Living How I want

Accidentally, when I was searching about something in my notes, I went to the personal journal I had written on 2016.

It goes like this

13 October 2016:

“This is not the life I want to live, but neither this is not the life I wish to miss as

well. What I’m doing right now empowering myself in different knowledge in short time but yeah, not getting expertise answer but a small pinch to research more about it.

I’m sitting in a garden, I can see the tree branches moving around with the natural music which I can’t listen when I go back home.

It’s a third day I’m spending, what have learned?

....“

And there are few action points in the journal, one of it is

“Work in Holiday Visa”

When I read that, it put me back in the couch thinking about many things. If I have not able to do the action point, it would be like “okay, let’s move on or let’s see how to do that”. But when realising for the past 4 years I have been living the life on how I envisioned on 2016 that I don’t have an office or restricted by location or anything like before. It feels likes a big achievement. Materialistically, it’s not a big achievement, but the definition of achievement has changed. A simple life living on our terms.

As always, it’s God blessings. Praise to him. His blessings could be based on our effort as well. So do what does it take?

What does it take?

Time

It actually takes time to do everything we want. Just because I have written on action item, it didn’t happen in one year. But it took a few years with various experimentation to reach where I am now without I’m realising how time runs or things moved on.

I tried consulting, offline business, marketing technology writing, a bit of travel vlogs(recomposing out of boredom on covid time), building the SaaS business with my hardworking team. Everything need consistency and a lot of effort. But I do test into variety and identified what works for me.

And each of this business has a different timeline, different target audience, and different skills to add value. When I try certain things, there is a lot of learning time to master that skill as well. It really takes time and I can’t fasten everything.

Knowing the necessary

People have target of few hundred thousands, few thousands, millions. Anybody can have their target of any size. It’s important I calculate the necessary and design the life accordingly. If I try to live a lavish lifestyle with few thousand, then my fuel will be gone in few months.

Knowing the necessary also helps me to be content with what I have. And also allow me to make decisions easily.

Example: When I decided I need consulting income of $such, I decide whether I need one client or 10 clients. And When I have that, I will stop doing activities to get more clients.

I have limited time. If I try to be more more clients, I will not have time for other things. Similar like how I want to travel, I had liking to read books in non-fiction. Hence, when I’m being strict on few necessary things, I had time to read books and spend time with family.

Example of necessary: When I can only make this much money for next 3 months, I can cut down or increase different activities to live that life.

I decided to have 3 targets.

• One is necessary(maybe few thousands) (Necessary = Me + Close family)
• Second is good enough (that provide necessary + allows you to save + Invest small)
• Third is excellent (that covers the second + More to Invest in own business / crowdfunding / REIT / Gold)
• Knowing what is necessary and discipline to live in that limit gives me peace of mind to spend the additional amount on other things.

Sacrifices

Until 2019 I was single, so I was able to take the risk to resign and live a simple life to focus on business and getting the financial backup to live how I wanted. As a typical Indian family, dependancies to take care of them is always there. But after marriage as well, thankfully I got my wife on the same wavelength on how I wanted to live. This also means changing their lifestyle as well. Meaning not to live a meagre life. But aligning on the priorities for the current time. This means lot of sacrifices. Sacrifices here is you cut down one thing to make the other grow and have stability. We clarified it, it’s about focusing on business and seeding our efforts in multiple avenues.

1. Diversify our income sources to have more stability. This also takes time to do it. Years.?
2. Savings for the rainy days. It was a bit of struggle on the 2nd year when I didn’t carefully save it and was optimistic about the future. But start of the year I decided I never want to be in that stage, so we banged on this more for all things missed out. My operational cost is small, and So I try to reserve for a 6months—1 year run rate. This peace of mind would really help to try other risks.?
3. Spending on experiences but not materialistic for now. The itch to shop for every human is high. We were careful on how we spend our money, so it doesn’t disturb our travel plans.?

Ignoring Society Pressure

This heavily takes up the mind space, especially living in India or say your country where lot of people knows you. They have expectations about you and keep asking about it whenever you meet them. I have shared a lot about those before here.(but the site is not working for now)

The only attitude I need to have to cross through that stage is “I don’t care”. Hard to explain everything here, but don’t discount this society pressure, it can disturb your mind space.

Discipline

All the things we have seen above need a consistent effort and high discipline to track each of them. Every so often, it’s easy to get distracted, but it’s fine. Just go back and execute everything you missed on the distraction time. This is the mindset I have. So if I find on a night or daytime I had a good productivity, I deprioritise everything and continue to bang them on it more. Lot of people have good discipline, do certain work every day. I don’t think I crafted it that well. So, I go extended hours of time on a certain day to balance out what I missed executing on other days.

Example: When I make videos(Product, Academy), I try to do more on that day itself. When I’m doing sales work for Tradly, I try to do more on that day itself. When I am doing marketing consulting work, I try to do more on that day itself. It’s because if I get up from the chair and walk on, plenty of things to distract me. You can replace the days with week for something that need week focus. And Can replace weeks with month for something that month of focus and effort to get it running.

Thanks to Apple for their recent work/sleep notification stopper that avoid notifications when I am working. And my wife, who give space for me to work without distraction. The small sacrifices we make will be balanced with the reward of travel.

My next goal is building tradly into a self-serving successful creator software that allow people to run their business. So, my work / travel dream action point took 2-3 years to start the life and another 2 years to get a bit of stability on the cash flow. And with the same mindset, it’s going to take a few years for Tradly as well.

We just need to work, It takes time and reward comes as per God’s Plan. He is the knower of everything.?