Points of Contrast

The entry ticket of the community you are a part of goes up if the choices the collective choices they have made were good business ideas. This can limit the ideas you can choose to focus on if you want to be a part of those communities. To eat in the restaurants people eat in, send children to certain schools, or live where and how they live. 

It is easy to say, “don’t judge yourself based on your peers”, but it can get more practical than that. Going to visit a friend for dinner, you can’t help but see their comparative lifestyle. It is more challenging to see the whole picture. We only see what is conspicuous, and process the immediate points of comparison we notice or pay attention to. It can be difficult to hold on to your values and choices when spending decisions become joint decisions because of peer pressure. 

Part of stilling waves of anxiety, is realising that each wave is not the only wave. Each thought is not the only thought. There are others. The thing you are aware of in a particular moment will pass. 

When I stopped working and starting writing and thinking about non-monentary things, I realised that most of my friends were happy, but they had made a wide variety of choices with trade offs and consequences. Every opportunity you take, closes the door to other opportunities. Keeping all your options open can mean not actually experiencing any of those options. We can’t do everything. 

The other realisation I had was that there are a whole bunch of people who aren’t even in the position to question their choices. What can happen if you are solely focused on financing your own choices, is you can forget about the hills in Umlazi. Other bubbles are out of sight and out of mind. The nature of global apartheid is that not everyone has the same opportunity.

Imagining a Post Work World

In order to consider a “post-work” world, I had to do some reading about minimalism, and explore the reasons why we get tied into expensive lifestyles. 

The default can be to commit to paying off the debt of expenses that end up controlling us. Each spending decision has unintended consequences. Minimalism doesn’t mean you don’t like the thing you don’t buy. It isn’t a case of “I don’t want it”... normally you do want it. The better question is, “in the broader context, is it worth it?”. 

At the time when I stopped working, I was single, and I had no dependents. I believed I could sustain paying for the things I valued if I held a broader context in mind. 

I get quite defensive of the younger version of me. The problem with being contrarian, and doing something that is different, is that almost everyone tells you that you are wrong before you do the thing that is different. Still, I took my shot. So, when I had to go back to work, there was an awareness of the obvious and plentiful, I-told-you-so retorts. 

The world is complicated. Plans change. I still believe it is possible to live off capital in a post-work world. There are consequences. I learnt a lot in my 6 years of attempting to step away from the world of money. So, I try and be compassionate to the younger version of Trevor that stopped working. 

I still think strategizing around how to release ourselves from the constraints of how to make money is something worth giving energy to. I still want to figure out a way to direct less of my time and energy to thinking about money. What I did realise about a year and a half in what just how fortunate my bubble of friends and colleagues were. 

There are obviously stresses, but decisions have consequences. There are tradeoffs. People make choices. Honestly reflecting on choices and constraints is a privilege.

Contrarian Choices

Being Conspicuous

There is a wrestle with the way people dole out respect. It is trite to say “don’t care what people think about you”, but umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person through other people). 

Even the most hardcore libertarian has to make agreements to engage with the world. That involves a meeting of minds. That involves respect, trust, and trade-offs. 

Now if you are wrestling for respect using conspicuous “success” that doesn’t resonate with you, it can be hollow. I sometimes get resentful when I do get recognition. 

When the thing being recognised is actually a trade-off I am making, and not what really drives me. When I meet the productive targets of others, but they don’t see me. 

They don’t see the inconspicuous, hidden, hard to communicate ways I am creating meaning. It can then be frustrating when the only time I get seen is when I am doing the things I need to do. 

Joint decision making is hard. Really seeing each other is even harder. 

“Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to.” (Marcus Tullius – Braveheart)

Time and Energy

Freedom is not the absence of constraints. It is a sense of autonomy and consent. The ability to make decisions. The feeling that you are seen, and matter. All decisions are made inside containers and with consequences. How much do you value time? How much do you value being paid a lot? Many of the ways to make lots of money will consume your time and energy on problems that are not your priority. It's not about you. 

You can get to a situation where weekends and holidays are where you get access to your community. Where your job becomes your weight-of-time-and-energy community, and your life. Be honest about what the life you are designing will really look like. Speak to as many people as possible who are doing what it is you think you want to do. Map it out. See what the barriers and trade-offs are for you. Have honest conversations about the advantages and disadvantages of the paths you are considering. 

