Adventurous Mom

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Ulti­mate Lifestyle Design: How Are You Wast­ing Spend­ing Your Time?

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As an avid Lifestyle Design fanatic, I have to admit, I have been bug­ging all of my Face­book and twit­ter friends about this topic.  I ask them, Which would you rather have? Time or Money? To which 99% reply, they’d rather have more TIME.

So my fol­low up ques­tion is, What is stand­ing in the way of your abil­ity to get more TIME? To which they all respond: Money or My Job.  So it seems to me that most peo­ple draw the con­clu­sion that inevitably TIME = MONEY.  But is this really true?

Retir­ing

As I write this post, my won­der­ful father will be retir­ing in less than a week after hav­ing “served” the phone com­pany for most of his adult life, 39 years to be exact.  Started as a line­man and worked his way up into impor­tant man­age­ment posi­tions.  I am so proud of my dad for mak­ing the deci­sion to retire.  They are finan­cially secure and will have their house paid off in less than 2 months! A mon­u­men­tal undertaking!

I said to him, “You know, you’re the last of a dying breed.”  He acknowl­edged and said that not many who retire after him will be receiv­ing a pen­sion and excel­lent ben­e­fits.  This rep­re­sented a major turn in our country’s work his­tory going from Defined Ben­e­fits (Pen­sions) to Deferred Con­tri­bu­tions (401Ks and the like).  I guess my dad was one of the lucky ones, but he cer­tainly did sac­ri­fice a lot to get to this reward.  But I do also know that part of him is ter­ri­fied, not because of the money, but NOW, what does he do with his TIME??

What will be my rea­son to wake up in the morning?

“Kenz, [my dad’s nick­name for me] I just don’t know what my rea­son for wak­ing up in the morn­ing will be if I don’t go to work.”  Ugh! Just pulls at my heart strings, and of course, I men­tion 101 things he could do aside from he and my mother try­ing to kill each other for spend­ing too much time together.

Retire­ment depres­sion is so com­mon among new retirees, that AARP addresses this issue on their web­site.  Part of me is fear­ful that my dad will end up one of these sta­tis­tics.  These are some of the things that they men­tion that can curb retire­ment depression:

• What do I want to do? (Go back to school? Be a gourmet cook or mas­ter gar­dener? Start your own business?)
• Who do I want to do it with?
• What resources do I have?
• What resources would be avail­able in a new com­mu­nity if I choose to relocate?
• How can I make this happen?

Now hold on a sec­ond… When I read this list, I was flab­ber­gasted!!  Why are we not doing this NOW? Why don’t we ask our­selves these very reflec­tive ques­tions today?  Do we have to wait until we retire old to ask our­selves these questions…especially this one:  How can I make it happen?

Oppor­tu­nity Cost

I recently read a great book by a won­der­ful Author, Tisa L. Sil­ver, MBA enti­tled The Time Value of Life.  Tisa was an esteemed finance pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware’s Alfred E. Lerner Col­lege of Busi­ness and Eco­nom­ics, and unlike many pro­fes­sors, takes a dif­fer­ent (read: refresh­ing) approach in her view on money.  In her book, she looks at sev­eral fac­tors that play into the time value of money and then also explains why our time is so precious.

I obvi­ously agree with her argu­ment that, money is a renew­able resource and time is not, “Time can be spent but only money can be replaced” (Sil­ver).  And one inter­est­ing con­cept that relates to both time and money is “Oppor­tu­nity Cost.”  In money terms, if you invest in a bond or other invest­ment, you’re giv­ing up your money for a cer­tain period of time for some­one to use it, and you for­feit any other ben­e­fit that you may have received by using that money in other invest­ments (or to spend on yourself).

Time works the same way. There is an oppor­tu­nity cost to time.  When we spend our time being angry we are for­feit­ing our time that we could be using being joy­ous, happy, silly, or even indif­fer­ent.  Even more delib­er­ate than that, when we choose to spend our time doing what we feel is an oblig­a­tion rather than a choice; we for­feit our time to do what we choose.

