The Education of Axel Heyst

[RoamingFrancis]

Consistency over time seems like a much better model for me than the crowbar approach.

[AxelHeyst]

Indeed. Besides temperamental considerations, crowbars are appropriate for certain circumstances and not for others.

In particular, crowbars are useful when you suddenly realize that you are in a deep hole and you very much want to be out of it. When you are way over HERE but decide incontrovertibly that you very much want to be way over THERE. Circumstances like these are no time for subtlety.

Once you've crowbar'd yourself into the neighborhood of where you want to be, then consistency, tuning, paying attention to subtle feedback, and etc are the way to go. And if there is any doubt whatsoever about what direction you want to go in, leave the crowbar alone. I knew at a deep soul level that I wanted to get my burn rate below $10k as quickly as possible... and I was burning $65. That's a 85% desired reduction in CoL. My current ttmCoL is an 89% reduction from my 2019 CoL. That required some spirited swings with a dull hunk of metal. (There were other non$ goals that I crowbar'd, that's just the easy one to measure.)

After swinging my crowbar like a madman for three years, I sense that it's time to put it back up on its peg over the mantle and dedicate myself to the subtle arts... hence why spending time with mF was so particularly inspiring for me. Right example for me to be exposed to at the right time. I feel very fortunate -- even, dare I say it... serendipitously blessed?


ETA: One way to think about it might be to think about DVP, dissatisfaction vision plan. When dissatisfaction is very high, the vision is very clear, and the plan is relatively straightforward, consider the crowbar.

But:

• Using the crowbar when dissatisfaction is low is a bad idea because you risk breaking stuff you actually like about your life.
• Using the crowbar when vision isn't perfectly clear is a bad idea because you risk making a lot of progress in a direction you don't actually want to go.
• Using the crowbar when the plan requires fine control and some amount of complexity is a bad idea because crowbars lack fine control.

[theanimal]

How do you see this new perspective playing out in practice? I imagine you'll be focusing less on the granular details of decreasing expenses. Anything else? What will you be doing more of?

[AxelHeyst]

Good questions. This is what I've got so far:

• Project NOPE is prerequisite to keep space clear in my life. I don't feel psychologically/emotionally equipped to build this foundation/practice while engaged in any significant projects that aren't of my own design.
• Same goes for being in a relationship. I think it's important for me to stay single through this phase at least (based on 14 years of aggregate data).
• Yes, I haven't really paid attention to decreasing expenses for a few months now. A couple hours a month, if that.
• mF talked about how he plans when necessary, and his tracking practice is the feedback that lets him know if he needs to increase the amount of formal planning activity he's doing or if running it intuitively is fine. So, taking this idea...
• I'm going to build a lightweight tracking practice focusing on the areas of my life I care about making consistent progress or maintenance on. When there's a big delta between my aspirations and what I actually do, that is the feedback to dig in and ask questions like Do I even understand what it is I'm trying to do? Is the aspiration too big, or too vague? What's my block? Do I need to make it easy to start? Is something else distracting me that I need to make more difficult to access?
• In particular, I'm going to track the Fundamentals of sleep, diet, and exercise, with a +1 of daily meditation.
• The full set of categories I've got in mind are FFHAWSEC: Freedom, Fundamentals, Hard Things, Adv/outdoors, Writing, Spirit, Engagement (social), and Craft. I don't propose this as a comprehensive list, just a set of categories that speak to me at the moment and that I can kludge into a pronounceable acronym. I love pronounceable acronyms.

Thinking how to drop into consistent and compounding practices is one of the things I'm going to be doing while pedaling through the desert over the next couple months.

[mountainFrugal]

One subtly I might add is that if you (not necessarily @AH) have not tracked anything before, you might start by tracking a single thing. The act of tracking is a skill and habit in its own right. Not that you have a ton of things here, but it might be easy to overwhelm a newly developed tracking skillset by adding too many things at once and only lasting a month or two. It is better to have the goal of tracking consistently over time rather than tracking everything right away.

I started tracking time when I was in grad school. I was thinking about what my ideal amount of work was. I was "working" way too many hours I thought. Once I started tracking I realized that a majority of those hours sitting in an office chair were not actually work. They were the appearance of work. ~20 hours of quality work per week was actually getting done. I started spending less time in the office for its own sake and more time carrying a notebook around to work out ideas as I was walking or running. I was thinking about work all of the time anyway so why did I need to be in a chair in a certain location?

[RoamingFrancis]

Yeah I was definitely crowbaring 1-2 years ago. Now I am generally in the neighborhood of where I'd like to be and need to refine. Subtlety matters here.

