The Education of Axel Heyst

[jacob]

Insofar status is a finite resource (relative good), I propose that a much simpler explanation for losing interest in status is finally/eventually having enough of it. It's like money or oxygen in that way. This could be a WEIRD perspective though. A common trope in Chinese philosophy/stories is indeed that of an "everyman joker muddling through" adversity.

[7Wannabe5]

A common trope in Chinese philosophy/stories is indeed that of an "everyman joker muddling through" adversity.

Yes, I think the concept of the "beautiful loser" is towards the more functional side of the Level Green tendency towards Sklavenmoral (slave morality.) The hyper-focused winner/achiever takes himself too seriously, and this is his Achilles heel, because humor is a sign of intelligence, because it assumes perspective. Thus, it is also a dysfunctional case when the Winner is taken too seriously by others at Level Green. The vibe of sincere-irony at Level Yellow is reflective of the inner tension formed by the need to step forward and take things seriously and the need to step back and not take things so seriously. "Ha, look at me and my puny struggles....(dusts hands on knees, pushes rear up off chair )... and here I go again!"

[Stasher]

Where to start with this all, man my brain hurts

I was able to pull little bits and pieces of content I could relate with out of this most recent discussion @Axel but I need to jokingly refer back to an SNL skit I laughed a lot at from back in the day and say "I'm just a Caveman". https://youtu.be/2AzAFqrxfeY?si=Hx1vRv6pgLr8RJEg&t=60

Honestly so much of the really intellectual stuff and acronyms and so on get lost on me in these forums and I glaze over them, the parts that do stand out are Status and VLCOL. I grew up with no real post secondary education and worked in the resource industry grinding it out to the top with dirt and oil under my fingernails paying my dues. I have a lot of diversity and perspective as well as experiences but lack what seems to be a well educated cohort in the forums who engage in this discussions (don't get me wrong, I do glean a small amount of education from all this)

I achieved FI in 2017 but in so far as that it could only cover my support of the household finances it was more so only technically semiERE. Not until this year have we as a couple fully achieved full FIRE if we choose and have optimizing to meet the ERE level rather than the MMM level we are at. The VLCOL is truly a super power and I agree AH, we need a billboard 'cuz nobody wants to put in the effort to get there. thus my return to the forums to help bring me back down from a MMM COL to an ERE COL. Income doesn't come first in the puzzle, the cost of living comes first and until an individual sees the light then they are set to keep making the same mistakes over and over.

The only people I don't get stressed with status when I am around are family and my close friends, as with the term "stealth wealth" they know full well the hard work I have put in to have what looks like a low income lifestyle. This then leads to where I always feel like I let EGO get in the way or like I have to defend myself.

Part of achieving FIRE included a bit of geoarbitrage to start over financially, where we are now nobody knows my background really or what my status was in my chosen industry, responsibilities or income level. All people in my community and circles now see is some guy who did social media, wrote some gear reviews, took some photos and sells clothes and shoes for a living while driving an older dented up vehicle and rides a bike everywhere or walks. In the societal status machine I get pushed down and not taken seriously when I want to say .. Yo, dude I ran an entire division of a company and was responsible for million dollar operation budgets as well as multi million dollars in sales revenue just to be taken seriously.

Status and societal positioning including wealthy hierarchy gets put upon us every day and it takes everything to ignore it when you don't have a corporate or industry title anymore. I'm getting better at it and remember people's opinions of me are only what I make of them and should not be part of how I see myself.

So coming back full circle, comparison is the thief of joy and will distract me from my continual goals of striving for an ERE level of what a VLCOL looks like. I'm human and not immune and will fall off the wagon from time to time most likely as my lizard brain does its work subconsciously.

[Ego]

I’m more convinced than ever that in the absence of specific and compelling reasons not to (impending mental health emergencies for example, or Ego’s ‘stay hungry’ personal philosophy), getting FI over with is generally speaking The Move. A lot of the effort some people put into to coming up with a strategy for their lives that avoids the discipline/effort/etc necessary to hit FI could have just been put towards hitting FI and the whole issue would be done with. A lot of the reasons people give for FI being not that great once you get it have to do with internal dysfunctions that exist either way. The answer isn’t to not become FI, the answer is to face those dysfunctions head on. (Which you’ll have more personal resources to deploy towards if… you’re FI.)