So there are choices with how you spend your time, every minute you spend holds an oppor­tu­nity cost.  Where and how are you spend­ing your oppor­tu­nity minutes?

If Only’s and Once I’s

Do you do this?  Do you wish for some­thing so badly and then once you get it, the result did not make you feel the way you thought it would?

Sil­ver calls these fal­lacy state­ments, I call them “If Only’s and Once I’s”.  We have all been vic­tim of these state­ments.  I remem­ber my hus­band early in our mar­riage would say, “Once I become a police offi­cer then every­thing will be alright, and I’ll be happy…finally.”  Take a guess at what hap­pened.  Yep, he was the same per­son, no more or less happy!

Do you say this to yourself?

• Once I get that really nice sports car, then I’ll feel good about myself.
• If only I had more money then I’d be happier.
• Once the kids get older, then I’ll have more free time.

Fal­lacy state­ments do not allow us to spring into action, instead we wait for the “per­fect tim­ing” of an occur­rence, or we wait for the occur­rence to hap­pen to us rather than go after it.  We give up our power to be present in the NOW when we use fal­lacy state­ments.  We would rather focus on wish­ful future events, rather than appre­ci­ate what we have in front of us.

How DO you Trade your Time?

I know what is true for me that I make a hor­ri­ble employee, and pre­fer entre­pre­neur­ship.  But I know a lot of peo­ple that LOVE their jobs and they make great employ­ees, this is how they choose to trade their time, for money, and I think that is won­der­ful!  I am not in the busi­ness to tell peo­ple to quit their jobs.

For these, the oppor­tu­nity cost is a fair trade.  They love what they’re spend­ing their time doing at work, and gladly col­lect money for doing it. In fact, time seems to breeze by, they feel free in their life, and they don’t nec­es­sar­ily feel their time is being sucked dry.

There are, how­ever, far more peo­ple that are mis­er­able, hate their jobs and the oppor­tu­nity trade off does not seem fair in their book.  So then what?

The Tim­ing is Never Right

You have options about how to spend your time, good and bad.  If you’re spend­ing it in a way that is not con­sis­tent with a fair oppor­tu­nity trade, then you have a choice to change it.  Some­times it seems impos­si­ble, but you do have choices.

One of my favorite reads, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim­o­thy Fer­riss, tack­les this very issue of decid­ing when the time is right.  He describes the time he asked his mother about how she timed when she would have a baby, to which his mother responded, “We fig­ured we would do it at some point, the tim­ing is never per­fect to have a baby”.

I can cer­tainly attest to this one…and not just one baby, two!  My older son was a sur­prise pack­age when we least expected him, and our younger son came right before I was start­ing our mega ven­ture busi­ness.  The tim­ing was so wrong for both of them, but if I waited until it was right, I likely would have no kids!!  Yet I sur­vived and real­ized that my worst case sce­nar­ios never usu­ally manifest.

So with this in mind, are you wait­ing for per­fect con­di­tions to change?  Are you wait­ing for some­one else to tell you what to do you get your act in gear?  You can do it the Band-Aid method, make it fast, and let it hurt for a few min­utes until the sting­ing stops.  Or like jump­ing into a cold pool, it is numb­ingly shock­ing, but then you warm up to it.

Every Day Opportunities

While my dad was one of the “lucky” ones to retire with a pen­sion, he sac­ri­ficed a lot of time to get him to where he is at today. In fact my mom will argue that he was a work-a-holic.  He did not know any dif­fer­ent, it was in his pro­gram­ming.  He is now faced with a totally for­eign chal­lenge, and that is to learn to have, do or be what he loves!  Yet, what he did not real­ize all a long, is that he could have cho­sen that path every day!!

Which path are you on? One that mis­uses your oppor­tu­nity cost?  Or one to HAVE, DO and BE what­ever you desire?

Leave a com­ment below and let me know!!

Many adven­tures to you!!

