Beyond the 21 day Makeover

[theanimal]

Jacob's 21 day makeover is a well established path to putting yourself on the path to financial independence. I would humbly argue that it's limited in the sense that it leads people to an optimized life, at the very stage many become trapped in relative comfort rather than pursuing the renassaince aspect of ERE. Some type of roadmap beyond the 21 days could be helpful in setting the stage and leading others to become more agentic as well as more freedom-to oriented. I think any such guidelines will be a lot broader than the initial 21 day makeover as individual interest, circumstance and web will dictate what activities people will engage in. However, I think there could still be some general guiding posts to nudge others further along towards the renaissance ideal.

Some early thoughts I have with brief explainations for some. The below is a rudimentary list and by no means all encompassing. I imagine there are things that I'm missing, or things I've listed below that some might argue aren't necessary.

• Establish/find non-monetary yields- One of the next stages of decoupling from the consumer economy after reducing consumption is finding yields elsewhere. This could be through any of the other non-financial capitals.

• Discover your stoke- What is it that brings you joy? Where do you find flow? What do you want to do with your newfound freedom? This segment could offer suggestions on how one can go about finding answers to these questions

• Build community

• Break the optimizer/specialization brain

• Give freely- An effect of shedding the scarcity mindset and embracing the new reality of abundance. Perhaps this is part of one of the others but it also serves as a way to build community and increase yields elsewhere

I'd be curious in hearing others thoughts, additions, and critiques of this idea.

[AxelHeyst]

Cool idea!

• Sketch a handful of reverse fishbone diagrams a day for several days/a couple weeks.
• Sketch a WoG per day for two weeks. (A list of prompts for different style of WoG sketches for guidance: "Sketch a WoG around shelter, food, and transportation Needs." "Sketch a WoG identifying money flows and buffers." "Sketch a WoG on the theme of 'social capital'." etc.

[jacob]

Jacob's 21 day makeover is a well established path to putting yourself on the path to financial independence. I would humbly argue that it's limited in the sense that it leads people to an optimized life, at the very stage many become trapped in relative comfort rather than pursuing the renassaince aspect of ERE. Some type of roadmap beyond the 21 days could be helpful in setting the stage and leading others to become more agentic as well as more freedom-to oriented. I think any such guidelines will be a lot broader than the initial 21 day makeover as individual interest, circumstance and web will dictate what activities people will engage in. However, I think there could still be some general guiding posts to nudge others further along towards the renaissance ideal.

I fully agree. The 21 day makeover was originally intended as a 30 day blog posting project for December. (After writing a few hundred posts even a blogger needs a challenge to keep going.) However, after the first three weeks I ran out of ideas, so it became the "21 day makeover". Given its popularity it was eventually moved to the sidebar for permanent display.

I've seen suggestions around the internet from the tl;dr-crowd that the makeover is a good summary of ERE, but in reality, it's better thought of as a "must be at least this XYZ to begin ERE" recruitment test. The series is a series of tips or small and independent tasks that challenges status quo and prepares people for the actual ERE journey cf. the army's fitness test.

In terms of WL levels, the makeover speaks mainly to WL3-4 which formed the gravitational center of the personal finance blogo-sphere at the time (and ditto the FIRE movement today as those two are practically the same now).

I think good guiding posts for taking people further are the various WL5->WL6, WL6->WL7, WL7->... threads on the forum.

[7Wannabe5]

A fairly straight-forward way to expand towards systems from the 21 Day Challenge would be to accomplish each day's challenge in 3 significantly different or independent ways towards greater resilience. This could also contribute to WOG thinking if maintenance hassle/cost is also taken into consideration. IOW, each "day" has 3 solutions and each solution is towards serving 3 "day"s. For example, "backyard vegetable gardening" is a net no-cost hobby, which is towards reducing food budget, and is also towards ability to procure food within walking distance of shelter solution.

Since the 21 Day Makeover overlaps to some extent with Maslow's Hierarchy and the section on Needs/Wants in "ERE" the book, The Rule of 3 could also be applied to these models with similar outcome. Maintenance costs/hassles could also be reduced by considering an option valid if it has been achieved/demonstrated and continued access is periodically verified. For example, you are currently pet-sitting as option for sustainable-expense shelter challenge, but you maintain the fitness/gear to rough camp in the National Forest like you did all summer two years ago, etc. I would note that in the years since the 21 Day Challenge was first posted, some solution options for the various days have become easier or more flexible and others may have become more difficult within the boundaries suggested.

ETA: Another fun variation on the challenge would be to notice that Day 1 assumes that you already have a job/work/income-source, so that would constitute Day 0. The variation would be to make this task Day 12 or even maybe 22.

[Slevin]

Would be interesting to ask people to actually start to grok different alternative styles of living. I.e. the chapter of the ERE book on shelter has you run through an exercise of actually living in many of them for varying amounts of time to have a literal reference point of how different alternative lifestyles feel.

I.e. Live out of a tent for N days, live / hang out in an RV / bus for N days, live out of a glamping tent / geodesic dome / yurt for N days, etc / etc.

