It happened again. I had lunch with an ex-colleague back from that phase in my life when I served my corporate duties and built up the foundation of my finances.
TACOMOB: “How are you?”
CORPORATE WARRIOR (CW): “Busy.”
TACOMOB: “Busy with what?”
CW: “Busy with work, what else?”
TACOMOB: “Why are you not busy with life?”
CW: “Actually, I am busy all of the time.”
TACOMOB: “What are you doing outside of work to keep yourself so busy?”
CW: “What do you mean?”
TACOMOB: “Well, for example are you keeping yourself ‘busy’ with taking care of your own business?”
Get Up and Evolve
CW: “My own business? I don’t have any business of my own.”
TACOMOB: “Yes, you do. Everybody does. It’s just that not many people are consciously aware of it because they are always so busy working for other people. You see – to put it bluntly – being busy is a form of laziness. It is lazy thinking that results in aimless and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a cover for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.”
CW: “But I have hardly any time for my own business.”
TACOMOB: “Really? Could it be that you use your busyness to stroke your ego? That you work all day and fill your free time with additional activities because you’re ‘important’ and no one else can do what you do?”
CW: “Yeah, well, there is a bit of truth in that. But this busyness, this being in demand gives my life some meaning. It serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness.”
TACOMOB: “Ok, and would you agree that what you choose to work on is far more important than how hard you work?”
CW: “Yes, that makes sense. Often, I just don’t have a choice though.”
TACOMOB: “Whaaat? Are you out of control? We always have a choice in life, we just have to deal with the consequences and make conscious decisions. Those kinds of decisions that are harder and less comfortable but much more rewarding. I made a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since you can always make more money and time is non-renewable.”
CW: “Choose time over money? Hmm, what do you mean by that?”
TACOMOB: “I have gotten myself out of that ‘personal time deficit crisis’. I made the conscious decision to live my life by design and not be default. I choose to use my extra time on Extracurricular Activities like learning stuff outside my comfort zone, sports, spending time with family and friends. Not via gadgets but real face to face interactions. And I chose to take care of my finances – the key to freedom. By the way the latter can – or should is a better word here – take up the least amount of time. I just say ‘Prospect Theory’. But that is a topic for another face to face interaction.”
CW: “So, what you are saying is, we work hard so we can retire and sit on the beach with our kids sometime in the indefinite future when in fact we can do that now when the kids are actually still kids and not grown-ups who do no longer want to sit on the beach with the parents.”
TACOMOB: “Exactly. It’s putting yourself back in control of your working hours to be able to work on your business – whatever that might be – and less in other people’s business.”
CW: “I got it, lack of time is lack of priorities.”
TACOMOB: “Yes, life is too short to be busy.”
“Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.” – Brian Andreas
“My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.” – Nassim Taleb