, that’s probably the best option. It’ll suck at first — no question! — but in the long run, I’ll be much more productive.

The Ideal Schedule

So, there you have it. After all that, I’ve arrived at an “ideal schedule”. It looks something like this:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday
04:30 wake
04:45 drive to gym (sorry, Mr. Money Mustache)
05:00 Crossfit
06:15 drive home
06:30 take the dog for a walk
08:00 grab breakfast and sit down to work
13:00 end work, eat lunch (with somebody, if possible)
14:00 personal development
16:00 go into evening mode

Tuesday, Thursday
04:30 wake, grab coffee, start working
06:30 take the dog for a walk
08:00 grab breakfast and resume work
13:00 end work, eat lunch (with somebody, if possible)
14:00 personal development
16:00 go into evening mode

Look at that! With this schedule, I’ve built in 29 hours of work — and that doesn’t count afternoons or weekends. I love it. I’ve also built in ten hours for self-improvement. Yay!

I like this schedule because:

I’m free to do as I please after four o’clock every weekday afternoon.
Aside from Crossfit on Saturday mornings, my weekends are entirely free.

The challenge for me is to be militant about protecting my mornings. That’s my time. No meetings, no appointments, no errands. Only my priorities. It can be done. (I’ve done it before!)

Today is my second day on this ideal schedule. Yesterday morning, I woke early and went to Crossfit. I didn’t make the 5 a.m. class, but I did make it to the six o’clock session. Then I came home and walked the dog. Then I worked until one. And this morning, Kim and I got up together at 4:45. Here, two hours later, I’m done with this article and ready to take the dog for a walk. (She’s ready too!)

I have high hopes that this ideal schedule will allow me to get stuff done and give me plenty of time left over for play.

Note: By chance, my pal Chris Guillebeau recently published a related article: Eight ways to have more time.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

As Kim and I slowly make our way across the United States, we’re learning a lot, both about ourselves (individually and as a couple) and about others. We’re spending extended time with family and friends, and we’re meeting strangers in the places we stay. Through this constant exposure to a diverse population of people, we’ve come to realize how each of us tends to live out the stories we tell ourselves.

Many people we’ve met, for instance, are living a story in which taking a year off to travel is impossible. It’s not that taking a year off to travel is actually impossible for them, but that these folks believe it’s impossible, and that’s the story they live.

At the same time, there’s a small handful of people who decide to live a different story. We met a man near Sedona, Arizona who had been living the “I can’t travel” story but decided to re-write the ending. He quit his corporate job on the east coast and moved to Arizona with only the vague outline of a plan. He’s now giving donation-based tours of the Sedona area while maintaining a modest lifestyle. He decided to live a different story, one that (so far) has a happier ending.

We don’t just tell ourselves about travel. We tell ourselves stories about every aspect of our lives — and most of these stories can be changed, if we have the guts and gumption to change them.

We all know folks who live stories in which they are the victim of circumstances, in which fate has laid them low. My mother is a prime example. Ever since she was a girl, she’s told herself a story in which her mother didn’t like her and favored her siblings. She’s allowed that story to dominate her life, to define her as much at sixty as she did at sixteen. My father tried for decades to get her to live a different story, but he failed.

My ex-wife lived a story in which she hated camping. She didn’t want to spend the night outdoors in a tent or a camper or anything else. In this story, camping was a bother. Now, thanks in part to her current boyfriend, she’s re-written this small part of her life. Today, Kris enjoys camping and how close it brings her to the outdoors (especially birds!).

As part of the story I told myself, I was an introvert. I didn’t like meeting new people. I couldn’t make small talk and I was overwhelmed by crowds. But in discovering the power of “yes”, I changed the story I was telling myself. I discovered (decided?) that I enjoyed chatting with strangers, that meeting new people was part of playing the lottery of life. Now I’m happy to make new friends.

Generally speaking, no one story is more true than any other. Each tale is simply a different way of viewing our life. If one story makes us unhappy or uncomfortable, it’s possible to tell ourselves a different version of the story, one that creates a more positive experience. (It’s like the story of the blind men and the elephant.)