Shifting between years of primarily 'doing' and then back to years involving primarily 'being' has forced us to think about the two extremes and the transitions. Despite the fact that we are generally in places that are very different from what we are used to during our 'being' phases, they generally involve doing very few things that we don't want to do. In other words, if something is uncomfortable, unfun or just plain tedious, during the being phase we can just avoid doing it. Once back in the real world where 'doing' is the primary focus, we often HAVE to do things. We've made commitments and unless we are willing to walk away from them, we don't really have a choice.

Having things that we must do is IMO a critical element in life. Very few humans have had the luxury of doing only what they want. I believe we are not equipped to deal with the effects of living a life where we do not have to do much that we don't want to do.

But what are the effects? According to Google Gemini....

It can be counterintuitive, but intentionally putting ourselves in situations where we have to do things we don't want to do can lead to a surprising number of positive benefits:

Builds Discipline and Self-Control: Regularly tackling undesirable tasks strengthens your ability to stick to goals and commitments, even when motivation is low. This discipline is a foundational skill for success in many areas of life.

Increases Resilience: Facing and overcoming challenges, even small ones, helps you develop resilience – the ability to bounce back from setbacks and adversity. You learn to cope better with discomfort and grow stronger in the process.

Fosters a Growth Mindset: When you push through tasks you dislike, you cultivate the belief that your abilities can be developed through effort and practice. This mindset encourages continuous learning and improvement, rather than seeing your capabilities as fixed.

Boosts Confidence and Self-Esteem: Each time you successfully complete something you initially resisted, you experience a sense of accomplishment. This builds confidence in your ability to handle future challenges and can significantly improve your self-esteem.

Expands Your Comfort Zone: By stepping outside of what feels familiar and easy, you gradually expand your comfort zone. This makes you more adaptable and open to new experiences, opportunities, and learning.

Improves Adaptability: Life is full of unexpected changes. By regularly exposing yourself to situations you don't prefer, you become more adept at adjusting to new circumstances and handling transitions smoothly.

Enhances Creativity and Problem-Solving: New experiences and challenges, even uncomfortable ones, can stimulate your creativity. When you're forced to think differently or find solutions to unexpected problems, you develop stronger creative problem-solving skills.

Teaches You About Yourself: Confronting tasks you don't want to do can reveal your fears, your resistance points, and your inner strength. This self-discovery is valuable for personal growth.

Overcomes Procrastination and Perfectionism: Avoiding unpleasant tasks often stems from procrastination or a desire for perfection. By tackling them head-on, even imperfectly, you break free from these cycles and make progress.

Increases Productivity: Comfort can be a productivity killer. A little bit of "eustress" (positive stress) that comes from pushing yourself can actually enhance performance and motivation, leading to increased productivity.

Imagine the opposite, and then amplify the effect by the many years that early retirees have relative to trad retirees. The longer we avoid doing things we don't want to do, the harder it is to do them.

Turns out, there is some serious neuroscience involved.... (watch about 4 minutes).... and may explain why so many retirees die shortly after retirement.
https://youtu.be/GrhLT9P61Z8?si=mfNQ1jALBz3ChYMy&t=5465

So, I am not convinced it is "The Move" you might think it is. I could be wrong.

[AxelHeyst]

Ego, I was hoping you'd weigh in. I'd like to engage with your perspective on this, which I actually think about frequently.

The tl;dr is that I believe strongly in doing hard things I don't want to do. But I want to be able to choose which hard things I don't want to do that I want to do.

Imagine the opposite, and then amplify the effect by the many years that early retirees have relative to trad retirees. The longer we avoid doing things we don't want to do, the harder it is to do them.

Let's be really clear here: I'm saying I think becoming FI is a solid move. I haven't said anything about being RE. That's because I think attempting to kludge the concept of "retirement" onto my lifestyle is... not even wrong. Like sticking a propeller onto a chest freezer.