Cost for trying out alternative shelters might be high, but let’s say food / transportation / etc are good trial places to mess with with low entry costs and benefits.

Some of the forum users lives might look crazy to an average lower WL user at first, until they actually did a small trial of “eating off $2 / day or whatever”, at which point you see how it’s done. You might also find it’s horrible and not for you, but that’s the cost of discovery.

Obviously “no buy periods” sort of shove you into a lot of these situations at once, could be those are better (but also a lot higher cost of execution).

This might avoid the trajectory of “starved optimization” to actual execution paths for the individual users.

[7Wannabe5]

. Live out of a tent for N days, live / hang out in an RV / bus for N days, live out of a glamping tent / geodesic dome / yurt for N days, etc / etc.

I like your suggestion, but would note that while the expense spectrum of individualistic solutions tends to run from rough/minimalist to fancy/maximalist, the expense spectrum for more communal solutions is more likely to provide wider variety of zero expense solutions across the rough/minimalist to fancy/maximalist spectrum. For example, pet-sitting or decrepit-human-sitting or campground hosting or air bnb cleaning may provide access/opportunities for free occupation of spaces that may otherwise be empty, luxurious, and heated. The average American has 926 sq ft of living space, and 350 sq ft. /capita is the optimum level for happiness. So, it's like there is a virtual dumpster full of under-occupied, heated/cooled, living space in the U.S. So, on some level it is wasteful to even burn the resources to own your own solo-occupied tent and insulated sleeping bag. It's like spending the money/burning the resources necessary to produce a grouchy-old-guy sex robot when all you have to do is click around on your phone for 10 minutes to have a under-utilized, moderately-used one delivered right to your door.

[Slevin]

Sure, could be a good end goal, but stop trying to make a minimum activation action more complicated for a newbie.

No use wrangling up a long term solution through complicated interpersonal interactions when you don’t even know if you will like it. First try, then do longer term planning. I.e. add “try joining an intentional community via a week long stay” to the list of potential things to try, the. Let people self sort by temperament.

Then if you find that you love living out of an RV in nature, consider running a campground / etc.

[loutfard]

I want to keep my eyes open for people willing to experiment with ERE and mutually beneficial ways to support that experiment. I wonder if I can be more systematic about that and measure success. I guess that's part of what ERE 2.0 is trying to solve...

[jacob]

It is part of what ERE2.0 is trying to solve.

It think the simplest possible "best practices" map needs two variables.

The first variable would be the CCCCCC-chain. Beginners (copy, compare, compile) (WL1-4) would ideally get a gamified makeover challenge like "accomplish these context-free quantifiable steps". For example, the minimalist-challenge of getting rid of 1 item on the first day, 2 items on the second day, etc. is one such game. (Quick point: I did not write the 21 makeover with all this in mind. My world of perspectives and lenses was a lot more limited 15 years ago!!).

Intermediate (compile, compute, coordinate) (WL4-6) would ideally "optimize a variable within a given context" while beginning to touch on the existence of different contexts (other than earning/spending money). Challenges, here, would be along the lines of "finding the best way to accomplish goal with known method" (optimize budget or organize investment plan) or "trying to accomplish existing goal with other method" (try to make dinner without buying groceries, buy only local food, buy nothing year).

Advanced (coordinate, create) (WL6-8) would ideally coordinate more than one variable across different contexts. IOW, this is where "out of the box"-thinking begins and "compartmentalized optimization" stops. The reason this is the hardest barrier to cross is that this kind of thinking is not encouraged nor rewarded in the modernistic schooling system and while the postmodernistic approaches does encourage different boxes, it doesn't work when people spend the life in one box or believe that all boxes are of equal value. Pomo-thinking recognizes the problem but remains notorious for its lack of effective solutions.

The second variable would be the pedagogical process. STEM folks are so used to having objective standards that the very idea of not wanting to adopt the perspective of someone who knows better is inconceivable. That is to say, STEM people are not very attached to their personal perspectives as much as they seek a universal [inter]objective perspective. As such, to communicate with this modernistic crowd, all you have to do is to establish yourself as someone who knows what you're talking about; alternatively, quickly realize someone else knows better and proceed to shut up and learn from the former. Diametrically opposed to this framework are the postmodernistic or traditionalistic standards where perspectives are subjective or intersubjective either belongs entirely to the person ("lived experience") in the former case or to the in-group ("what our tribe agrees on") in the latter case.

Note that my examples for the first variable along the CCCCCC-chain was entirely in objective/individualistic terms. For subjective or community-oriented processes, they would look quite different. Since I'm personally individualistically oriented to a fault, I have a hard time seeing much beyond the "copy"-stage using the collectively-framed lenses. The first [copy]step is almost always to "join a group" that is relevant to the problem, thereby becoming "the average of the group one has surrounded oneself with". I have eventually learned the hard way that the goal of the collective approaches is not always to actually solve a given problem as much as it is to "being and working together while trying to solve it". As such, I don't have much to add in this direction.

[7Wannabe5]

Then if you find that you love living out of an RV in nature, consider running a campground / etc.