My mom’s story that her mother treated her poorly didn’t have to dominate her life for fifty-plus years. At any time, she could have chosen to live a different story. But she didn’t. Now it’s probably too late.

Similarly, I know folks who’ve struggled with family members or former friends. They’ve fought over something and the relationships have suffered as a result. These folks tend to tell themselves stories in which they cannot repair the relationships because the other party has made it impossible to do so. But again, that’s just a story. In almost every case, it’s possible to write a different ending, one in which the person repairs his relationships by choosing to tell himself a different ending.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with my friend Tyler Tervooren. He and I were both going through a lot of life changes, and we were each trying to re-write parts of the stories we’d been telling ourselves. Tyler shared a technique he was using to change his belief systems.

“I have a list of qualities I want in myself,” he told me. “I’ve written them on index cards in a specific format and I read these to myself every day.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “one card might say, ‘I am the sort of man who always keeps his promises.’ Another might say, ‘I am the type of man who makes exercise a priority.’ I have about twenty of these cards, and I review them every day. This is a way for me to stay focused on what’s important to me, and to remind myself of my values.”

What a great idea!

The bottom line is this: If you don’t like the story you’re living, only you can change it. You are the author of your own life. You didn’t write the beginning of the story, but you have the power to choose the ending. In so many ways, life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Choose an adventure you love instead of one that makes you unhappy.

I know, I know. All of this is easier said than done. Once you’re thirty or forty or fifty years old, you’ve had decades to tell yourself certain parts of your story. You may have written yourself into a corner. Changing plotlines can be difficult. Still, it is possible — and nobody else is going to change the storylines for you. It’s up to you to live the story you want.

Checklists for Daily Life

Recently, one of my readers pointed me to an old New Yorker article from Atul Gawande. In “The Checklist”, Gawande describes how one simple change seems to be revolutionizing medicine: the use of checklists.

Modern medicine is complicated. There’s a lot of stuff that doctors and nurses need to know and do in order to provide effective care. Health-care professionals are smart and capable, but they’re also human. It’s easy to forget (or casually neglect) important details during the heat of the moment or the crush of monotonous routine.

That’s where checklists come in: By creating and using checklists for important procedures, health-care providers can be certain that they haven’t forgotten to do something important. Gawande’s article explains that pilots have used checklists for decades to make sure they don’t forget about important steps in prepping and flying their planes. Now, hospitals are realizing that checklists can help them prevent infections and save lives too.

Gawande’s article is great — interesting and insightful — and you should read it if you haven’t already. (I readily admit I may be the last person on Earth to have seen it since it was published seven years ago.)

For me, this idea of checklists has more profound personal implications.

One of the side-effects of my ADHD nature is that I often forget to do the most basic things. I forget to brush my teeth, to wash my face, to comb my hair. I forget to close cupboards, put dishes in the dishwasher, pick up my dirty clothes. It’s not that I don’t care about these things — I do care — but that I get distracted and forget to finish what I was doing. (“Complete the cycle,” Kim tells me when she notices I’ve left something out on the counter once again. She means that I should follow one action complete to the finish before moving onto something else.)

It occurred to me after reading Gawande’s article that checklists might help me manage my life more effectively. One common ADHD coping mechanism, one that I’ve learned to love, is the to-do list. If something needs doing, it’s important for me to get it out of my head and onto a piece of paper because otherwise I’ll forget. I keep a running to-do list on a whiteboard in my office.

Actually, I keep three lists:

One list for high-priority tasks (“prep laptop to sell”, “do year-end business finances”).
Another list is for medium-priority tasks (“get maintenance on Mini”, “sort storage unit”).
A final list for low-priority tasks (“repair grandfather clock”, “learn three songs on guitar”).

My to-do list is great, but there’s a weakness. It doesn’t capture items that need to be done every single day. To that end, inspired by Gawande’s article, I’ve decided to adopt a series of checklists to help me stay focused, to help me establish a routine.

I have one for morning:

Weigh-in

Drink a glass of water

Wash face

Moisturizer

Take meds

Get ready for gym

Eat a healthy breakfast

Inbox zero

Brush teeth

¡Exercise!