It seems that your warning against become an early retiree is largely a freedom-from motivation. In other words, you're concerned about the dangers of too much freedom, so you advocate for avoiding FI in order to be free FROM the dangers of over-freedom (that you listed in your post).

I feel very freedom-to motivated. There are a lot of projects I want to get involved in as soon as possible -- my post-FI dreams are full of 'doing'-mode activity. Most of them involve voluntarily assuming various forms of commitments and responsibilities towards other humans. As such, I don't anticipate much risk of falling prey to the dangers you listed.

Also, my freedom-to projects a) will require most if not all of my attention and energy and b) may or may not make any money -- regardless, I don't want to have to aim them at "must make more money than they need to keep themselves going". I don't want to have to draw income from the things I plan on building, in other words, although if that happens incidentally its fine with me. So, it behooves me to a) free up my attention as quickly as possible which implies "solving money" asap so that I can b) start dumping all of my attention into my freedom-to ventures. Aka, let's get FI'd.

Do you think I'm kidding myself?

--

I think, based on comments you've made, that you are in fact FI? And that you voluntarily take on commitments with other humans of various kinds -- you choose to adopt certain roles and responsibilities that lock you in, to a certain extent, to fulfilling certain expectations and constrain your choices? Do you find this hard to do since you're FI? If you had it to do over again, would you intentionally avoid accumulating an FI level stash to make it easier to make the decision to stay in doing-mode?

[AxelHeyst]

Couple extra thoughts:

- rejecting the benefits of FI in order to avoid the dangers of retiree syndrome seems kind of like keeping your job as a mail delivery person in order to avoid the risks of a sedentary lifestyle. A better strategy seems to be to… defeat the bell curve, shout “I AM NOT A NUMBER!! I AM A FREE MAN!!” Into the abyss and take up hiking or whatever. In other words, the freedom that FI brings obligates you to get better at life. So get better.

- In case it isn’t clear, I think the main aim is to get over money and stop thinking about it so much. My experience to date has indicated that for me as well as at least some others I talk to, getting FI in the bag ASAP might be the shortest and simplest (not easiest) route to decenter money from one’s decision-making apparatus. Maybe I’m wrong about the how, and of course ones wiring will play a big part, but the overall goal is to “solve” money aka stop letting it take up so much space in your head.

[jacob]

It depends on the existence and degree of internal motivation one has [left]. For a lot of people, schooling and working has completely eliminated the capacity and ability to "kick a rock" and trained to them to "do what they otherwise don't way to", that is, working on other people's visions rather than their own.

It seems that some people are self-starters and many people are not. I believe most people are born self-starters. Most children are capable of creativity. Even if you leave them with nothing, they start playing. They can turn a small rock into an improvised soccer game, a stick into a sword or a bicycle into a spaceship. Most adults have substituted this creativity for this so-called meaningful work that they do filling out forms, pushing buttons, writing memos, … In return they have lost their creativity and their ability to generate their own meaning.

They worry what they are going to do when they retire. Who will provide their meaning for them?

https://earlyretirementextreme.com/a-me ... ement.html

Frankly, I don't really think this is a big issue. Over time it would become clear if one needs/wants external structure or not. The thing about external structure is that it is easy to find someone to tell you what to do. Developing internally structured motivation is more difficult especially if the ability has completely atrophied. There's a reason why the middle class and the upper class educate their children differently. This aspect is a big part of it.

In my favorite Heinlein quote there's a part that humans ought to be able to both give orders and take orders. This includes taking orders given by oneself. Many struggle with this because they haven't given orders or only given them in a limited conformal way (implementing someone else's orders for example) for a long time.

[Ego]

The tl;dr is that I believe strongly in doing hard things I don't want to do. But I want to be able to choose which hard things I don't want to do that I want to do.

Do you think I'm kidding myself?

