Wow, what a day. Got up at about 2pm, ran some errands, did my laundry and then pondered the question: what to do in September?
So in the practice of inevitability thinking I had let my landlord know that I would be vacating my place at the end of August. I did this to push myself forward into action to do what I had to do.
And so today, I did. I sat down and worked out where my life is at and where it is headed. It was all very confusing for the first 4 hours. BUT, then I remembered… to ask myself if what I was doing (or planning to do) was taking me towards or away from my goals.
So I reviewed my big goals for this year:
- Grow my business by 10-20 times by the end of the year.
- Get in better shape. Take up some more physical activities.
- Grow and nurture my social circle.
- Travel and have a lot of fun.
- Move towards a 4 hour work week lifestyle.
My recent stay in Sydney showed me that I really could live a 4 hour work week lifestyle – I think I did all of one day’s worth of work while I was there, and my income stayed constant. However, this goes against my number one goal of growing my business.
My original plan for September was to jump ship to Buenos Aires and learn some Spanish. After some online investigating and talking to some people who have lived there recently, the plan fell apart. A typical week in Buenos Aires would have looked something like this:
Monday – get up, language class, Spanish Study, bit of work, go out.
Tuesday – get up, language class, Spanish Study, bit of work, go out.
… and the same thing all the way through Friday. Saturday and Sunday would be going out all day and running personal errands.
I feel that if I’m going to spend an extended period of time in a given country, I want to take the time to absorb the culture and language. There’s no point moving somewhere and then trying to live like an Australian/American.
When I tallied up the potential working hours, it came out at about 5-6 hours a week of solid, interruption-free work time. I know from my recent Sydney trip and past experience that 5-6 hours is enough to maintain my business, but not to grow it. So… moving to BA violates big goal number one, so it’s off the list. Which is a bit of a downer as I was completely excited about it and told everyone I was moving haha.
Option number two is travel-and-work. This would be mostly around the US and UK, so the language barrier is a non-issue. This means more time to work on my business, and still get to see the sights and travel and have fun. The financial cost of travelling on the road, staying in nice hotels and so on and so forth would work out to about $7,000-$10,000 a month, at least from what I could dig up online. While I could make this work, for some reason spending that much money seems somewhat excessive, especially because it focusses mainly on goal #4 and is not conducive to goals #2 and #3, and only partially to #1 (it would take a lot of discipline to sit in a hotel room and work for 5 hours straight).
Option number three is to stay in San Francisco. This actually makes quite a bit of sense. Financially, my cost of living remains the same. I’ll be able to hit up goals #1-3 & #5 easily, and if I take weekend trips domestically or to Canada then I’ll get some #4 in there too. To make this happen I would have to: let my landlord know that I’m staying (or find a new place), really hammer down and focus on developing my business (i.e., set more aggressive goals and targets), and spend more time just going out and having fun. I should also keep in mind that I still do want to travel the world, and that I want to do it on my terms. So… I also need to decide where I’m headed next year (which, ironically was my original plan at the start of this year, but more on this below), and start preparing for that.
Which brings me to something interesting. My two big “impulse” decisions to jet off in September this year were largely fuelled by a couple of friends who were all about “let’s go overseas and have fun!”. One of them did, albeit a few months early and is now enjoying himself living in East Asia. The other has decided to take a different path in life, and hasn’t really decided where he wants to go. For me, this says something pretty revealing: I got caught up in the excitement of the moment, and didn’t plan accordingly. I’ve realised that decisions like these really need to be made on an individual basis. I need to decide what I want to do, and work on my own schedule (I hate to say it, but most people are pretty unreliable). My trip planning for next year will follow this philosophy.
- Aaron P