[AxelHeyst]

## Tracking
Spent: $435 ($5,220 annualized). I think my TTM is now just below $7k but I'm away from My Spreadsheet.
Writing: I wrote every day beginning May 19, when I started the practice.

## Accomplishments and Hard Things
..Pedaled 550miles along the Eastside of the Sierras and then up through the Lost Sierras north of Truckee. 25 days with three zeros. 80miles longest day. Pedaled all but the section between Reno and Truckee. Dirt till Bishop, pavement since. Many of the forest roads are buried in snow or runoff.
..Learned to deploy a tarp for shelter in high wind, thunder and lightning, hail, and heavy showers on short notice in desert and forest (coming from the land of megadrought, I've actually never been rained on overnight while *packing to my memory.)
..Sewed a bivy bag and a tarp.
..Finished neighbors PV system.
..Had some hard conversations; personal revelations and growth resulted.

## Observations
For me, trips are for and about coming home slightly different (leveled up, ideally) and with new perspective. I think that more frequent (4-6x/yr) trips of shorter duration (3-15 days) rather than one multimonth trip is right for me. I am no longer interested in doing the full PCT next year.

There is no need to 'get away to nature' in my current lifestyle due to where I live. Just a need to ensure I don't get sucked into unbalanced screen time or living indoors all the time. Ft Dirtbag is more remote than 90% of the places I've been pedaling through.

You don't need to be in shape to do a long trip, you just need to be in good enough shape to start and have enough grit to not quit. You get in shape as you go. (This is personal experience now confirming Alestair Humphreys writing.)

I will never bring a stove *packing again. Cold soak method is far superior. I thought I'd 'suffer through'. There is no suffering! It's tasty and delicious!

Skills assuage anxiety. At the beginning of my trip the storm clouds and lightning piling up really stressed me out, because my tarp deployment skills were low. Now, ten deployments in under a variety of circumstances, storm clouds (under a broad, but not total, range of circumstances) are information. I'm relaxed about it. I'll be fine. I know what to do.

No wonder so many moderns are anxious... Specialists live in a world surrounded by circumstances they are not confident they are able to deal with unless they can solve it with money. This might also explain the stereotype of rich people freaking out when they can't buy a solution (eg no reservations and restaurant is full). It highlights domains of helplessness/limits of their power/efficacy.

The sense that more and more of my meatspace social life involves ERE folk is awesome. Even though I don't live very near any of my IRL ERE relations, there's a sense of growing richness of social ties. I didn't set out intentionally to make this happen but it is happening and I really like it.

## Projects
I'm canceling Project NOPE. I needed the training wheels at the time to set some neural pathways, and now I feel capable of making decisions on a case by case basis. I needed to say "I'm doing this for a year" because otherwise I would have just told people 'yes, but after October' or whatever.

## Values on my Mind
..Frugality as a value (rather than merely a means to and end e.g. individual economic freedom... See Jim Merkel's idea about the global buffet table; you're near the front of the line, how much will you take?)
.. Generosity as a virtue (and the tension or lack of it with Frugality)
..Calm industriousness
.. Simple Organization (being simply organized)

## "just do your job, and then let go"
Tao de Ching, Stephen Mitchel translation.

[Western Red Cedar]

## Observations
For me, trips are for and about coming home slightly different (leveled up, ideally) and with new perspective. I think that more frequent (4-6x/yr) trips of shorter duration (3-15 days) rather than one multimonth trip is right for me. I am no longer interested in doing the full PCT next year.

There is no need to 'get away to nature' in my current lifestyle due to where I live. Just a need to ensure I don't get sucked into unbalanced screen time or living indoors all the time. Ft Dirtbag is more remote than 90% of the places I've been pedaling through.

“When you’re in the mountains, with a mission, it’s like all of the superficialities of life just sort of evaporate, and you can often find yourself in a deeper state of mind, and that can stick with you for a while after a big climb. You appreciate everything so much…that you take for granted most of the time. It’s kind of funny. The actual achievement doesn’t really change your life, like you think it might, but what you’re left with is the journey that got you to that point.”

Marc-Andre Leclerc

I couldn't find the rest of the quote, but I think he goes on to talk about how it is almost impossible to not experience some type of transformation when you put yourself in a beautiful, natural place for multiple days. When I first heard him talking about this, it immediately resonated and described my experiences in the backcountry. I often go in with a certain conception of what a trip will offer, but regularly come out with a different insight or experience.