As you go through life, there are people at similar stages to you who make different choices. Then a few years later, their stage will no longer be similar. Yet we will only see the conspicuous. Tangible success is easy to share. We are not completely open and authentic about each other’s struggles. Partly because we only have so much emotional capacity. We are dealing with our own stuff. Opening up is a “call to arms”, and so the barriers we put up make a lot of sense. Trusting and allowing each other to deal with our personal struggles, and shout only if necessary.

Source and Use 

of Energy

Eagle's Nest

Wealth can create an Eagle Nest problem. As wealth compounds, and salaries and capital grow, the target at the end stretches. Not just what we are accustomed to, but the lifestyle to which we aspire. Ironically, unless wealthy parents do give their children capital starts or income support, they are going to limit the life choices those children can make. 

If they want to match the lifestyle of their parents and community, they are going to have to choose from income generating options with kick. You can’t be a dancer, artist, social worker, or anything that is difficult to monetise unless you have outside financial support. If you want a certain lifestyle, you must fund that lifestyle. The higher that is, the more difficult it is to jump from the nest. 

Without a jump-starting buffer or introductions and networks for risky new businesses, you are going to have to choose high-paying (limited supply) STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) professions. The irony is that if your family doesn’t have lots of money and your community does not spend a lot, there may be more options for financial freedom available to you. You can choose a lifestyle that is not conspicuous in its spending. 

When you choose what you value, and develop the areas you find pleasure... you can look towards things that do not cost a lot. High prices relate to scarcity. If you want things most people can’t have, and you are the one paying, that is going to have consequences for the choices you can make.

Bald Eagles

Half Squash

Every decision has trade-offs and constraints. It is nice to believe we can identify and avoid all the things we don’t like and hide them under an upturned Gem Squash. It is nice to believe we could all run the 100 metres in under 10 seconds if we really put our mind to it. We can’t. As Cicero said in the Gladiator, “Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to.” Brutal honesty combined with some optimism and belief in small, achievable goals can gradually disempower constraints. Given time and application. Facing harsh realities can be done with kindness. We can build buffers to soften blows. To give us recovery time. To allow us to build flexibility and strength. We can chip away at reality, and change it. But every journey starts where you are. 

You can't hide the bits you don't like under the Gem Squash

 

Messy Trade-offs

Sometimes you have to do things. If you are fortunate, what you have to do depends on what you want to do. There are realities to accept once you have figured out what you want. Trade-offs. Each opportunity taken closes doors to other opportunities. The tricky bit is negotiating through complex competing relationships and trade-offs. The deeper your network of meaningful connections, the more you have to take into account the desires of others. A lot of my anxiety comes from the managing of expectations. If no one expects anything of you, and your actions do not impact anyone else, then you can do what you want. If you cut yourself off from the world. If you engage, it is messy. A friend of mine took this approach when he started work. He said, “you have to do a good enough job that you don’t get fired, but not so good that they come back”. It is comfortable under the radar. That strategy did not last long. Eventually, he wanted to engage, and people started coming back. A life worth living is messy.

Under the Radar

Getting Paid

Money is made by solving problems for decision-makers with money. Desire to solve those problems is not enough. You need the skills and knowledge to be able to deliver. To do that, you need training/studying. You also need the decision-maker to choose you specifically. There will normally be others who can solve the problem too. How many others is the key factor in how much you get paid. It is not about you. It is about the supply of problem solvers, and demand for problem-solving. Beyond merit (skills and knowledge), the two other key factors are capital and containers. Capital buys you time to build skills and knowledge. Ideally, you can build while earning, but often there is a trade-off. Time to learn. Time to earn. The container is the barriers to entry that make it worth your while. The container is the “rubber hits the road” way to get paid. You can spend years developing merit, but if there is no container to fit that into a countable “product” where an ask meets an offer, there will be no reward.