I have one for during the day:

Eat a healthy snack

Drink greens powder

Take fish oil

Shower and shave

Read 30 minutes

Write something substantial

Eat a healthy lunch

Brush teeth

Drink a glass of water

Practice guitar

Practice Spanish

Run errands

Complete one to-do item

Inbox zero

¡4pm Clean sweep!

And I have one for before bed:

Perform a brain dump

Record calories and exercise

Flip checklist on computer

Brush teeth

Wash face

Moisturizer

Take meds

Drink a glass of water

As you can see, the things I’m asking myself aren’t tough. In fact, most are easy. For some of you, this may seem crazy. Checklists for basic life tasks? Who needs that!?! Well, I need that. In fact, even with checklists, these things can be a challenge. I can quickly become blind to the checklists, can begin to ignore them.

One of my goals for 2015 is to force myself to go through each list every day. My hope is that in time, all of this stuff will become routine. I realize that I probably won’t get every item done every day, and that’s okay. The important thing is for me to get in the habit of doing most of these things on most days. If I do, I’ll be a better man.

How to Become a Better Communicator

As I continue to do more public speaking — whether on stage, on air, or via recorded interview — I’m becoming interested in what does and does not make an effective communicator. But I’m not just interested in how to communicate with a passive audience; I also want to be a better conversationalist with my friends and family.

Recently I spent ten minutes watching this TED Talk from Julian Treasure about how to speak so that people will listen:

To begin, Treasure covers the things you ought not do when you talk. He says that these are the seven deadly sins of speaking:

Gossip. When you speak ill of somebody who’s not present, the action reflects as poorly on you as it does on them (and perhaps more so). I gossip way more than I should. It’s a problem.

Judging. Gossip is, of course, a form of judging. But judging includes sweeping generalizations about a group of people or things. Whenever you judge, you run the risk of offending somebody in your audience. (This isn’t always a bad thing, perhaps, but it’s something you should be aware of.)

Negativity. It seems that some people only see (or speak of) the bad things in life. But people prefer to pass time with folks who are positive. We want to feel good about ourselves and the world around us.

Complaining. One form of negativity is complaining — or “viral misery” as Treasure calls it. It goes beyond just talking about what’s wrong with the world at large to griping about perceived trials and tribulations in your own life. Everyone has shit to deal with; try to keep your complaints to yourself. Don’t vent.

Excuses. People don’t like to listen to the reasons you haven’t accomplished the things you’ve promised to do (whether for yourself or others). They want you to do these things. If you don’t do them, don’t talk about them. And, especially, do not blame others for not getting things done. (Again, I have trouble with the first piece of this. I try not to blame other people, but I tend to make excuses for not doing my work.)

Exaggeration. At its most basic, exaggeration (or hyperbole) demeans our language, says Treasure. If we use big words all the time — like “awesome” and “unbelievable” and so on — they lose their meanings. At its worst, exaggeration becomes outright lying. I have a couple of friends who are prone to exaggeration; it can be tough to know when to believe what they’re saying!

Dogmatism. Too often, people confuse fact and opinion. They believe that just because they think something is so, it must be so. They don’t recognize that each person has her unique personality, circumstances, and experiences. What’s true for one person may not be true for another.

These seven “sins” can sabotage effective communication. But there are things to become a more effective speaker. According to Treasure, the four cornerstones of powerful speech are:

Honesty, the ability to be plain and true in what you say. “Be clear and straight,” Treasure says.
Authenticity, the ability to say what you think and feel instead of trying to say what you feel is expected of you. “Be your self,” Treasure says.
Integrity, or the ability to do what you say. “Be your word,” Treasure says.
Love, or the ability to make others feel better about themselves. “Wish them well,” Treasure says.

By aligning what you say with these qualities, people will want to listen to you. Treasure says that how you speak is important too. He covers tools of speech, such as rhythm and pitch and pace and timbre.

Treasure’s talk is short. If you’d like to become a better communicator, it’s well worth ten minutes of your time.