I don't know if you are kidding yourself. I think I have a tendency to kid myself. So I am probably projecting. Being in the midst of a transition, my mind is particularly focused on how much I kid myself into believing that I am choosing to do hard things that I don't want to do... that I want to do... (I like that!) I think the transition we are going through right now from relatively unproductive (being) to relatively productive (doing) is showing me just how unproductive we've been over the last year. It is hard to get back into the swing of things. That difficulty is showing me 1. how much we succumbed to the temptation to not being productive, 2. how easily and unknowingly it happened and 3. how important it is to remain productive. If we did not have to come back and have to be productive, I worry that I might be tempted down the permanent sloth path.

I think, based on comments you've made, that you are in fact FI? .... you had it to do over again, would you intentionally avoid accumulating an FI level stash to make it easier to make the decision to stay in doing-mode?

It depends. We do not own a home, so we would have to find a way to provide housing to be FI. With the property management gig, we get it for free and we get a salary as well. Today, without the job, we would be FI if we bought a place in Italy or Spain or Southeast Asia because they are relatively inexpensive and healthcare is practically free, but then we'd have to live there all year. If we bought a place in SoCal, we would not be FI... until Social Security kicked in. That is still a while away, but as of now we will defer receiving Social Security until we have to take it at 70 because - hah!- we are trying to maintain (the self delusion) that we are doing hard things. Then again, this transition IS hard, so I guess it isn't really a complete delusion.

Overall, my point is that it is easy to overestimate one's future willingness and ability to adopt the doing-hard-things-strategy when we don't have to do hard things. Or, said the in the opposite direction, we (Mrs. Ego and I) are not as impervious to the temptations to take the easy road as we would like to believe. YMMV.

This morning I had a guy come in looking for an apartment. At the end of the showing, he was nervous and it took him a while to decide whether or not to tell me the truth. Finally he blurted out that he has two restaurant jobs, works hard and has savings, but he doesn't have papers and used the SS# of a friend to get the jobs, so his passport does not match the name on his paychecks. He said that if I was open to it, we could walk down the street to the restaurants and talk to his bosses.... His plight made me realize that my supposed hard-things are a joke.

ETA: I realized I did not answer your question about whether we would do it differently. The answer is no.

[OutOfTheBlue]

@AxelHeyst, really glad to see my clumsy comment elicit (along with others) such a rich expansion. And thank you for doing it eloquently, with tact and class. These are excellent considerations, and I'm going to mull them over a while more.

@Ego, it is clear to me what the doing phase does for you.

Wanted to ask what the being phase brings. Or said differently, what is it that you bring home from that phase. How does it bleed into the more active phase and your life in general. What are you integrating from it? That is less clear.

I know there is being in doing and doing in being, and compartmentalizing them is probably counterproductive when the "goal" is an integral/integrated life.

Still, this tension, between being and doing, being and becoming, is often a creative one.

The question is a bit quirky: because I suspect that being does not fully suffer and somehow resists an utilitarian view, where efficiency, utility, practicality, applicability are paramount.

[ertyu]

Now I'm worried people think I've decided to pursue FI because of status, and I feel compelled to set the record straight.

I don't think anyone thinks this. Rather, you observed that "stuff" about status arose as you dealt with various approaches to pursuing ERE. "Stuff" about status seems to arise for many -- and for every one person participating actively in this discussion, 15 others are lurking and reading. If anything in what I wrote isn't useful or doesn't hit the mark, simply disregard. Maybe it's not directly hitting the mark for you but it would still be useful to somebody.

Insofar status is a finite resource (relative good), I propose that a much simpler explanation for losing interest in status is finally/eventually having enough of it.

I believe it's wiring. Some on the sociopathic/narcissistic spectrum have much stronger drive for it than others (eg. those others who find it meaningful to pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake, etc.). Each of us has a set point which can be "worked" on via introspection and choosing to let go of drives which are present but have been rationally determined not to be useful.

[Scott 2]

- In case it isn’t clear, I think the main aim is to get over money and stop thinking about it so much. My experience to date has indicated that for me as well as at least some others I talk to, getting FI in the bag ASAP might be the shortest and simplest (not easiest) route to decenter money from one’s decision-making apparatus. Maybe I’m wrong about the how, and of course ones wiring will play a big part, but the overall goal is to “solve” money aka stop letting it take up so much space in your head.