I'm still toying with the balance between time at home, and time away. I always appreciate hearing how others think about that balance.

[AxelHeyst]

That quote is great thank you.

I think the challenge is the 'right' balance changes. Last year, 6 months in one chunk was about right. This year, 1-2 months. Next year, more frequent but shorter duration I think.

Part of the dynamic for me too is that my life with DxGF was unstable (as in, not possible to create stability >3months within the her+me system), but now solo it's possible to create or cultivate stability, which I'm still getting used to. Aka I have three plus years of experience that the attempt to generate stability is stressful and doomed. I'm having to learn that it's possible to choose stability and not generate negative effects and fail.

[sodatrain]

Interesting to hear you lost interest in the PCT. I like your thought process around it. I coincidentally started a "treks to trek" list today. Everything is MUCH shorter than the PCT!

[AxelHeyst]

This weekend I had 12-20 conversations IRL that started "So, how do you know @mF?"

My most frequent response was

"Were both part of an online community that's into ecologically based strategic lifestyle design."

I don't love it. Lifestyle design has early 2010's tech bro cultural baggage, and strategic feels kind of pompous and redundant.

I also tried "Were both part of an online community centered around simple living, frugality, and meaningful pursuit", which worked better but still pretty vague.

I think the key is to say something that's only one sentence and has some keyword that the recipient will have some knowledge of. For the people I was around, ecological, simple living, and frugality were generally all ideas they'd vibe with. I didn't use the word autonomy or freedom, but I think I'd have done well to. I was trying too hard to avoid being immediately lumped into FIRE (more on that in a sec).

Hard mode: when they ask follow up questions,which was 75%. The trick is that all the people I was talking with were very smart, accomplished, thoughtful, well rounded humans. It's important to avoid implying that these people arent also intentional about their lives.

Never mind what I actually said. These are some ideas of what I could have said that might have worked better.

"There's a few pieces to it. The first piece is that we really don't need to spend as much money as society trains us to think we do. It takes some skill, but it's actually not that hard to spend a lot less money than average but have a fantastic life.

"Another piece is that if you save up roughly 25-30x your cost of living, you can be done earning income, and then you can do whatever is most meaningful to you. 25-30xight sound like a lot, but it's really not if you've done the work to reduce your cost of living. Five to ten years.

If you've heard of FIRE, that's the gist of it. But the community we're in places extra emphasis on developing broad skills, which increases personal resilience in a number of ways, and on applying systems thinking to your activities, which results in a really aligned, intentional lifestyle."

For me, I could/should havethen said something like "The reason I'm able to do things like wander Europe for six months, ride my bike the length of California, and spend time on my homestead project is because of applying to principles of this community."

Ideally you get something like all that out before they ask what the name of the community is, and then you can smile ruefully and say "it's one of those unfortunately named things where the title doesn't do the content justice, but it's called ERE which stands for Early retirement Extreme..."

Any other experiences/feedback? (I'm sure there's a thread on this but I'm on really constrained internet atm, if anyone has link handy I'll follow up there).

[jacob]

Ideally you get something like all that out before they ask what the name of the community is, and then you can smile ruefully and say "it's one of those unfortunately named things where the title doesn't do the content justice, but it's called ERE which stands for Early retirement Extreme..."

Any other experiences/feedback? (I'm sure there's a thread on this but I'm on really constrained internet atm, if anyone has link handy I'll follow up there).

The answer I eventually settled on in terms of "what do you do for a living", which is what 90% of rando small-talkers will ask, is that "I run an online community on personal finance for people who want to retire really really early". Most people have some idea of what those words mean. I don't mention more relatively esoteric concepts like "financial independence" (to some this just means paying their own bills) or "resilience" (it means different things to different people) until well into the conversation if it ever gets that far.

I've yet to find any universally attractive "branding". The word "ecology" immediately turns off 70-80% of humans. 95% couldn't define emergence if it bit them in the ass. Renaissance now has certain polarized connotations in that will instantly attract/reject tribally-oriented people. Words are tricky! When I'm talking to specific individuals as an individual, I try to suss them out before opening up another avenue of conversation. When I'm talking to the masses or specific groupings, I hold back a lot of things and try to meet people at WL+1 according to which group they're in (cf. FIRE community vs predicament community vs philosophy community). Let them find out for themselves [how to see beyond their own tribe] if they can. If they can't, talking at WL+2+ is usually more trouble than it's worth.

[AxelHeyst]

Hm it really does have to be tailored to the individual, oe to best guesses about the individual, doesn't it. For 70-80% of the people I'm likely to run into "retirement" will be a turn off (or something they feel indifference towards) whereas "ecology" used in a novel context will intrigue them.

