How to align happiness with capital accumulation phase?

[TopHatFox]

From what I've read on the forum, many of you seem to experience difficulty maintaining happiness or sanity at your job, and see financial independence--ERE--as a way out.

I feel unhappy and restricted already as a student of a college institution, so I am apprehensive how I might feel in a corporate 9-5 institution.

Usually my biggest source of happiness is reading what I want to read when I want to and for as long as I want to, going to events I want to go to when I want to, sleeping when I want to and for as long as I need to, building meaningful, deep friendships with non-busy people, and especially, not feeling stressed by incessant deadlines. Difficult and long college assignments, lectures, labs, and seminars impede all of the above sources of happiness. I think what I'd like most is freedom to choose and act, hence ERE.

BUT, I know that to earn enough capital to purchase a greater degree of freedom, I'm going to need to sacrifice--trade--five to ten years of my life as of now. Five to ten years includes many hours, days, and weeks that I do not want to feel unhappy through, even if it is for the ultimate goal of financial independence.

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I'm wondering how I can create an accumulation phase where I can maximize joy and minimize negative emotions like depression, stress, or anger. How have you all created an accumulation phase to be a overall happy time in your life? Have you?

I have so many other things I'd rather be doing with my time--traveling the world by bicycle, building my own house, spending time with my partner in Minnesota, reading over 20 books saved up on Goodreads--how can I be happy sitting in a classroom or a future job? Should I be happy sitting in a classroom or a job? Is it possible to align my coursework or employment with my growth as a human? Or are courses/jobs just interesting/profitable hindrances to exploring my more self-driven interests?

[jacob]

This problem comes from

1) excessive focus on SWR and exclusively focusing on a financial solution to the problem (a rookie/consumer mistake)
2) treating the problem as a race (don't!)

Enjoy the journey!

[TopHatFox]

This problem comes from

1) excessive focus on SWR and exclusively focusing on a financial solution to the problem (a rookie/consumer mistake)
2) treating the problem as a race (don't!)

Enjoy the journey!

I'm trying to find a way to enjoy the journey. Unfortunately, I'm having difficulty finding a solution on my own.

[mfi]

Develop your capacity to experience FLOW (Csíkszentmihályi) regardless of the activity that you are involved with and capital accumulation will simply turn into nothing more than mileposts in your rear view mirror.

[DutchGirl]

Zalo, is there any way where you could develop your current study into your own company? I find that people who own their own company are generally happier. My boyfriend is working for himself (he gets hired by other companies to do a job for them), and he is able to determine more about when he works, how much he earns, where he works (he has created his own little office with perks like a good coffee machine, excellent internet connection, and a nice surroundings in the cute city center).

It is also scary, and you have to make sure that you're pretty profitable and know how to handle the taxes and other laws. But it can be a way to make work, well, more fun...

[BattlaP]

Zalo, is there any way where you could develop your current study into your own company? I find that people who own their own company are generally happier.

Ding ding ding

This is the way to go. I think most jobs or lines of study can be used in preparation for, or in support of, a business or micro-business on the side. Keep an eye out for opportunities in whatever industry you're in, look for shortfalls in the company you're working in, listen to odd requests or complaints from clients, closing waste-loops (using a byproduct of one thing to make a profit somewhere else), etc.

Looking at jobs as ways to develop skills that I can use immediately, or later on, to my advantage has made everything I do while working seem personally valuable. Too many people see a job as the end-product, when they can be instead a launchpad into an industry - gather intel, experience and network and get paid to do it.

[GandK]

Okay. I'm going to go a little afield here, so please bear with me. This is what I wish someone had said to me in my late teens/early twenties regarding happiness. If I'd listened, it would have saved me a world of hurt.

Happiness is a choice.

Barring a chemical problem or a major life hurricane like death in the family, it's a choice. It doesn't always feel that way, but feelings are misleading. Emotions are the weather of the mind. One day it's sunny, another rainy, and your emotions frequently have no discernible connection to outward events. Making major life decisions based on the weather is not wise. Ditto making them based on emotions.