I have not experienced this shift. The time it came closest to water, was at peak earning, after reaching FI. The monthly surplus was stupid, I had no free time, was well on my way to burnout, and held zero chance of changing habits. That was very much a WL5, throw it at the problem mentality. FIRE was so tremendously more expensive, that a couple hundred here, a thousand there, meant nothing. Whatever it took to keep the train on the tracks.

Within FIRE, my financial experience has been one of tuning the system. It's my largest pool of capital. Allocation makes stuff happen. I'm the steward. Life includes interfacing with entities who want the capital. Do I give the dentist $2k for preventative care? Spend $3k for a lifetime trip? What if those expenses are for my wife, whose health constraints make them hard options? What legacy aspirations do I want to finance? How about making life easier for a relative with a special needs child? Sparing a couple grand sure feels reasonable. I can get that with 10-20 hours of credit card churning. Should they have an inheritance??? What would a couple dozen hours of tax and investment optimization do to that number?

Developing skills and doing hard things is a great part of FIRE. It can immediately solve your personal needs. Looking towards the broader world, we're managing a diversified portfolio of capitals. Wealth exists in many forms, money being part of that. It's unique, in being both liquid and scalable. I question if the post consumer path excludes it. When I did see it as water, that stemmed from lacking bandwidth to act as a proper steward.

Maybe this is remnants of WL5 thinking. I certainly have lingering financial dysfunctions. The other night I drove 30 minutes to save $5 on bagels. But it's hard to imagine deleting my current personal finance system. Money is a small, but daily consideration.


The do nothing in FIRE concern feels like a red herring to me. After about a year, it's unbearable. Like having cake for every meal. The person who gets there is extremely unlikely to be satisfied.

[7Wannabe5]

The thing about external structure is that it is easy to find someone to tell you what to do.

Actually, it isn't that easy. Directing the behavior of other(s) is energetically expensive, so that is why it is more often manifested within a structure. More often than not when we are "following orders", we are actually running a collection of pre-installed scripts relevant to a given context. IOW, some large portion of "other human as boss" is actually a projection of "yourself as boss."

Also, the process of giving and fulfilling orders, whether in relationship to self or other, can be broken down into at least two quite different tasks or characters. Let's call them The Visionary and The Enforcer. So, for example, in a classroom setting, I am a great Visionary and a seriously half-azz Enforcer, and this is also true in terms of giving orders to my own The Technician. So, I am always quite surprised when I happen upon other humans who are great at Enforcement, but crappy at Vision, or those with a strong preference for Technician mode.

I think another possible problem with FI and "Freedom to..." is that within our professional situations or other defined roles within structure, we are often actually granted more resources to play/work with than we allow for ourselves as frugal humans post-retirement. IOW, "find some solo free hobbies" is too limiting and/or too risk-averse. For example, whether you think Elon is angel/devil, on some level investing your funds in his business/vision is letting him have all the fun. If I wasn't absolutely exhausted due to Crohn's disease now installing itself in my sinus system, I'd be out there throwing 10 grand at another permaculture project or similar endeavor in a heartbeat.

[jacob]

Actually, it isn't that easy. Directing the behavior of other(s) is energetically expensive, so that is why it is more often manifested within a structure. More often than not when we are "following orders", we are actually running a collection of pre-installed scripts relevant to a given context. IOW, some large portion of "other human as boss" is actually a projection of "yourself as boss."

I mean that there's no shortage of people willing to provide a structure/direction/structural directions to those who want or need them. If [structure or orders] is something I want, I can find it. I don't care that my boss/coach/teacher feels like providing this for me is hard for them.

The disagreement between @Ego and myself on this point is long standing. Lets take exercise as an example since this may explain what I mean better. Lets for the sake of the argument assume that the goal of exercising is to get stronger, faster, or higher (It doesn't matter what the goal is as long as there is a goal). If so, it's best to have a program (structure) and a way of enforcing it (coach).