Thoughts on Taking Risks, Making Mistakes, and Solving Problems

Faith in Paris Last night, I met with my friend Faith. Faith is eighteen, and she’s just getting started in life. Her parents are two of my best friends, but they’re still parents. You know what I mean. Faith wanted to meet with me one-on-one to talk about family stuff and to talk about boys.

I’m not the best person to give advice about dating, but I did the best I could.

Taking Risks

Earlier this year, Faith made a bold move. She’d been hanging out with a boy she really liked, but she was tired of waiting for him to ask her out. “You should ask him out,” Kim told her. And so she did. The boy said “no”, though, and now Faith regrets making the move.

“That was a mistake,” she said.

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “Sometimes we have to take risks in order to get what we want.” I was thinking about how people on their deathbeds tend to regret the things they didn’t do rather than the things they did. “It’s not a mistake to go after what you want. But that doesn’t mean you’ll always get it.”

Faith seemed unconvinced.

“Look,” I said. I pulled out my pen and notebook and drew a diagram.

“Here’s how I see it. You can sit on the sideline and not take risks, and you’ll never get what you really want. You won’t have to suffer failure, and that’s great, but you’ll just have to take what life gives you. Or you can take an active role in your life, make some bold moves, and run the risk of getting rejected. Or failing.”

I drew five circles and then crossed out four of them. “In my case, I probably fail about eighty percent of the time. Only about one out of every five things I try works out. But you know what? Twenty percent of the time, I get what I want. Some people see my life and think, ‘Wow, J.D. is lucky.’ There’s no question that in many ways I am. But I’ve learned that I get luckier the more things I try.”

This concept has become a core piece of my philosophy. It’s a precept preached by plenty of people in the world of positive psychology and personal development. But I think it may have been the first time Faith had heard of it — or maybe the first time it clicked. I’m not sure she’ll take my advice, but I hope she will. The bolder and braver she becomes, the more she’ll get what she wants out of life. (My bottom-line dating advice for Faith? Instead of asking the boy out, she should have kissed him!)

Making Mistakes

Faith and I also talked about making mistakes. Sometimes we do the wrong thing and we end up hurting ourselves. Or, worse, we hurt others. Sometimes we do these dumb things despite knowing better or not wanting to do them.

Faith beats herself up over her mistakes. Many of us do. But I’ve learned that the key to coping with mistakes is to own them, fix them (when possible), and move on.

Here’s an example.

Last week, I tried to pull together a whisky night with my friends Sean and Tyler. Originally, we planned to get together Thursday night but then Sean realized he’d double-booked. “How about we get together Sunday night instead?” he asked. We all agreed. But there were complications.

First, Sunday was Kim’s birthday.
Second, our original plans included our sweethearts. When things changed, Kim explicitly told me “no girls”. She wanted to spend time with Tate and Jesse if they came over but Kim already had plans for Sunday evening. During rescheduling, I forgot to relay this key condition.

On Sunday afternoon, while I was out buying cheese and sausage for the whisky tasting, I realized that Sean and Tyler still planned to bring Tate and Jesse. Instead of clearing up the confusion immediately, I sent an awkward text message that just made things worse. Tyler and Sean were confused and Kim was angry. (She never gets angry with me!)

The old J.D. would have hemmed and hawed and dug the hole deeper, but the new me took action. I owned my mistake and apologized to everyone involved. We cancelled the whisky night, and will schedule it for a time when the six of us can have a relaxed evening together.

Mistakes suck. It would be great to live a life without mistakes. But you know what? We’re all human. As a result, we do dumb things from time to time. Or we do things that seem smart when we do them but later turn out to cause woe. When this happens, the best course of action is to solve the problem as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Solving Problems

And this is the thing: Often we are so afraid of fixing what’s wrong — whether or not it’s an actual mistake — that we choose to live with a broken situation. That’s crazy!

I’ve begun to re-read M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled. This book had a profound impact on me two years ago, and I’ve been feeling like it’s time to revisit it. I’m glad I am.

Peck’s thesis is that “life is difficult”. He argues that understanding (and accepting) that life is difficult is the key to being happy and fulfilled. To Peck, life gains meaning through recognizing and solving problems. “Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom,” he writes. “Indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom.”