Where the rubber hits the road

Path Dependent

Learning is path dependent. There is a real risk of Group Hypnosis on the path. Money and meaning are made in containers. Within constraints. With shape and form. It takes time and effort to build these containers. The things we care about, may be connected to things we don’t care about. Things we used to care about. Perhaps even things we think are wrong. We don’t get to pick and choose everything to be exactly as we want it to be. There are trade offs and concessions. We cloak the truth in a shared story or interpretation. There may come a point at which pointing out that the Emperor is wearing no clothes becomes worthwhile. Before that, it may be fine to have a naked ego maniac playing bossman if it doesn’t mess up the things you care about. When he suggests strip poker to take the things you care about, it becomes a little too obvious. Somehow, we need to detach and keep learning rather than defending our container. While still defending the people we care about in the containers. 

Holding the Flood

Money anxiety has the ability to flood our minds. This can be long-term stress where we don’t know how to overcome the barriers to the income required to fund the consumption dictated by our vision of what our lives should look like. The homes we want. The holidays. The entertainment. The fashion. The signals of conspicuous success. It can be stress about the trade-offs, even if we can over come those barriers. Habitual work for money consuming every morsel of energy we possess. It can also be short term anxiety. More immediate. Where the financial waves make our decisions as we hop from crisis to crisis. With brief gasps of air in between bills, or the rising damp of debt nibbling at our foundations. Before controlled movement, comes calm. Finding a path to stillness.

Holding the Flood

Navigating the Madness

Decisions aren’t made in isolation. Value is relative and dependent on both how we see the world, and how the person we are interacting with sees the world. Our options depend on their options. There are trade-offs and unintended consequences. Actions have reactions. One thing changing means everything else ripples. How do we end up navigating our way through this complexity? One way is empowering decision makers and reducing the size of those decisions. More decisions. Smaller decisions. More awareness. More transparency. More commitment to a feedback loop. The world is noisy and ambiguous, but we can each adapt and adjust to accommodate change if it is small and we are willing. The beauty of markets, trade, and prices are they don’t reflect permanent value. They reflect agreement. When two informed decision makers engage and consensually support each other through exchange. Voluntary, autonomous, sustainable relationships.

Complex Decisions

In Context

I don’t’ write Blank Cheques. Every decision has trade-offs. Having been born into Apartheid South Africa, I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of abundance. Scarcity is real. This means you can want something, but still not get it, because the price is too high. Everything, has a price that is too high. That doesn’t mean you don’t value “the thing”. That you don’t see the value. That you don’t have the desire. In isolation, every story can be incredibly powerful. But to understand something you have to understand the constraints. You have to understand the context. You have to mitigate for unintended consequences. No single decision stands alone. Unless it is literally the only thing that matters to you.

Horsepower

Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Not all good business ideas are good ideas. We can’t reduce a complex world down to clear decisions that don’t have trade-offs, and uncertainty. Decisions have consequences. Within businesses, this complexity can be left to the judgement of those where authority lies. Businesses have Cost Centres, and Profit Centres. Things that don’t bring in money, but are still considered ambiguously worth it. Maybe even considered the Core Purpose. The Profit Centres are the Engine. Print Media has gone through the disruption of having its Engine removed. Quality Content was the Core Purpose. But Advertising was the Engine. Search and Social Media swooped in. Now lots of people produce content (of ambiguous quality) for almost free. I have written over 2,400 posts in the last 5 years for £23.44. Except I don’t get paid till that hits £60. Don’t hold your breath. I’m not. No one clicks on my ads. It is important to work towards a detached Engine, so that your purpose doesn’t get its financing removed if the rules change.

Generating Power

Still the Waves

Spending decisions always require trade-offs. Economics is the study of scarcity. It is a Social Science. Value is determined at an individual and community level and can’t be reduced to numbers. That doesn’t stop people trying, but all the quantifying and modeling are, are attempts to simplify incredibly fuzzy comparisons, moods, desires, beliefs and relationships. One of the biggest obstacles to building Capital is that there are always things that shout and scream for attention. Often unplanned expenses that insist they are more important NOW than building a theoretical Engine. We are natural-born consumers, and the idea of becoming custodians fights with clear and present dangers. That is why Capital building starts with a Buffer. Something to still the financial waves. An Emergency Fund that can be repaired when the unexpected bites at it, so that the Engine can be built unmolested. Start with a Buffer. Start with space to breathe.