Many people spend their entire lives "pursuing happiness" by chasing their own positive emotions, which when seen through the rear view mirror of age looks a lot like full-grown adults running after rainbows to see if there's a pot of gold at the end. Society romanticizes this quixotic behavior, and there's no acknowledgement that it doesn't actually yield anything other than campfire stories for the elderly.

So what does make you happy?

Happiness occurs when you look at your life and see the good. When you're grateful for being warm, and fed, and free. Happiness is a long walk when you dwell on the warm breeze on your face instead of the rock in your shoe, because for most of your life there will metaphorically be both. And while removing life's gravels is the main focus of many of the threads on this site, the real reason for ERE is not to reach a state of freedom from rocks. It's enjoying the warm breeze.

So... what I suggest is that you start each day by saying to yourself, "Today, I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be as happy as it's possible for me to be." And then, go do it. It won't always work. Some days there will be rain, either within you or without. But rain only ruins your day if you're counting on sunshine for your happiness.

Playing in the rain can be great, too.

[IlliniDave]

Recently I achieved one of those lifelong yearnings that started when I was middle school age. I am now 50. That it took almost 40 years to achieve did not make me unhappy.

What worked for me was/is learning to control my mind. Rather than letting my little thinking voice run rampant either reconstructing the past and wishing it were different, or imagining countless futures that may be but most likely won't, I learned to let my mind be present where I was at the time. In the last few years I've made a more deliberate "study" of this. All of our life occurs in the present moment. I am much more content when I can keep my mind and thoughts there with me. Doing so is a way of valuing the time allotted to me. It also cures most of the unhappiness that comes when my thinking mind would otherwise sit around and whine about things while the rest of me wasted big chunks of life going through the motions. Today is a great gift. I don't want to diminish it by treating it as an obstacle or mere stepping stone to some better day later on. Part of that is learning to see dignity and value in every step of the thousand mile journey, not just the destination.

[Sclass]

Great replies here. Right now I'm going through an obamacare headache where I keep getting booted out of the system. It is a stone in the shoe. The reality is I'm healthy today which was not so a few years ago when I got hit with a life threatening illness. My slogging through health insurance hell has very little to do with my health in the present. Just saying I get it. Thanks Illinidave, GandK.

I can recall shortly after finishing grad school telling my dad not to worry about my career path. I told him I'd be retired in three years (it was during the dot com) with my stock investments. Of course this didn't happen and I ended up struggling as a tech worker for many years. While being hard work it was a fun path with a lot of creation. I built more stuff than I can even remember. It was an exciting time. Heaven for a techno type. The bad was I was creating somebody else's dream.

I wouldn't be so worried about the capital accumulating stage. Jacob said it best in his terse post. You may be looking at it in the wrong way.

As I look back on the path now I see all the wage work as obtaining sticks to build a dam. It was just part of the bigger plan. I'm glad I enjoyed aspects of it though I don't want to do it anymore now that I've backed up enough river to wade in.

It may not be so much fun to escape if you don't taste the prison food for awhile. A young person can learn a lot by doing a stint here and there.

[Tyler9000]

Interestingly, I've seen very similar versions of this question many times in career circles completely unrelated to retirement.

I've worked with various people who had dreams of being a CEO some day but lacked the patience to earn the experience to get there and succeed and looked for every possible shortcut (buying an overpriced MBA, starting a fake micro business just so they can hand out CEO cards at parties, simply acting like they were already CEO and abusing coworkers). They were perpetually unhappy people, and were often not pleasant to be around.

More fundamentally, they had no real interests in life other than being in charge. They were fixated on the wrong goal. If they simply focused on working towards a passion with value to others, one as driven as these people would likely achieve their CEO goal eventually (if that goal actually lasted the test of time) while enjoying each step of the journey (inconveniences and all).

I think the same principle applies to ERE.

[Scott 2]

Just work part time and live poor. You can put in 10-20 hours a week and have enough.

[Did]

Re the happiness is a choice observation, I think that may be true but not at the level of just positive thinking as you shuffle off to the madhouse. Sometimes (often), doing horrible, boring or stressful jobs or working with horrible or boring people will make you unhappy. No positive or magical thinking will change this. Self help books aimed at industry support will tell you to grin and bear it. Doctors will tell you you have chemical imbalance in your brain and to take pills. But the real thing you have to do is to make change in your life.