He goes further. He says that our “tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness”:

Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, hoping that they will go away. We ignore them, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain. We attempt to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them.

It’s like tearing off a bandage or diving into a cold lake. If you avoid the action, it takes on greater power in your mind until you’re suffering more from the imagined event than you would from the event itself. Peck’s philosophy — in my words — is to say “fuck it”, tear off the bandage or jump in the lake, and just get the damn thing over with. You suffer for mere moments and can move on with life.

For a long time, I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t tear off the bandage or dive into the lake. I wallowed in unhealthy relationships and allowed myself to remain mired in work I hated. Even today — despite knowing I should make quick, clean breaks — I sometimes stay stuck in situations that suck. But I’m getting better.

Last night, Faith told me that she’s going through a period of her life where she has to make some tough decisions. Will she go to college? If so, where? What will she study? Will she live at home or move out on her own? What should she do about certain friendships that she knows are bringing her down? And what about those darned boys?

It’s an exciting time for her, but it’s also scary. Small choices today will have huge repercussions for years to come. There’s pressure to make the “right” decisions. I hope our conversation helped her to see there’s a profit to be gained from taking calculated risks instead of playing it safe by waiting. And if some of the risks she takes turn out to be failures or mistakes, that’s okay.

Though it now seems trite, I think Nietzsche had it right: “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Or, to use a more eloquent Spanish proverb, “No hay mal que por bien no venga.” (That is, “There is no bad from which good does not come.”) Failures, mistakes, and problems aren’t the end of the world. In fact, sometimes they’re beginnings in disguise.

Ecuador 2014: Thoughts on Happiness and Well-Being

Kim and I have just returned from two weeks in Ecuador. For a second year, I participated as a presenter for one of Cheryl Reed’s “Above the Clouds” retreats. Once again, the experience was awesome.

We spent the week of the retreat at the El Encanto Resort outside Los Bancos. (“Resort” is a strong word, in this case. The place was lovely, but it’s not a resort in the way I think of a resort. It was more like a standard American hotel.) El Encanto is located exactly on the equator, near (or in?) Ecuador’s cloud forest. When we woke each morning, we could watch clouds being “born”. Condensation from the river in the valley below would rise in slow, misty columns — not unlike smoke from a bonfire — to form clouds in the sky above. Once, on a bright and sunny day, a wall of fog surged in from the south until everything was dim and grey…and then the fog slipped away as quickly as it arrived.

Our view from El Encanto

Last year, attendees knew me as J.D. from Get Rich Slowly, which is how I’m accustomed to being identified. But this year was different. This year’s attendees were largely unaware of Get Rich Slowly before the retreat. Instead, they knew me because of this blog. As a result, they went into the week with a different preconception of who I am and what I do. It was interesting.

At Get Rich Slowly, I wrote about my struggle to overcome debt and develop smart financial skills. Over the course of several years, Readers got to see both what I did right and what I did wrong. I presented a real-time log of who I was and what I was becoming.

But here at More Than Money, most of my writing has been centered on presenting a (relatively) polished philosophy that I’ve been developing for a decade. My articles have been all about the things that lead to a happier, more successful life. I haven’t dwelt on my past mistakes, and I haven’t spent much time chronicling my current ups and downs. The result? This blog hasn’t painted an accurate picture of who I am today.

“I was so glad you wrote about your struggle with the doldrums,” Jen told me during a chat early in the retreat. “After reading your blog for several months, I’d begun to believe you were one of those folks who had it all figured out, who never struggled like the rest of us.”

I had to laugh at that characterization. Long-time readers (and those who know me in Real Life) are well-aware that although I’m always trying to become a better person, I’m far from having everything figured out! But Jen’s comment made me realize that even while sharing a well-developed philosophy, I need to leave room to explain the process that led me to these ideas and beliefs. It hasn’t been easy or quick! And I’ve made plenty of wrong turns along the way. Plus, the philosophy continues to evolve as I gain more knowledge and experience.

During a stop in the town of Nanegalito, we happened upon a town carnival.

