Posted by Canadian Dream on April 1, 2010
I recall taking a time management course a few years back that pointed out most things in life are either important and/or urgent. The urgent stuff usually gets done first, regardless of if it is important. For example, do you check your email right after you get a new message at work? 95% of the time it’s only urgent in your mind yet not important to do. So we fill our lives with the little things like checking email meanwhile what is important but not urgent languishes on our to do list for a long time.
I’ve been guilty on not taking this concept far enough in my life. I haven’t been asking myself what’s important to me to obtain my long terms goals of being happy and retiring early. I’m been in a almost pure reaction to what’s urgent at home for months now with regards to happiness. I haven’t asked what is important for me to be happy and how do I make that part of my daily life.
So I have pushed off things that I enjoy like:
- Working on my book more than once every two weeks.
- Starting a new batch of wine.
- Tiling part of my fireplace with granite.
- Planning our garden for spring and planting some seeds indoors.
Instead I keep working on things that just come up, so I end up reacting rather than planning my life. Therefore if you have noticed my blog posts have been lack luster for a while, you can blame that on I’ve been on autopilot for months now. I haven’t felt engaged in much of what I’ve been doing so my creative process on ideas for posts which was often a fire hose at times has lately been a trickle. That to me is a sure sign of something is wrong, but I wasn’t ready to see it.
This entire revelation came out of a meeting with my boss at my day job in which we were talking about strategic planning for our department. Which to me is very ironic that it took my day job to tell me why I had been unhappy at home.
So this weekend I’m going to do more things that I enjoy (like those listed above) and spend some time thinking on what matters most in my life and ask how am I getting there? It’s time for a happiness reboot and for me to turn off the autopilot.
Have you ever spent a long while in autopilot? How did you snap out of it?
Posted by Canadian Dream on March 31, 2010
Ok, I normally only do net worth updates every second month, but this month is an exception. I ran the numbers to confirm not my net worth, but rather what my investment net worth . So in total my investment net worth is $108,300 which is now more than my mortgage balance $107,900. So as you can see below I hit a cross over point of the yellow and blue lines (click image to see a larger version).
This cross over isn’t nearly exciting of a cross over as being financially independent, but it is exciting to me regardless. Since it represents my mortgage is on such a decline I could sell every investment I own and nearly pay it off (I would be short the tax penalty from taking out of my RRSP’s). I don’t plan on doing that, but it is merely an option.
In some regards this is meaningless number with just two lines crossing over on a graph. Yet I’ve gave it meaning in order to keep me motivated on this path. I’ve always found I do better with longer term goals is I have little steps on the way there.
So as I go into this long weekend I intend to celebrate a bit on making it to this point. I’ve got a long way to go, but at least I’m getting there. (By the way, no posts on Friday or next Monday I’m taking the weekend off.)
Posted by Canadian Dream on March 24, 2010
I think just about anyone who works on an early retirement dream at some point thinks: why am I doing this? It’s taking forever. Am I EVER going to retire? I’ve know been down that line of thought enough times that I’ve learned a few things about myself and where that idea comes from.
You see I typically start to get impatient when I’m stressed out at work, busy at home and often close to some kind of interim goal sort of like right now. Both jobs have been very busy lately and as a result I’ve been often pushing off things at home so that is starting to build up. Then I’ll be checking the numbers at the end of this month to see if I hit one of my sub cross over points.
In reality I’m not impatient at my long term goal but rather impatient on my sub goal which is just being transferred to my long term goal by association. I think what is driving my nuts on this sub-goal is I know for sure I’ll hit it by the end of April, but I might hit it by the end of March. So the waiting is killing me as we are only a week from the end of the month.
Of course I find this vaguely amusing due to irony of me planning a goal that will take over a decade to reach and I get impatient over something that will occur in a week. I’m almost as bad as my kids at Christmas, but I suppose that we all need our little interim goals to keep going. No person can really handle a decade or two wait without something to keep us motivated along the way.
So what are you impatient for today? Did you have a goal that you are close to or perhaps just made?