Now, someone with the sufficient ability to envision this can make their own program. Those who can't or won't can acquire a program from someone else. For example, I like to get my programs from Tony Horton and Shaun T. Even if I can make my own programs, I like the variation/complexity from them because their programs are better than mine. I can buy these programs on eBay for a one-time fee of about $1 for each hour of programming.

Likewise, someone with sufficient self-discipline can enforce the program on their own. I can hire a personal trainer to yell at me or to make me feel obligated to show up on the required regular bases. However, I don't need or want this. I'm capable of being disciplined on my own. I can make myself show up daily even if I don't feel like it.

What I understand @Ego's concern about "losing the ability to do things we don't want to do because we don't do them" ... would be a couch potato who can no longer be moved off of the couch because not only do they lack or have lost the ability to get themselves moving; they have lost the ability for getting other people to move them. IOW, having a trainer scream at them to "dig deeeeper" no longer motivates them to do the necessary hard work.

I think this example contains everything there is to know about extreme early retirement. If one lacks sufficient vision, discipline, tools, structure to generate one's own challenges, then it makes sense to outsource this to others AND maintain the ability to "take orders" from others, lest it doesn't work.

OTOH, if one is capable of making a vision/plan that aligns with one needs and wants to do AND one has the discipline and ability to carry it out, then goals and action become fully homeotelic. I simply can not grok why one would deliberately choose to misalign goals and action in order to carry out actions not in alignment with one's goals simply in order to engage in an exercise of induced frustration. I'd rather get my frustration from accomplishing a goal I want to accomplish than accomplishing a goal I don't want to. If I want to work for myself, then not becoming FI so I can keep working for others/other people's money is but shooting myself in the foot. But if I never wanted to work for myself ... it's an entirely different situation.

[jacob]

Let's call them The Visionary and The Enforcer.

It occurred to me that a much better pattern is that of the e-Myth. Every small business or undertaking needs a Visionary, a Technician, and a Maintenance role. (I would add it that for operations involving dealing with the outside world, it also needs Sales.)

Individually, we're not equally strong in all 3(4) of those roles. Our ABSOLUTE strength very much determines what we can go. For example, I'm strong in Vision and competent in Technician. However, I'm only adequate in Maintenance and I'm weak in Sales. This limits what I do and thus determines why my FI/retirement will be like: "I can easily come up with new things to do (Vision) and I can also learn pretty much anything I want to. However, I lose interest once anything becomes routine (Maintenance) and I might as well not bother doing anything that involves convincing other people one on one. As such, for me FI/RE is the only move. Most working-life jobs eventually turn into some kind of dead-end for me. I'd suck at management due to Sales and I'd suck at reaching the highest level of competence because once reached it's all Maintenance and support.

Whereas, I'd say DW is weak on Vision, strong on Maintenance, decent on Technician and Sales. For this reason, she's better off with a non-stressful WFH spreadsheet job that involves helping others because it gives her something to do that's better than taking care of a potted plant.

Whereas, I'd guess that @Ego is strong on Maintenance (based on choice of job) and Sales (based on choice of side-income) and weaker on Vision (based on an observed repetition of the same pattern of managing an apartment complex followed by traveling) and Technician (based on not talking about building/making things and a dislike for too much theory). I apologize if I got that wrong.

Whereas, a typical freedom-from fatFIRE techbro might be strong on Technician (their job) but weak on everything else.

Menthinks that freedom-to FIRE basically MUST include a strong degree of Vision + at a decent degree of at least one of the others. Otherwise, suspect freedom-to FIRE will not be sustainable. Indeed, it may be the trap that @Ego warns about.

Basically, Vision sets the internal goal, and one of the others determines the action. Successful FIRE entirely depends on the limits of one's capacity for Vision.

[daylen]

I spent quite a bit of time in and after college thinking that I wanted to be in more of a technician role (because $$$ basically), but generally I prefer vision and maintenance. My vision has pretty much always been to learn and imagine new possibilities (finally getting more into fiction, love A Song of Ice and Fire). When I can be in various maintenance roles throughout the day that allow my mind to wander while doing lite physical labor, my life feels quite homeotelic. Simple activities like cleaning, cooking, and gardening work well for this. FI will come with time, but I do not really see how it would change this overall approach much. Instead of cleaning offices, I may spend more time gardening or something.