The core of the retreat was a series of two-hour presentations from three different speakers. Like last year, I spoke about defeating fear, creating happiness, and choosing freedom. (These are the very ideas I’ve been writing about at this blog for the past year.)

During her presentation, Cheryl Reed went into greater depth about what it means when you choose to be happy. She shared how she used to search for external sources of happiness (new clothes, new job, new home) before realizing that if she wanted to change her life, she had to change her self. She learned that she had to adjust her expectations. She had to change the way she thought and how she responded to situations. (Sound familiar? That’s because we talked about these ideas here at More Than Money earlier this year.)

David Cain (of Raptitude) talked about how to create a life of well-being. He delineated the difference between happiness, which is a mercurial emotional state tied to exceptional short-term circumstances, and well-being, which is a state of mind tied to more permanent long-term circumstances. “Happiness is like emotional weather,” Cain explained, “whereas well-being is like emotional climate. You’re happy because you ordered the salmon; you have well-being because you live in a city you love.”

I liked this differentiation between happiness and well-being. Sure, you could split hairs over terminology, but it’s the concepts here that are important.

Cain says that we’re taught to pursue happiness instead of well-being. Our biological makeup urges us to worry about threats, hoard resources, and eliminate risk and uncertainty. Deep down, we’re still animals just like any other; left to our own devices, our survival instinct takes over. We have to consciously choose to pursue long-term good over short-term pleasure. Meanwhile, society teaches us to compare ourselves to others and to always want more than what we have. This produces a constant yearning for something different. (In personal finance, we call this lifestyle inflation or the hedonic treadmill.)

With wisdom, we can overcome these outside forces to find a personal path to well-being.

A happy Kim during our visit to the butterfly gardens in Mindo.

In general, well-being is best pursued by:

Learning to live in the present. “Suffering comes from resisting the present moment,” says Cain, “from longing for something other than what is.” Once the present is unfolding, it’s already happening and we no longer have a choice about what is occurring, so resisting it only brings unhappiness.

Understanding our moods and emotions. There’s nothing wrong with becoming angry or tired or frustrated. But if these are a permanent state, they decrease your well-being. Instead of fighting bad moods or trying to figure them out, learn to “hang out with them”. Don’t make decisions while under the influence of strong emotions, but let them pass.

Purposefully cultivating gratitude. Like many before him, Cain says that learning to be thankful for what you have is a key to long-term happiness. Waking in an uncomfortable hostel bed, for example, always makes him grateful for the comfortable bed he has at home. (Or that he even has a bed.) Driving through Ecuador made me thankful for the more calm and orderly roads at home.

Learning about and training the mind. If you allow your “monkey mind” to control your actions and dictate your response to life, you’re abdicating responsibility for your well-being. Instead, learn how the mind works. Practice structured meditation and mindfulness in order to feel better and work better. “The more I meditate, the more beautiful I find ordinary moments and events,” Cain says.

Cain says that you ought to cultivate a vision of your ideal life. Where would you live? Who would you be? How would you spend your time? Give yourself permission to pursue this dream. Too many people are reactive, moving away from the things they don’t want instead of toward the things they do. “Fear and desire are competing forces,” Cain says. “But fear doesn’t give you direction and desire does.” (Please re-read that last bit. I’m glossing over it right now, but it’s very important.)

During our visit to the school, the kids played with a piñata.

Sidebar: I had a rough stretch early in the trip. First, I dropped my digital SLR and shattered the viewscreen. (Fortunately, I’d brought my “cheap” DSLR on this trip.) It still takes photos, but I can’t preview them or make deep changes to the camera settings. Next, my MacBook Air gave up the ghost. While prepping for my talk, it shut itself off. It didn’t restart until after Kim and I had returned to Portland. (I suspect it didn’t like Ecuador’s humidity.) Then the navigation buttons on my Kindle stopped working. And lastly, my own body gave out on the day of my talk. After my presentation, I spent 24 feverish hours curled in bed. Following my own advice, I chose not to let these minor trials and tribulations get me down!

After our week in the cloud forest — which included hiking, a visit to a nearby elementary school, a tour of a chocolate factor, and more — Kim and I spent a couple of days exploring Quito.