What an excit­ing week it has been for me! So many great things going on.  I recently did an inter­view with a great entre­pre­neur: Josh Roa, The 80 Day Millionaire!

Stop By to Read My Interview

I know what you’re think­ing 80 Days?  Well, I have to tell you that it’s been done before, and this young man’s per­se­ver­ance is absolutely inspir­ing, he is doc­u­ment­ing his every step in his Blog! I have no doubt that 2010 will be an amaz­ing year for him!

So my ques­tion for you in 2010 is: Are you cre­at­ing worth­while goals? Are you aspir­ing to be your great­est like Josh, or are you just cre­at­ing goals so that you won’t fail?

Stop by his blog and lis­ten to my inter­view.  I divulge a lot of infor­ma­tion about me and my businesses!

Josh Roa — The 80 Day Millionaire

In a pre­vi­ous post, I dis­cussed my fer­vent pas­sion about pro­tect­ing my time after I real­ized that our time here is so lim­ited.  And as we go into the New Year, I plan to fur­ther empha­size how impor­tant I really feel like this idea is.

I first wanted to share a life les­son that I encoun­tered early.  I know that most peo­ple have expe­ri­enced friends or fam­ily mem­bers that have passed away at some point in their life and I have too.  But one per­son that affected me greatly, was a per­son that I didn’t even know.

A Hard Les­son at 21

I was 21, and it was Thanksgiving-eve.  It was another shift on my para­medic intern­ship, and I was respond­ing to a call for a “man down”.  We got these calls occa­sion­ally, and usu­ally it was a tran­sient passed out on the cor­ner.  This call was about 11:30 in the evening and it was rain­ing and cold out­side.  The call was for a man down in the street.  We drove around in cir­cles for close to 15 min­utes at the loca­tion of the described area.  We couldn’t find him.  Then we saw a bystander wav­ing us down.

In the mid­dle of the street there was a young man, face down, he appeared have been skate­board­ing and fell.  He didn’t appear injured except that he was not respond­ing and his breath­ing was very irreg­u­lar, he also was lay­ing in a pool of vomit.  We had to put a breath­ing tube into this throat to help him breathe bet­ter, bystanders said he had a dog with him and was walk­ing his dog.

We did what we could med­ically to help him and trans­ported him to the near­est trauma room.  He died later of a mas­sive brain injury.  He was 25.  My fiance (soon to be hus­band) at the time was 25 too…they looked the same. That really both­ered me.  I don’t even remem­ber the man’s name.

You don’t expect at first to be asked to try save some­one your age when you are that young (and fail).  For me, still in my early for­ma­tive years, it was a hard and fast les­son:  LIFE IS SHORT.

Up to then, I had only seen old faces pass away. Since then, I have seen faces of all ages leave.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part II of “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” we explore find­ing your niche…or what really inspires you.

[I write this for one of my very tal­ented friends that could do almost any­thing but she is strug­gling with find­ing that “niche”. ]

Inevitably I was fooled by think­ing that when one grad­u­ates col­lege, or even high school, that the fairy-career-mother strikes you over the head with what you are des­tined to be for the rest of your life.  This has never hap­pened to me, and from my dis­cus­sions with all of my 20–50 year old  peers, this is not the case for them either.

Don’t Always Fol­low the Leaders

My dad has worked at AT&T for his entire career.  He is the excep­tion not the rule.  My mom on the other hand has worked in quite pos­si­bly every indus­try there is: Amway, Real Estate, UPS, Finance Bro­ker­age, even Taco Bell.  There may not be just ONE right career or busi­ness for your, but maybe several.

Minds change, soci­eties change and so do economies.  Think­ing that you will be in one career or busi­ness for the rest of your life may lead to per­pet­ual dis­ap­point­ment.  Your career or your busi­ness might some­day be extinct is another possibility.