[7Wannabe5]

I think the differences between your take, Ego's take, my take, and AxelHeyst's take can fairly easily be explained in terms of how our MBTI types vary. I think what you are maybe not quite grokking is that because Ego and AxelHeyst are both yet differently somewhat more E, S, F, and/or J than you are as an INTj, (more towards ENTJ (The Executive) or ESTJ (The Supervisor)) they have somewhat more of an urge to boss other people around and/or move actual stuff around than you do. OTOH, the weird thing about the ENTJ vs. the ENTP is that they often superficially have similar lifestyles, but their motivational/moral landscape is almost entirely different. For example, ENTJ leads because leading is their default mode "somebody gotta do it", INTJ leads if/when/because others are incompetent (which is, obviously, pretty much always and everywhere), ENTP "only leads if/when/because otherwise will be compelled to follow (or be trapped under Puritan/Autocratic/Fascist/Arbitrary-Illogical-like rule)." (Tyrion Lannister in "Game of Thrones" is a great example of this sort of ENTP leadership functioning.) A couple simple exercise/movement based examples of this would be that Ego chooses to make money by inhabiting the Tony Horton/Shaun T. role himself in the realm of spin classes and/or similar and AxelHeyst feels somewhat compelled to move beyond design to actually using his own muscles to build tangible structures, and I might feel compelled to put aside my books and my pudding to attend a protest march if/when I felt my political liberty was being significantly encroached upon.

For better or worse, I do not believe that there exists a full-time corporate-employment-by-other position in which I would last even 5 years without thinking/feeling, "Fuck you, I will eat lentils and sleep on a park bench." and also choosing to act upon it (sigh.) OTOH, I can find just about any activity interesting for the first 3 months or so of learning curve, so short-term job-hopping is very much like choosing random book off of library shelf for me. The amusing (to me) thing is how often I can go beyond this 3 month limit by pretty much completely ignoring all the dull tasks I dislike and/or re-inventing the job for myself without requesting anybody else's permission. Actually, you can also kind of see this in play in my take on ERE/FIRE.

ETA: @jacob: Cross-post, but obviously we are pretty much on the same page. I have even less Maintenance ability than you, somewhat less Technician ability, but more Sales ability. Therefore, the "sales" tasks involved in frequently switching gears in order to keep myself amused are not overly onerous. The other reason I have likely never quite achieved full FIRE is that my Visions have often been FIRE-adjacent, but not FIRE centered. Centering right on FIRE does not work for me, because I immediately think, "Why?" and then when I answer the "Why?", my goal becomes only FIRE-adjacent, and likely to be fulfilled well prior to absolute FIRE.

[AxelHeyst]

@ego thanks, I feel I understand your position better now.

@ootb I appreciated the call-out. You actually spooked me a little bit because the overall pattern of moving from "this! THIS is THE thing!" is certainly one that's been present my whole life -- but I thought I'd at least mellowed out in the overt expression of this pattern/projecting it onto others since my tenure on the forum began, so I was suspicious that you'd somehow gotten your hands on my analog journals going back to teenage years lol.

I also suspect that sometimes my excitement over The New Thing can come off a bit more evangelistic than I intend it to.

That said, the overall theme or direction or pattern of The Things I've been into seems *to me, from inside my own head*, to be entirely consistent and also obvious what it is I'm striving towards. So to me the "this! --no, actually that! --- oh no, this!" is more like tacking (sailing), or one of those math problems where you have to guess the final answer and feed it back into the beginning of the solution, and then iterate several times until the answer converges within an acceptable range.* I have friends who have accused me of being a leaf on the wind and getting a 'new hair' every six months, and while I see where they're coming from I reject the characterization. I'm on a very vaguely-defined but strongly felt mission with no guidance or exemplars. Finding ERE was an enormous coup.