Yes, this would be the newbie-simplistic order of operation for those who prefer/err on side of introverted and/or individualistic. What I am attempting to convey is that if you run "search for inexpensive shelter" on neutral in terms of I/E or individualistic/communal, most humans will likely hit solutions such as "move into my great-aunt's unoccupied rec room" or "share a bed with my BF who is exchanging DIY skills for free housing at his good friend's rehab project" or "join $150/month anarchist co-op in the city" or "buy a small house with 2 of my BFFs" with more ease and less complication and expense than "build-out a solar-powered van you can live in by yourself." IOW, the individualistic approach is often more expensive/complicated than is conveyed on this forum, because "fish/water"= relatively blind to expenses attached to privacy/solitude vs. those attached to comfort/company. "ERE" the book, being a work of great general applicability, mentions the more communal option explicitly, but does not develop it in the manner the ERE Wheaton levels have been developed on this forum. For example, there is no reason why 3 young humans (not otherwise contractually or genetically combined) couldn't contract to even achieve financial independence as a group consulting with the forum. The "independent of anybody else" is simply a cultural assumption and the "to the strategic extent of my lifespan" is simply a temperamental-preference/cognitive skill. The "ERE" model is actually better, more generalizable, than these assumptions. So, the 21 Day Plan that would be the least complicated for the most people would be the one generalized towards a more typical personality type, rather than one simplified towards Beginner Level INTJ (or semi-towards other introverts/rationals.) I mean, consider what percentage of the population is more likely/capable to move back into parent's house vs. live in a van-they-built-with-working-kitchen towards reducing expenses? Consumerism and Individualism are inherently linked in growth through the Modern Era towards One Human = One Kitchen Sink. To some extent, the Skill Acquisition aspects of "ERE" is an attempt to retain Individualism while booting Consumerism, but it is not as strictly necessary in a more Communal model that is just as effective in terms of reducing expenses. Although, it is true that "sharing a kitchen sink" could also be seen as a skill held by an individual, and in that case, I am simply suggesting that there exist a plethora of social skills that are more simple for most humans towards reducing expenses than, for example, the skills necessary to "build a functional kitchen in a solar-stealth van.

OTOH, I might just be reflecting on how dead simple it was for me to (once again) reduce my shelter expenses from $550 for my tiny garret apartment in inexpensive city to $0 for my own room in larger more luxurious apartment in more expensive city by integrating my more towards social-skills rather than choosing to be a complete hermit. For example, cooking dinner for myself and my decrepit mother (or formerly one of my grouchy old poly-partners or my family-of-four) is only very slightly more work than cooking dinner for myself, but hugely conserving of resources over the group. Don't get me wrong, there is something about the complete-hermit-lifestyle which is appealing to me, but it is just not worth the expense if primary goal is resource-conservation-towards-sustainability/resilience. If you think about it, it is actually kind of odd that any human lifestyle model (for example, pure Libertarian/Modernity) would demand or assume complete-hermit-lifestyle as default. Like "Everybody dies alone." is likely most beneficial philosophical outlook.

ETA: cross-posting here with Jacob. Nodding in semi-agreement.

ETA:

Since I'm personally individualistically oriented to a fault, I have a hard time seeing much beyond the "copy"-stage using the collectively-framed lenses. The first [copy]step is almost always to "join a group" that is relevant to the problem, thereby becoming "the average of the group one has surrounded oneself with". I have eventually learned the hard way that the goal of the collective approaches is not always to actually solve a given problem as much as it is to "being and working together while trying to solve it". As such, I don't have much to add in this direction.

I am definitely not most skilled in either house, but since I am very balanced or neutral in I/E, I would suggest that the mid-point of functioning would approximately "Finding the best solution for the group based on respecting the group's mix of relative competencies while attempting to honor the group's mix of needs, desires, values, and preferences." At the Shared Kitchen Sink level this might involve weighting the hassle/work of trying to plan/prepare delicious, nutritious, sustainable meal/menu for group of humans that includes Vegans, Paleo-weight-trainer, lactose-intolerant, bean-haters, kid who only eats noodles, Kosher, goumet-critical, and locavores vs. the expense of providing each human with own kitchen vs. the obvious other problems (see siloing, confirmation bias, in/out group boundary behavior, etc.) associated with grouping humans in alignment with dietary preferences and/or cooking competency aligned with their own preference. Generally, the best leader is the one best able to meet the needs and honor the preferences of the largest contingent while still maintaining the general boundary requirements such as sustainability. For example, Ronald McDonald is not a very good leader at Shared Kitchen Sink level because does not provide Servant Leadership maintaining reasonable boundary requirements of Nutrition towards Sustainability or Resource Acquisition towards Sustainability, although he does do a pretty good job of maximizing honoring and meeting of shared over entire population preferences for "Delicious", "Low Effort", and "Low Cost." Therefore, facilities with somewhat more responsible-for-long-run-outcomes leadership and population, like community college campus, are more likely to have something like a McDonalds and something like a Salad Bar in their student food court. OTOH, when leadership attempts too much long-term vs. short-term over population then this results in a lot of raw vegetables in the elementary school trash bin = overall worse outcome.