Then, last Monday, we hopped on a plane over the Andes to Coca. From there, we took a boat ride up the Napo River and into the Amazon basin. (Never heard of the Napo River? Neither had I, yet it discharges roughly the same amount of water as the Columbia River!) We spent several days exploring the jungle. We saw heaps of bugs and birds and frogs, but also caught glimpses of monkeys and more.

Kim keeps watch for monkeys and birds in the Amazon jungle.

It was a good trip. We learned a lot and laughed a lot and explored parts of the world we hadn’t seen before. But it’s good to be home. I’m ready to resume writing in earnest — both here and for other outlets — and I’m eager to focus on physical fitness once more. Because, as Jen discovered when she met me, I don’t have it all figured out. I’m still learning and growing, just like everyone else.

The Path to Purpose

You can improve the quality of your daily life by learning to focus your attention and choosing to filter your experiences through a lens of positivity. But while it might be simple to find happiness in a single day, it can be much more difficult to link a series of days into a meaningful whole. Still, just as we must be active agents in creating our own happiness, we must also take an active role to create meaning in our lives.

“Creating meaning involves bringing order to the contents of the mind by integrating one’s actions into a unified flow experience,” writes Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. To give meaning to life, to achieve this “unified flow experience”, you need a purpose — an overall goal around which your lesser goals are clustered.

The path to purpose is different for each of us. Exercises like those I’ve shared over the past month — the big rocks, the three questions, and the lifeline — can help you identify your personal purpose, but often this process requires many years of experience and soul-searching. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t found your purpose.

And be aware that it takes more than cultivating purpose to make meaning out of life. To make meaning, you must also forge resolve. You must take your goals seriously. If you’re not willing to accept the consequences of the goals you set, or to put in the effort required to achieve them, those goals become meaningless.

Curiously, it can often be easier to find meaning and purpose by limiting your options. The more choices we have, the more difficult it is to maintain our resolve. “Commitment to a goal and to the rules it entails is much easier when the choices are few and clear,” notes Csíkszentmihályi. “When we can imagine only few opportunities and few possibilities, it is relatively easy to achieve harmony. Desires are simple, choices are clear. There is little room for conflict and no need to compromise.”

Because life is complex (and becoming more so every day), it’s vital to keep your psychic energy focused on the things that matter most. Exercising personal restraint and preferring simplicity can help you stay glued to your purpose, on your goals both big and small. Restraint and simplicity reduce the possibility of distraction.

But restraint and simplicity aren’t enough. When life gets busy and you feel overwhelmed, you must do more than just simplify your environment. At these times, action and intensity become your allies. “Harmony is restored to conscious indirectly — not by facing up to contradictions and trying to resolve conflicting goals and desires, but by pursuing chosen goals with such intensity that all competition is preempted,” writes Csíkszentmihályi. “Action helps create inner order.”

Action cures fear; apparently, it also imparts purpose.

The final piece to the making of meaning is self-knowledge, the process by which you sort through conflicting choices. Based on your personal history, preferences, and passions, you must filter the available options to select the goals that truly reflect who you are and what you mean to the world.

Example: At any given moment, I have many options available to me. Do I want to write another book? Do I want to speak at a conference in India? Do I want to continue to write about money? Do I want to study Spanish? Do I want to travel more? Less? And so on. Most of these options are good (by which I mean they’re positive, both for me and for the world). Who I am and what my life means is a product of the opportunities I choose to pursue.

Ultimately, it’s up to each of us to discover our life’s purpose though a combination of simplification, action, and self-reflection, be being true to who we are and what we believe, and be setting goals we find worthy of pursuing for their own sake. Short-term goals provide pleasure and enjoyment. By stringing a series of short-term goals together, life takes on form and structure. We make meaning and purpose.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Later in the year, our discussion of Financial Independence will explore this notion in depth.

Before we can talk about financial freedom, however, we have more philosophy to cover. Over the next few months, the next portion of our journey will travel the trail of personal freedom. We’ll learn more about creating a life you love so that you die without regrets, so that you don’t reach your final day on earth feeling like something is missing.