I've been mulling my use of the word 'incidental' in my as-if-FI approach, and I think it's not the appropriate word.
Incidental implies that making money is
accidental, is given no consideration whatsoever. I think this is not right and actually probably impossible (at some point you wind up in a 'don't think of a purple elephant!' situation).
What I mean is that
I'm trying to construct a WoG where money is never the zeroth order goal/effect. But it's fine for it to be a first or second order, acknowledged, goal, as long as it doesn't damage intrinsic motivation / stoke. This concern about intrinsic motivation is the heart of the matter for me.
Ideally, I'd do the thing even if I don't get paid. But that ideal might not always be the case. Yields and flows analysis demands that you examine
all of the yields and flows and make a decision based on how it fits into your larger web of goals. Some activities might have lots of positive goals, but if it lacks any kind of possible remuneration, it just might not pass the go no go decision process. (An example would be last summer when I went out to help @mooretrees with their skoolie build. It was close to being something I'd do for zero remuneration, but noooot quite for a few reasons. The remuneration sealed the deal.)
A while ago I spent some time thinking about Buckminster Fuller's oath to himself, which was approximately to forget remuneration and just only try to do things to help humanity. I sort of mixed that into the soup of idea ingredients for axelERE, but I think I need to take it back out. It's an inspiring story... but also a) survivorship bias, b) his family went up to the brink of serious consequences as a result of that decision all the time, and c) it's just not, actually, good strategy. Just because you have the weight of justice/virtue on your side doesn't mean you won't wind up a bug on God's windshield. It's just not repeatable, so even if I DID succeed with it, I'd not be comfortable advising anyone else to do something so insane. I'm not necessarily optimizing my exact strategy for repeatability, but neither am I into hail-mary-ing it for the fences just because I can.
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It's worth emphasizing as a reminder that what I'm doing is, at least approximately, canon. It just has a couple extras that I don't think fundamentally alter the strategy. By canon I mean in The Book.
In the chapter The Renaissance Lifestyler, there's a list of guidelines:
- Reduce wants and needs from the marketplace to a minimum to decouple the buy-work connection. Check.
- Decrease volume and size but increase the sophistication of your activities and possessions. Check.
- Measure prosperity by less activity, not more. Do fewer useless things. Check.
- Work for the purpose of earning money for no more than five years of your life or five hours a week. My chosen strategy is to focus on the latter, after getting halfway with the first pre-ERE.
- Avoid generating waste and find ways to use the waste of others. WIP but Check.
- Learn to use the system to your advantage, but don't be evil!
- Serve yourself rather than having others serve you. Instead, help them. ?
- Keep running costs down but pay for value. Check.
- Maintain health to avoid the personal and monetary cost of sickness. WIP but check.
- Build up the capital to live as a capitalist or the skills to always find a new job. Currently emphasizing the latter, but went halfway with the first preERE.
- Focus on productive assets rather than stuff. Check.
- Focus on developing skills rather than on passive entertainment. Check.
- Gain the maximum in satisfaction with the minimum expenditure of money and energy. Check.
The twist is that I'm putting great effort into understanding human motivation and drive in order to do things that I want to do, not that merely I find tolerable, in addition to making that minimum required income. I think the standard semiERE pitch can sound like 'work a whatever but low-stress and low-time job for 'enough' income', whereas my twist is to put effort into generating 'enough' income as first or second order effects of activities I want to do for any number of other reasons.
There are a lot of stories of people who FIRE and then wind up doing stuff they want to do for money anyways. I'm basically just trying to skip to that mindset without having to pass through official FIRE first. My experimental hypothesis is that under the right circumstances, it's not necessary to do so (although under other circumstances, I see how it would be, i.e. people who'd be driven to anxiety by the lack of financial security that 3% or whatever represents to them).
At the moment, I have a very high value placed on autonomous time and developing intrinsic motivation / intrinsically motivated activities. My story is that I went through severe spiritual type 2 burnout. I really, really don't want to do anything like what I used to do for money ever again, not for two years, not for two months. I'm not sure I can, in fact. When I tried to work on the visualization studio startup, which on paper was something I'd like to do, I just.... didn't do it. I sat down, looked at my notes... and... didn't do it. It was too much like what I used to do, and the payoff was too far in the future, which is a great way of destroying intrinsic motivation.
I think I can generate >1CoL without much difficulty doing things I'm intrinsically motivated to do in such a way that doesn't corrupt the Intrinsic Motivation. The key is to maintain high levels of autonomy/agency, competence/sense of mastery, and a sense of relatedness/purpose (that won't get knocked out from under me, aka is robust).
That last paragraph is key!! If I'm right about it, it means getting a job or doing anything I'm not intrinsically motivated to do is a waste of time, because I have a path to FI that doesn't require it. It just will likely take longer, but that's fine because I'm not slogging to that point. My life doesn't start after FI, it's already going. My life is now, now.
Also, doing what I want to do anyway is more robust from an inflation and energy descent perspective. And this approach is more likely (I think) to get me to L7/L8 territory without getting stuck in a local maxima at L6.... I mean, it's a faster (if riskier?) path to postconsumer praxis than if I got a FTE and had to deal with golden handcuffs and lack of time/energy to devote to upskilling etc.
I guess I just feel like it's not necessary to pursue remuneration via any activity I think sucks. I think I've got enough stash, skills, and strategy to not have to deal with that bullshit ever again. And achieve the goals I have for how my life works in accordance with my values.