Write It Down
Who do you want to be eight years from now?
I turned 57 last month. I’ve had a great run the last few years.1
The darkness of winter 2021/2022 has been washed away and replaced with serenity, productivity and satisfaction.
My week-to-week life is simple, punctuated by a monthly trip/event/race.
My work follows a cycle of the tax year, the monthly accounting cycle and reporting requirements.
My kids (13/14/17) are increasingly independent.
The Path
In finance, we talk about “get rich skills” and “stay rich skills.” In sport, athletes often miss the difference between get-fast and stay-fast. Today is not about sport. It’s about life satisfaction.
Get satisfied.
Stay satisfied.
Now that I’m back-happy, I have been thinking about my stay-happy strategy.
A friend asked me, “How will I know I’m on the path?”
Because I’m not qualified to tell individuals what to do with their own lives, I recommended he take it up with his mental skills coach. It’s the sort of question we used to ask our rabbi or priest.
What is living well? I offered you a template in my Kids & Money series.
The first step to feeling I was on the right path was living better, by keeping small promises to myself.
A podcaster asked me, “Why did you decide to return to the athletic life?”
These questions are related. If you have a question that’s difficult to answer, try inverting it.
In 2000, 2011 and in 2021, I had no idea about the correct path but I felt I was on the wrong path. The wrongness of the path was indicated by a vision of the person I would become if I kept repeating the life I was living.
My most recent change (2022-2026) was returning to the lifestyle I had created from 2000 through to 2008. I dramatically changed who I was, met my wife and, eventually, stopped moving around the world (searching for better).
Looking forward from those transition points
1994 - desire for health, feeling current life won’t deliver that need.
2000 - desire for love, feeling like I could be in a much better place to find a match.
2011 - desire to to strengthen my marriage by being a better parent.
2021 - a bit desperate to escape a feeling of darkness, so I decide to return to a lifestyle when I was emotionally positive towards everyone around me.
At no time was I trying to be right, or correct. Generally, my focus was to change myself to meet an unmet need. To meet the unmet need I had to get better at something. The something has changed over time. Looking back my needs have been basic, predictable and human.
The human condition is not a complex puzzle. A bit of reading goes a long way.
The Gamification of Reality
Fun resource for you.
George sees reality as malleable. It’s a way of seeing the world that’s proven effective for me.
Here’s a quote for you, “I know this isn’t true but it works so well I’m going to act like it is true.”
We don’t have to believe for memes work in our favor.
Back To My Birthday
8 years from now, I will be 65 years old. I’ve been thinking about my future life. I have found writing down my desired future makes it likely to happen.
At first, I brainstormed things I wanted to have, the geography I wanted to access. These are traditional, external (and largely meaningless) targets. One interesting change was my geography being confined to the range I’m comfortable having my Tesla autopilot me2. FSD has been a transformation technology.
Health, Fitness, Friends
This is the good stuff. The highest return areas of our lives.
What are best bets we can make for our future selves?
Health - if we lose it then nothing else will matter.
Fitness - because I started healthy, it took me 1,000 days to return to fitness.
Friends - let’s dig into this one.
In 2011, it felt like I left everything to be a good parent. In reality, I didn’t leave everything. What I left was an identity. It was an identity that I was good at and loved.
Years earlier, in 2000, I left an identity in finance. Finance was an identity that I was good at but didn’t love. Leaving finance, and its associated trappings (wealth, status, style), was easier.3
What is difficult to see as a young person… we will have, and leave, many identities in our lives.
What I hope everyone reading this will see… we can create many different identities.
With my fitness back, I realized that I miss my (fit) friends. Fortunately, they’re easily accessed. Sharing fitness is my best environment. I made all my best friends (and met my wife) while sharing fitness. It’s a useful insight. Worth thinking about, then writing down, your best environment.
If I had to make a prediction for you:
As you age.
As your kids leave the nest.
As you tick the boxes on your goals list.
You will be drawn back to your best environments and want to share them with friends. Write down what and who.
Across your peak-earning years, building-a-family years, saving for the future years… make an effort to stay healthy and stay in touch.
Your pals are going to age out of whatever seems important to them right now… you can be the person they enjoy hanging out with.4
What’s lacking?
Who is the person I need to become to fill that need?
Can I make it happen right where I am?
My values & needs are likely to change in predictable ways, what are those ways?
When we can envision a desirable future, we will notice opportunities to make it happen today, thereby creating the path.
I don’t think it’s voodoo. I think we’re surrounded by opportunities that we often fail to notice.
Write it down.
There is a book called Extreme Ownership. It’s a mindset that’s has helped me. I never read the book (!) I follow the author on X and embrace the key principles.
I wrote about my Vision 2030 last year. It covers thoughts on self-driving pods.
An interesting wrinkle is the status of being fit is higher the older we get. If we are persistent then time makes relative fitness both easier to achieve and more exceptional.
My ease of leaving finance may also had something to do with realizing (at a young age) I was playing game that was impossible to win. Amateur sport is a less competitive space.
If you asked my closest friends if I was exceptionally fun then I’d expect most of them to laugh out loud. It’s an area where I can improve.
Thanks Gordo, this one hits home!
Great one G!!