Hello everyone,
Welcome to the Weekend Reads.
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Time freedom as the ultimate goal
“Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.” — Rollo May.
If you value time freedom as much as money, you will optimise your life accordingly. Almost everyone won’t mind making more money. The important question is: at what expense? The easy answer is time. Time away from meaningful experiences. Time you won’t get back no matter how much money you make in the end.
Many people who become wealthy later in life don’t mind exchanging even more money for time to fully experience life. According to research, more autonomy over your life and time has a greater impact on your quality of life than wealth.
If spending time on activities and meaningful things means that much to us, why are we not optimising for both time and money now? I value flexibility, freedom to invest time the way I want and authentic creative expression over money.
I rejected lucrative jobs early in my career because controlling what I did with my time was more important than the money I could have earned. I was willing to make less money to focus on building a creative career that could help me improve the quality of my life.
It was scary in the beginning, but I don’t regret it. Today I choose to do what brings out the best in me. I learn and earn at the same time. And I pursue my intellectual curiosities without holding back. For many people, the many demands of making a living make it challenging to think about pursuing freedom or optimising for more time. They are constantly trying to figure out how to make ends meet.
Many millennials will choose meaningful or great work that offers opportunities for a better life, career and personal growth over salary raise.
The great resignation has raised a lot of awareness about what people expect from the world of work. It’s not just about money anymore. It’s also about creative freedom, opportunities for career advancement and work-life balance.
Value time over money
Freedom is the only law which genius knows. — James Russell Lowell
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that we want more money, more time freedom, and more happiness in our lives. You can get all of them simultaneously — but in different measures, depending on how you distribute or spend your time. There are a lot of variables with happiness and more money.
Someone with more money might be able to purchase things that increase their happiness. They might also have more freedom to pursue their interests, passions, and dreams.
But at what point do you stop valuing money over freedom of time. If you want more money and more time freedom, it’s essential to know what you want and what you’re willing to do to get it. Many people make the trade-off between more money and more freedom. The question is, is that trade-off worth it?
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are,” Jim Morrison once said. Should you choose to have more money now, or should you choose to have more freedom now? Do you build more wealth now and exchange it for freedom in old age? What can you possibly do with more wealth in old age if you don’t have good health or time to enjoy it?
“Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” says Ferris Bueller. When it comes to personal finance and the freedom to pursue what you want, most people are either terrified or excited. No matter how much you earn right now, if you can improve how you earn, save and invest your money, life will be incredibly better in the future.
Use money as leverage within limit — don’t allow it to have power over what means a lot to you. If freedom to do what you want, quality time with your loved ones and creative expression are what you want, optimise them over money.
By all legitimate means, make money but think it shouldn’t rule your life or cloud what makes life worth living.
Time freedom create better experiences than the pursuit of wealth. Time can make you money, but it can’t buy you more time. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom,” says Viktor E. Frankl.
Don’t wish you had more time — optimise for more time now and invest in extraordinary experiences that bring out the best in you. Will your future self be better off with how you are spending your time now? Ten years from now, would you be happy with your current path? Life is extremely finite — optimise for a life with little or no regrets.
Weekend Reads
100 tiny changes to transform your life: from the one-minute rule to pyjama yoga — [The Guardian]— Want more health and happiness in the year ahead without having to work too hard? Here are tried and tested tweaks that can lead to big improvements.
Trapped in routine? Here’s how to “dishabituate” and rediscover joy [Big Think] — The alarm goes off to herald the start of another glorious routine! It’s time to do the same things in the same order and in the same way: eat the same breakfast, take the same commute, see the same people, and, at the end of the day…
Anger, sadness, boredom, anxiety – emotions that feel bad can be useful [The Conversation] — Remember the sadness that came with the last time you failed miserably at something? Or the last time you were so anxious about an upcoming event that you couldn’t concentrate for days?
A surprisingly radical proposal: Make people happier — not just wealthier and healthier [Vox] — Economists love things they can measure objectively, like the number of deaths in a village or the number of dollars in an account. So over the past century, they’ve focused on measuring health and wealth.
2 Ideas on Better Living
Botanist and author Dr Robin Wall Kimmerer on paying attention
“Paying attention is an ongoing act of reciprocity, the gift that keeps on giving, in which attention generates wonder, which generates more attention – and more joy. Paying attention to the more-than-human world doesn’t lead only to amazement; it leads also to acknowledgment of pain. Open and attentive, we see and feel equally the beauty and the wounds, the old growth and the clear-cut, the mountain and the mine. Paying attention to suffering sharpens our ability to respond. To be responsible. This, too, is a gift, for when we fall in love with the living world, we cannot be bystanders to its destruction. Attention becomes intention, which coalesces itself to action.”
A concept worth understanding — Learned helplessness
“A state of mind that prevents you from trying because you convinced yourself that you’re helpless to make a difference. This usually happens if someone is/was experiencing difficulties over a long period of time – abuse, failure, unsupportive peers. To emerge from this state, a person needs to see that their actions can make a difference.”
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Thanks for reading!
Until next week,
Thomas
Medium | Thinking Toolbox | The Write Life | How to Live: Lessons in Stoicism
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I love the quote from Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer that when we fall in love with the living world we cannot be bystanders to its destruction. Straight up: “attention becomes intention, which coalesces itself to action.” Oh if we could just seek the freedom to be ourselves as you advocate and add this great intention to be the difference we wish to see in the world- protecting creation. Thanks for your insights!