---

Based on the discussion, I'm going to update my statement that hitting FI is "The Move":

I think banging FI out is The Move For You if:
- You're strongly Vision oriented/have a very strong freedom-to
- Your freedom-to will require long periods of consistent focus
- You are unable to not think about covering your flank (aka you won't be able to switch off "but I haven't solved money forever yet, we can't afford to chase freedom-to for the next six years!")
- You are unable to concretely task-switch from bread job to freedom-to (aka you can't mentally turn work "off" when you clock out)
- You're committed to VLCOL as an aspirational and instrumental goal
- You're wired a lot like me (ask around, they'll explain it better than I can )
- A primary motivator is to decenter money and finances from your decision-making process, in other words
- Internalizing systems thinking / aka WL7+ (spinning up a WoG composed of several forms of capital, not just financial) is a goal

If none or not many of the above apply in your case, then I would not categorically say hitting FI is The Move for you. Long story short, I think knocking FI out is The Move For Axel, for reasons.

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Regarding Decentering FI: I'm not sure how explicitly it's been stated recently but it's probably worth repeating: I think that at WL7 or so, by definition, financial capital becomes just one of multiple forms of capital that you deploy in your WoG. As such, it's 'decentered' - it isn't THE default capital you use to solve your problems, although of course you are competent at using it and don't avoid using financial capital when it's the appropriate move.

In Josh Waitzkin's book The Art of Learning, he relays how beginner chess players learn the 'scores' aka the numbers of the chess pieces to help them think about whether an exchange or a move is a good one or not. Advanced chess players do not think about The Numbers. Not because it isn't important, but because they've moved on to higher/more advanced/more sophisticated mental models of Chessic theory than simply counting the values of the pieces. They have transcended *and included* The Numbers -- gotten so good at The Numbers that that level of thinking subsided into their unconscious.

This is close to the model I have in my head for how I want "money" and financial capital to consume cognitive bandwidth. I think that the goal is to not think about it very much. But in order to not think about it very much, you have to think about it adequately in order to internalize it. I lived the first 16 or so years of my adult live not thinking about money very much at all. The results were bad! My past is a warning against attempting to take a shortcut to "decentering money" by just never thinking about it. You've got to think about it and get good at it. But don't get stuck there. Learn it, internalize it, transcend and include it, and move on.

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*(I still have a hi-def memory from college where the professor showed how to run an iterative heat-transfer solution in Excel where each cell represented the temperature of a point in a brick, and you just type any ol' number in for the initial temperature condition of the brick and hit "go" and the cell values flash rapidly until they converged within spec on the steady-state temperature. I was **smitten** by it.)

[AxelHeyst]

In other news, my brother FIRE'd today.

[jacob]

*(I still have a hi-def memory from college where the professor showed how to run an iterative heat-transfer solution in Excel where each cell represented the temperature of a point in a brick, and you just type any ol' number in for the initial temperature condition of the brick and hit "go" and the cell values flash rapidly until they converged within spec on the steady-state temperature. I was **smitten** by it.)

You're gonna love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rg7xvTJ8SU

I first heart about someone using excel to solve diff equations [for publications] from someone in the geology department. He did it and he meant it. I was flabbergasted because what he had going could be replaced with <10 lines of fortran code and run much much faster. [Programming] just never occurred to him. Solving by spreadsheet was department tradition. Similar situation with a professor from the microbiology department who showed me 30 pages of handwritten notes deriving an analytical solution to 3 coupled diff equations. I hacked up a generalized finite diff solver for him. About 30 lines of code. He almost cried.

[7Wannabe5]

My past is a warning against attempting to take a shortcut to "decentering money" by just never thinking about it. You've got to think about it and get good at it. But don't get stuck there. Learn it, internalize it, transcend and include it, and move on.

It just occurred to me that I don't believe that FIRE fully internalizes/transcends the concept of "money", because it does not internalize Sales and/or Consumerism and/or the Entrepreneurial Core and/or something akin to Venn Diagram Overlap of These. IOW, it doesn't contain the answer to the question, "Why would somebody want to buy something from me?"