As Jobs said in his famous speech, do not settle. Especially while you are young and energetic, work hard at something that takes your fancy - that really interests you. Do this even if it pays less (within reason). 6 or 10 years in a career that really gets you interested is far better than 5 years in a hell hole or doing something that makes your skin crawl.

The message here - at least the one that I take - is to really really really make an effort to reduce your costs, and to invest the money you save. If I had my time over I would do something fun and live in someone's basement with 5 other people; working all over the globe on a huge adventure. Eventually - too soon, time will have passed and rather than having pissed away every cent you will find yourself financially independent. And then you will really have choices.

[Matty]

Interesting tips from all.

To synthesize comments from several posts:

Get your financials on auto-pilot (unless you enjoy investing) and minimise the amount of time you spend dwelling over SWRs. Set a goal and forget.

From there, set yourself some challenges/projects for the year and define your life by those rather than your job, net worth or the fact that you are too busy to do the things you want. For example, in the past year I have grown more vegetables than ever before, this summer will be my first major experience with preserving food, I’m planning to build an aquaponics set up over Christmas, I have improved my rock-climbing ability by several grades, I’ve been on several camping trips and Microadventures*.

Note: I’d suggest choosing activities which can work with a full-time job. Bicycling around the world is hard to do with a full-time job so it’s probably not good to dream about that too much if you’re working – it will just make you unhappy. Either take the time off to do it or refocus your current challenges to things you can do while working. i.e. building/renovating a house could be done, training for a marathon, building furniture, Microadventures.

You can look at it two ways.
1. You are working full time and it’s unfulfilling and takes up all your time and that defines your life
OR
2. You have all these amazing challenges/projects to work on and are improving every day and you’ve also made the decision** to work full-time on the side which provides a stream of income and savings so that in the future you will do even more things that interest you.

If you’re really good you can do what BattlaP has alluded to and place value on your work through the skills and experiences it gives you that may be applicable to your larger life. For example, my job has allowed me to meet people who have provided some valuable insights into my life, even the experience of working the 9-5 for a few years is valuable in the sense that it provides contrast to measure your future ERE life. I have friends who have transitioned from uni student to underemployed bums (I say that in the nicest way), I think if they had experienced the challenges of a full-time job they would appreciate their current lifestyle to a greater extent. I’ve also developed several technical skills which are useful to my life and other projects I’m interested in.

* http://www.alastairhumphreys.com/microa ... fographic/
** It’s a decision, you could live out of a tent and work part-time or seasonal if you wanted.

[JamesR]

reading what I want to read when I want to and for as long as I want to, going to events I want to go to when I want to, sleeping when I want to and for as long as I need to, building meaningful, deep friendships with non-busy people, and especially, not feeling stressed by incessant deadlines.

I find it interesting that most of the previous responders didn't address the most critical part of Zalo's post - the issue of sacrificing time flexibility.

Zalo - so there's different levels to this.. First, you're young, and when you're older you'll want more routine - mainly because too much time flexibility will cause depression. However, working a 9-5 job is even significantly more routine than a retired person routine. I've been working my first real job in 7 years for nearly a year now.. It took 3 months before I got used to the routine and started making sure I got adequate sleep which makes a huge difference in how I feel about work.

For me personally, because I'm a super low-energy guy, a 9-5 job is incredibly tough, I generally don't do anything outside of work, I usually veg out completely on weekends. So the routine & lack of time flexibility affects me more than others. Most others find a way to fill their free time with activities, and that's probably the wise thing to do. I'm fortunate with my job in that there's rarely any 'hard' deadlines to stress me out directly, and I also have a decent amount of flexibility in when to show up & when to leave, which I'm starting to make better use of for handling errands.