...although I wonder if I'm being too hard on 'retirement', even among this demographic. I think I'm averse to using it because even when I say I'm semi-retired people assume I did the techie thing and then cashed out (which is fine for those who did it, but I did not, and I think it's a good thing to have stories out there that don't involve tech salary as part of the path).

I noted that when they asked me what I'm up to, 'im on a long sebbatical' got recognition. It's a thing nowadays.

[7Wannabe5]

Yeah, I think “ecology” is more likely to sometimes evoke defensiveness due to guilt, whereas “finance” is more likely to evoke simple anger.

[UrbanHomesteader]

I have been tailoring my "what do you do" or "what have you been doing" response to the individual somewhat. Since I have a few irons in the fire, I might pull out the thing that fits the audience or that I feel most likely will lead to an interesting bit of conversation. However, "I'm on a sabbatical" does seem pretty acceptable in broad circles, even though it often leads to follow up questions on what I am doing on sabbatical or what I will do for work after the sabbatical etc.

[sodatrain]

"working (corp/for the man) sucks.". (or working is way over rated)

*Pause* Nearly universal agreement.

I'm working on not working by dramatically reducing my spending so the little bit I have goes a long way".

And then if they are still hanging on "We spend a shit to on products and services that if I'm not working I'll have the time and skills to largely do myself. Thus leading to a more fulfilling and interesting life too!"

[Slevin]

“How do you know mF?”

“Well, mF listens to my podcast and was actually even a guest recently!”

“Oh whoa cool, what is your podcast about?”

“How to live an interesting life spending only $7000/ year (or you know, something else simple and concrete a normal person could interact with)”

Then let them decide if they want to interact with that more or not. Likely follow ups: “wait what do you do for rent?”, “Oh, so what do you do for money?”, “is it actually possible to spend that little money per year and not be miserable?”, “well what about health insurance?”, “there is no way I could spend that little per year, I spend 6000/ year just on eating out”, etc etc.

Also, no need to be promoting JLF or ERE all of the time if you don’t want to; you can just say you are friends who met online and hang out and draw and bird watch and trek in the mountains without having to do the whole hubabaloo of trying to explain ERE to six different people per day.

[Western Red Cedar]

I definitely lean towards @Slevin's approach and like his suggestions. Going down the rabbit hole of ERE is likely to lead to a one-sided conversation. I've actually met quite a few people in the last six months who I pegged as WL 6+, but I still opted to not mention anything about ERE. Our conversations focused on topics like human-powered transportation, environmental ethics, economics, and local food systems. On one occasion I casually mentioned something about FIRE and ERE because he was interested in how I was funding a sabbatical, but focusing on the underlying ideas generally makes for a much better conversation IME.

I also tend to avoid the word "retirement" these days and don't plan on using it after I leave work permanently. It just has a lot of connotations and probably isn't helpful for productive IRL discussions. Based on what I know about you @AH, I wouldn't describe you as retired.

Interestingly, using the term "ecology" or creating some type of identity around that phrase would likely be well-received in much of the PNW.

------

The "what do you do for a living" question is basically a conversationally crutch that reflects some deeply ingrained beliefs in US culture. I've noticed in discussions when I'm traveling internationally it is quite common for Americans to lead with, but not necessarily so for other foreigners.

[AxelHeyst]

I also like the gist of Slevin's take, although saying I know mF due to my podcast is more than bending the truth.

That said, I am coming around to the idea that if/when I decide explaining the forum is a good idea, starting with early retirement as the kernel of graspable concept is wise.

"It's a community of people who are into figuring out how to retire from [mandatory] full time employment really quickly." [I like this phrasing because it's inclusive of semiERE.]

With expansions to suit the context:

"...in order to focus on things more important to me."

"...by radically lowering expenses, which results in a low consumption/ecological lifestyle."

..

I don't bring ERE up unless it'd take a back bend to avoid it. When people inquire generally how I'm able to do what I do I shrug and say "turns out you don't have to work much if you don't spend much."

[Scott 2]

I'd say - we met online. Turns out we're close. I have his old bike... Then change to the IRL relevant topic. Nobody really cares. The question is a lazy small talk opening.

My work answer is - I'm not working right now. Change topic. If they particularly look sad for me - yeah, I am in tech but choosing to take a break. I might acknowledge burnout.

I save this talk for a select inner circle. I never talk about the internet. I also don't say retired. I'm interested in common ground, not challenging someone's world view.