In the early 1900’s, the type­writer man­u­fac­tur­ers and busi­nesses were liv­ing high on their prof­its.  Lit­tle did they know that just a few decades later, the basic word proces­sors would become extrav­a­gantly pop­u­lar.  Oh but that’s just a fad! Or so they thought.

The need for telegrams – extinct as the tele­phones and faxes became more preva­lent.  Med­ical tran­scrip­tion­ists? Maybe soon to be extinct as voice tran­scrip­tion tech­nol­ogy is improving.

Don’t get stuck on one idea as the end-all-be-all.  Be as flex­i­ble as the kelp in the ocean, flow­ing with the tide…and ready to break free and catch the wave to the shore.

I want to stress that, it is impor­tant to be adapt­able, and adjust to the cur­rent mar­ket.   It doesn’t mean you won’t be doing what you love; just keep your eyes open for the oppor­tu­ni­ties instead of stuck on ONE idea.

Be Like  a Blackberry

As Wal­lace D. Wat­tles explains in his book “The Sci­ence of Get­ting Rich” ,  you must pro­vide more in use value than you receive in Cash value.  Is the niche that you are look­ing at get­ting into going to pro­vide more to your employer or your cus­tomers than maybe you receive in cash?

At first I thought his think­ing was back­ward, “Um hello?  I need to get paid too!”  But it is a very sim­ple philosophy.

I like to take for exam­ple my Black­berry.  I paid $100 for my black­berry plus a monthly fee.  I could argue that my black­berry is worth many times that amount because the use value that I receive is far greater than the actual value.  I can’t count how many times I have been able to close a deal, or keep big dis­as­ters from occur­ring because I had my lit­tle infor­ma­tion por­tal attached to my hip.  So my thought is that the black­berry is worth far more than the $100 and the monthly fee that I pay for the service.

Ask your­self, what skills or knowl­edge do I have that is worth value?  Is my employer or my cus­tomer in need of the value that I can pro­vide them?  What am I really good at doing?

Phone a Friend

Every­one knows the old adage about opinions….everyone has one?  Yet, lis­ten intently on what your friends, cowork­ers, or fam­i­lies are say­ing about your tal­ents.  Are you great at bak­ing?  Are you great at strate­giz­ing? Can you sell ice to Eskimos?

The les­son here is that, although YOU may think you know what you are good at; it is dif­fi­cult to stand and view your own tal­ents from third person.

If you are truly try­ing to find your niche, maybe this is a good time to get oth­ers involved and seek feed­back regard­ing your tal­ents.  It could be as easy as send­ing out a sim­ple sur­vey ask­ing oth­ers to answer what they think are your tal­ents.  Don’t for­get to offer to buy them cof­fee for com­plet­ing it!

Find­ing your niche is a process that con­sid­ers the exter­nal envi­ron­ment and your inter­nal tal­ents.  With the right effort and some help from oth­ers, you may be on the right path to com­ing up with your Dream Life!

1. Unlucky peo­ple often fail to fol­low their intu­ition when mak­ing a choice, whereas lucky peo­ple tend to respect hunches. Lucky peo­ple are inter­ested in how they both think and feel about the var­i­ous options, rather than sim­ply look­ing at the ratio­nal side of the sit­u­a­tion. I think this helps them because gut feel­ings act as an alarm bell — a rea­son to con­sider a deci­sion carefully.
2. Unlucky peo­ple tend to be crea­tures of rou­tine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of peo­ple at par­ties. In con­trast, many lucky peo­ple try to intro­duce vari­ety into their lives. For exam­ple, one per­son described how he thought of a colour before arriv­ing at a party and then intro­duced him­self to peo­ple wear­ing that colour. This kind of behav­iour boosts the like­li­hood of chance oppor­tu­ni­ties by intro­duc­ing variety.
3. Lucky peo­ple tend to see the pos­i­tive side of their ill for­tune. They imag­ine how things could have been worse. In one inter­view, a lucky vol­un­teer arrived with his leg in a plas­ter cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheer­fully explained that he felt luck­ier than before. As he pointed out, he could have bro­ken his neck.