Your "five to ten year" ERE plan could be getting to $100k in a crappy 9-5 job in 2-3 years, and then striking out for significantly more fun/flexible jobs for the next 3-7 years and growing the investments to $300k during that time. You can do things like teach english abroad (a degree is required for that in some countries like korea & japan). If you can figure out a way to work online through odesk.com or better, then you can also get a lot more time flexibility by working remotely/contract jobs.

By the way, university is the absolute best routine ever. You could take it easy too, do the minimum number of courses per semester to stay "full time." Slow down your university experience and explore making money with a part-time venture. Be like Michael Dell or Mark Zuckerberg or the countless others that tried something in the ample time flexibility of university. Years later when you try working a job or whatever, you'll realize university was the best routine - especially if you take full advantage of it.

[henrik]

when you're older you'll want more routine - mainly because too much time flexibility will cause depression.

Is that your personal experience or something you know to be universal? I find the latter hard to believe:)

[IlliniDave]

when you're older you'll want more routine - mainly because too much time flexibility will cause depression.

Is that your personal experience or something you know to be universal? I find the latter hard to believe:)

It probably is not universal, but I believe the psychologists and such would tell us most people do better with some amount of structure to their lives. One of the bigger challenges that face many traditional retirees is a sudden loss of the routine/structure provided by their jobs/careers. My parents have been happily retired for over 10 years now, and although they have complete freedom with their time, they each have their routines to provide a framework. When the routine gets disrupted for an extended period, it causes them stress.

However, I'd guess that there are some people who could exist just fine having each day essentially be a random draw. My guess is that they would be in the minority.

[TopHatFox]

when you're older you'll want more routine - mainly because too much time flexibility will cause depression.

Is that your personal experience or something you know to be universal? I find the latter hard to believe:)

It probably is not universal, but I believe the psychologists and such would tell us most people do better with some amount of structure to their lives. One of the bigger challenges that face many traditional retirees is a sudden loss of the routine/structure provided by their jobs/careers. My parents have been happily retired for over 10 years now, and although they have complete freedom with their time, they each have their routines to provide a framework. When the routine gets disrupted for an extended period, it causes them stress.

However, I'd guess that there are some people who could exist just fine having each day essentially be a random draw. My guess is that they would be in the minority.

I'll write a more thorough response to people's posts when I have more time, but I don't mind routine. What bothers me is the fact that a big part of my routine is dictated by the demands of college-- classes, homework, labs, e-mail, etc.

If I was financially independent--no college or required job--I would have greater control and create a more personalized routine. I would not let my day to day existence be random for a long period. I would create routine just like I try to now, but with additional time to spare. Some things I'd schedule in my routine include: archery club, circus (I extinguished fire in my mouth the other day!), marksman club, outdoor club, climate justice with the local 350 MA chapter, habitat for humanity building, installing solar panels with the local Solar company in the area, bonding with close friends more frequently, and reading interesting books in between. No time to sit around! Unless if I want to .

[henrik]

It probably is not universal, but I believe the psychologists and such would tell us most people do better with some amount of structure to their lives. One of the bigger challenges that face many traditional retirees is a sudden loss of the routine/structure provided by their jobs/careers.

I can believe that if you've spent a large part of your life following a certain routine, it can be a problem if it suddenly goes away. It's another question whether that has anything to do with getting older per se. The reason the statement caught my attention above is that I just recently realised I've been getting less and less tolerant of routine as I get older:)

[theanimal]

Zalo, didn't you post somewhere that you're pocketing $10,000 a year from your stipends? So you'd be finishing school with around $40k and no debt? You'd be (and are) way ahead of the game . Why not take a part time or seasonal job and work your way there at a pace that allows you to pursue your other activities? Or if you don't want to do that you can go on that long bike tour. Alastair Humphreys http://www.alastairhumphreys.com biked around the world for four years after school for only $10k total. Akratic's friend, the ERE yoda, is about to finish walking around the world and I'm guessing he did it on much less than Alastair Humphreys.

Capital accumulation is the most popular, but (IMO) it definitely isn't the best or only way.

[Did]

If you wish to skip the capital accumulation phase then get serious about a Tim Ferris 'muse' aka lifestyle business.

As for routine being important as you get older. Maybe in your late 80s. But I hope not.