Living life without a working a dayjob…
Posted on March 4, 2009
For many (myself included) this is the holy grail. Somehow, someday, being able to work on stuff you love (or not work at all), yet still having more than enough income to cover the bills, and plan for our futures.
Right now, I have a day job again. I’ve had a few periods in my life where I’ve retreated from full time employment into the various realms of the self employed or the contractor, but I always seem to regress to full time employment (often due to fiscal pressures).
The sort of work I’ve taken on in the past has pretty much always been hourly rate based – I work X hours, I get paid X times $Y. Which is fine, but it’s not really the sort of thing that builds a self-sustaining business.
To be honest, neither are the fields I’m looking at now, at least not directly. However, my focus is on enjoying my life, not living in the lap of luxury. The important thing, for me, is that I’ll be living the life I want to be living more fully, not deferring my life until the weekends while I work enough to pay the bills.
For now, the photography and consulting I’m working on is part time, while I build up skills and contacts. This also, of course, limits the number of hours I have available for it, forcing me to focus my attentions and work more intelligently – smarter, not harder.
The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
While working 4 hours a week isn’t my goal as such, this book has a wealth of information about how to work efficiently, to focus on the things that really matter and out-source the rest (or even, simply don’t do it). Using virtual assistants and offices combined with professional call minding services and internet based collaboration tools, we can now optimise our days to the point where we only have to work on the things that we actively enjoy, that will really move us in the direction we want to be heading.
A lot of the information in this book focuses on the sort of business you can build up and then (mostly) ignore, but that’s not the way I want to live. As part of it, I’ll be working on stuff to bring in residuals, which I’d like to grow over time, but the prime focus will be on growing the core of the respective businesses. I honestly think that I’d be far less satisfied if I wasn’t working at something, I’d just vastly prefer that it be something I enjoy at least as much as I once enjoyed working in the pure IT space. For me, that means variety, which is why I’m focussing my attentions on more than one area (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). I know I tend towards procrastination at times (hell, just look at my posting history here), so if I’m going to procrastinate, I should do so on something else which has income potential.
The aim is to get to a stage where the day-job becomes surplus to requirements – where photography and a bit of consulting, even worked part time, have proven out their ability to maintain my chosen lifestyle. It’s not something that I expect to happen straight away. What I do know, is that it will never happen if I don’t start properly, and while time is limited, properly means efficiently.
And efficiency is what Tim Ferriss is all about.
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