Full-Time Job + Side Projects
“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I agree with this quote. I find it hard to find the time it requires to allow me to work on my side projects.
The goal is to be able to have a full-time job and generate income on the side. The challenge is finding the balance between the two.
It would’ve been easier if I hated my job. But I don’t. When I’m at work – I’m at work. I’m fully engaged.
That means I’m not daydreaming or planning about how I’m going to eliminate all my current debts.
The only time I get to think about and act on it is at 3:30 AM, during my first cup of coffee.
But I only have about 15-minutes or so because I still need to get ready for work in addition to my morning ritual of reading and meditating.
Needless to say, the time I give it is very limited – which causes my progress to be super slow.
This is why I’m reading about [Energy Management] because I need to be more efficient if I wanted to get a lot of shit done in a very short amount of time.
Thought It Was "Productivity"
Read an article on [productivity] which made it clear to me that I wasn’t learning how to become “productive”.
What I was actually doing is learning how to manage my time and do my work more efficiently.
Well, as I said earlier, I need more time to work on my side projects. To create more time, I need to reduce “waste”.
I think I’m already efficient. The problem lies not on HOW I’m taking action but on my ABILITY TO ASSESS which action/task I need to do to move forward.
P.S. Scott H. Young is a productivity expert I look up to. His book [Ultralearning] will teach you how to make yourself more valuable as an employee. And uhh, he’s a UofM graduate. Man, if he can find success online, why can’t we?
Helplessness
When your child is sick, there isn’t much you can do but to make it less uncomfortable for them as much as you can – it takes an emotional and mental toll on you.
Lexi was sick. As new parents, that worried us – a lot – even though we know it’s “normal” for babies to get sick.
No one would want their child to suffer. If possible, I wanted to suck all that pain she’s feeling because I know I’m in much better shape to withstand it.
However, logically, I also know that she needed to go through that challenge to make her stronger. The more challenges we go through, the stronger we get.
It’s such a mindfk – on one end you wanna become a hero and save her from pain, while on the other end, you wanna become a coach to guide them to become better at handling the pain.
A Year Ago This Week
I wrote about…
- training other team members.
- testing the exercise I created to educate others using arts-n-crafts
- silencing the brain
[read here]
Goal Update
Personal Projects
Tested FB ads to promote my stuff. In 4 days, I have about 22% engagement on my article on insurance [see article here].
This requires further experimentation…
Apartment Ad on Kijiji – I acquired a few views but no one messaged me for further details. What does this tell me? People are just curious to learn more about the apartment. They don’t have any intent on taking it over.
Personalized Art Client work – one of my co-workers asked if I can create a personalized design for her family. Design is done but I’m still waiting for feedback. If this pulls through, I make $30 lol.
Life Insurance – I need to block some time out in my schedule next year to attend the set of training sessions. Life has been busy that it became hard to find work-life balance. While that sounds hard, it doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Health
My health is the same as my car battery – it is weak. The cold weather didn’t allow it to start. I need to exercise even for just 5-minutes, just something, anything, doesn’t matter.
Right now, the plan is to use Wednesday as my work-out day. The workout will only last for 10-minutes max.
While 10-minutes sound like a waste of time, I needed to make it easy and enjoyable for me. The real goal here is to add exercise to my daily routine (not to lose weight). #longtermthinking
I attempted to do this last year and probably the year before. But time and time again, I failed lol. This means I need to find a better solution or perhaps it’s not as important to me?
Finance
Well, did some budgeting again this week and it seems like it would take us about 1.5 years to pay off our current debts.
An interesting comment from my sister’s co-worker which I found to be a debilitating belief. She goes, “In life, we’re always going to have debts”.
Now that may be true in a way but at the same time, it’s also the same mentality that would bury us further down with debts.
Believing in it will make owing money and acquiring more debts more comfortable as opposed to working your butt-off trying to eliminate it forever.
I understand it’s hard, but try anyway…