Building On Letting Things Happen
Establishing A Stress-Reduction Budget
I want to build on what we discussed last week, creating a habit of letting things happen.
As you move through your day, note the distractions and irritations that arise. I don’t usually recommend focusing on the negative but it’s useful at times.
Why?
Because we’re going to work on freeing ourselves from of the cause of these irritations.
Last week I talked about the power of learning to let things happen. I shared my experience that this simple habit is a powerful way to improve our life experience.
Let’s expand the power of this habit.
Inside every budget you control, build a line item called “Stress Reduction.”
Typically, I set this at 5-10% of total expenditure.
In a family budget, 10% of spending is a reasonable number.
When small issues pop up, you have two choices:
Pay it off and move on - it comes out of the Stress Reduction Budget.
Delegate it and move on - all the while, accepting that someone else will do it differently than you.
If it’s a big issue then you’re free to get involved. I’m not talking about letting everything go. I’m talking about:
Choosing to focus on items that have an impact, and
Staying focused on the daily actions required to achieve our goals.
If you become irritated with how the issue is being handled then… subtract the overspend (you think is happening) from the Stress Reduction Budget and move on.
There’s a lot of “moving on” happening in this workflow. Moving on to something that is either: (a) more productive, or (b) related to our goals. This is the fastest way to become surrounded, and supported, by competence.
As I wrote in the summer, we need to know exactly what we want. Write down what YOU want to achieve then align actions and incentives.
The above, is how I “play house.” I’m working towards being surrounded by a competent team where we support each other’s goals. I put my energy into building competence around me.
In practicing the above, two mantras have been extremely helpful to me:
I won’t engage with things I don’t control.
I won’t engage if the issue is less than “X dollars.”
Over the years, I’ve set “X dollars” at different levels.
These days, it relates to a percentage of family net worth.
I know doctors that relate it to “income from a night of call.”
As a Finance guy… it was a percentage of take-home pay.
My kids think in terms of allowance, and what they earn with yard work.
It does not matter how, or where, the threshold is set.
What matters is setting it at something reasonable and building a habit on non-engagement. You’ll be amazed at it what it does for your life experience and how much people enjoy being around you.
Financially, I’ve found this habit makes money. Marginal expense accounting isn’t where the big bucks are found, and it irritates star performers.
I’ll end with a Dan Sullivan quote via Tim Ferriss,
If you’ve got enough money to solve the problem, you don’t have the problem.
Small spending can be emotionally triggering. That’s why I find it helps to make a specific budget item.
Remind yourself where this game of life is heading… remember The Window of Time.
Next time, we’ll get into the dollars & cents of the last few articles. Once we’ve freed our minds from the small stuff, how should we focus spending?
A couple years back, I sold a rental property and decided to spend a chunk of the proceeds on current consumption. The lessons from that spending ran counter to what I had been told to expect.