Freedom-Learn-Create
Three-point checklist to live a reasonably good life
I've been rather overwhelmed by the response to the first post I wrote on this newsletter. Many wrote to say they found my journey inspiring, and a few even pledged to pay for a future paid subscription, which was a pleasant surprise given I have no intention of making it paid anytime soon and didn't know that feature was on.
My standard operating procedure for reacting to unexpected compliments is to act like I didn't hear it and change the subject, but I really was touched by how genuine and warm some of the messages I got were. Thank you for your encouragement, and here's the second post. If you haven't read the original article yet, here's the link.
The best thing about writing a journal in troubled times is that you can go back and find patterns and causal relationships you didn't notice before. In the last post, I wrote about how my journey started with a random memory of the myth of Icarus, but I now realise the seed was sown a few weeks before when I made a laundry list of goals - personal, career, and weird. It wasn't a structured list, and I wasn't trying to find my 'Ikigai' - I only heard about it later and never read the book. The purpose of my list wasn't to find the magical intersection point of everything I care about and what the world will pay for. It was simply a list of things I wanted or felt like doing because they kept me sane.
After writing my list, I tried to categorise them.
Financial freedom - defined by my friend Ranju as 'Fuck you money', the money you need to quit a job whenever you feel like it
A career I can be proud of - financial freedom might come from this, or independently of this
Create beautiful things (whatever that means)
Learn every day
Be useful - in concentric circles starting from family
Self mastery - Kung Fu Panda inner-peace
In the end, I simplified it into three: Freedom - Learn - Create
Freedom
Freedom is a vague goal, but I believe that's a feature, not a bug. For me, freedom is being able to do what I want, and not being forced to do things because I have to.
In the beginning, I thought financial freedom accounted for ~90% of freedom, but my view has changed.
What if you won a lottery today, that gave you enough money to never work again - would you? If that happened to me today, I think I'll celebrate a bit tonight, and go back to work tomorrow morning. I definitely wouldn't have said this last year, but overall, I think I would have said it for more than 50% of my career.
There are many people in the world who would do this. I've met a few who have said this, and observed many more who seemed to live their lives that way, content. But you will never read about them, or see them in a Forbes 30 under 30 list. You'll see them sitting on their porch with a cup of tea, reading a paper, or having a good night's sleep after a satisfying day of work - milestones that don't get celebrated on LinkedIn or get hearted on Instagram.
There was a 2001 movie called 'Shallow Hal' starring Jack Black, in which he is hypnotised to see people's inner beauty, and falls in love with a woman he sees as stunning, but isn't seen that way by others. At one point, Hal's friend, a comic book lover breaks the spell. He doesn't understand why Hal is upset till the following exchange:
Hal: Let me ask you something. Who is the all-time love of your life?
Mauricio: Wonder Woman.
Hal: Okay... let's say Wonder Woman falls in love with you. And everyone else in the world didn't find her attractive. Mauricio: It wouldn't matter. Because I know they'd be wrong.
Hal: See! That's what I had with Rosemary! I saw a knockout, I don't care what anybody else saw!
Mauricio: You're right. I guess I really did screw you, huh?
I now doubt if financial freedom exists. Freedom exists, and sometimes our financial situation stops us from achieving it, but it's quite likely that it will work the other way too - that you would think it will liberate you, like Mauricio thought he was liberating Hal.
Learn
I've always loved learning, and thankfully there was no social media when I was a kid. I would take apart flashlights, dust our front gate for fingerprints, learn Morse code, and try to invent burglar alarms. The only time I didn't love learning was in school, or maybe it would be more accurate to say any learning in school happened entirely by accident when they were trying to teach obedience.
But outside of the circus of the academic system, learning something new always made me happy. When I wrote my list, I was reading 'The Design of Everyday Things' by Dan Norman, and doing a Google UX design course. I found myself less depressed when I was doing it, so I figured learning projects made me happy.
But I noticed that making learning a separate to-do list item had its limitations. It kept me sane, but it didn't seem to be enough.
Create
The act of creation for me was another broad goal. It's hard to pin down, but here's my definition:
Anything original that I can make
Any activity that results in a sum that is more than its parts
The opposite of reaction - not watching a movie and talking about it, or reading a book and recommending it. Sometimes it can start there, but if the ratio of time and effort is 80% consuming content and 20% commenting on it, that's not enough. It has to be at least 50% my own effort
If I did it right, I would learn as well, just that it would be learning by doing.
I wrote this post in the same order in which I thought of these things. I thought freedom was the starting point, and financial freedom would free me up to do the other two things, but I now suspect it's the other way around.
If I can learn, create, and learn to be free, by redefining what freedom means, I think I can be happy. I don't think I need to pay off all my loans and build a retirement corpus with the exact mix of investments recommended by finance bros.
Here's my updated Venn diagram:
How did all this work out in practice? I think I did alright, all things considered. Going forward, I'm not thinking of learn-create-freedom as goals to achieve, but checkboxes to tick every day.
If I get 1/3, I can trudge along. If I get 2, I can live with myself. If I get all 3 right, that's a good day.
Journey before destination.