Five years ago, I was part of a meeting where future electronics-applications were being discussed. Sitting there with all these enthusiastic managers, tech-geeks and nerds with an enormous ego, I truly got scared (to some extent of the size of their ego’s, but mostly of how they want the future to look like).
Our intelligent fridges would be equipped with camera’s and gas-sensors, perfectly able to tell just how much inventory you still have, if something is about to go bad (and of course sending you recipes for dinner with those ingredients), sending shopping-lists to the grocery-store to auto-fill itself. We were discussing self-driving cars (so people can work while commuting) that would be able to analyse our emotions by face recognition, so they could already adapt the music at home to the way we feel or inform our spouses trouble is on its way.
Artificial intelligence will become part of our lives, whether we want it or not… all in order to increase the productivity of us, the working ants (See We Are But Ants).
All of us are part of it. The constant urge for more. Fast needs to become faster at an exponentially increasing and scary pace. Enough doesn’t exist.
It’s only sixty years ago people were not used to have a tv at home and they gathered together with their neighbors to watch one of the rare shows that were broadcasted. Till 30 years ago, we had the patience to rewind a VHS tape or our commodore 64 cassette to find the right game (always that magic when typing “load”). Only twenty years ago smart phones started to find their ways into our lives. Today we can’t live without them anymore, they’re part of our lives, extensions of our body. Screens are everywhere. Shows are on demand. We’re reachable any time of day and when we’re not standby, people start to wonder what’s wrong. We get lured into the world of social media, where people show the best of themselves, raising the bar for their ‘friends’ (even the ones you know for a fact are unhappy or depressed, often still manage to make you feel you need to step up just a bit, with their fake online-happiness… :))
We’re victims of the society’s unstoppable need for speed. And yet all of us contribute to it. Of course the above sounds negative. Evolution is nice, gadgets and technology are amazing exponents of what human beings can achieve…
… and yet we all scream for “pause”
Compared to only 20–30 years ago, there’s a tsunami of inputs coming at us every day. It’s amazing how human beings adapted to this threatening avalanche in a couple of decades, however we weren’t taught how to deal with this continuously and rapidly changing world.
People pay money to do some breathing exercises — inhaaaaale, hold, exhaaaaale… — Not ridiculizing meditation, I also did so — but it is just creating time for ourselves and pressing that pause button. We pay hundreds of dollars/euros to be in an offline yurt out of reach of any cellular network. Thousands of euros even to go to to places like this (nope, not an affiliate link, just fyi 🙂 Now that I think about it, not too wise for someone who’s writing about passive income models).
We seem to be in a fast forward-pause loop where the balance is disturbingly tilting towards the speedy side. Many people don’t realize this causes a constant energy-drain, until some( )thing(s) goes wrong. There’s an alarming increase of burn-outs worldwide, there’s more anxiety-attacks and depressions. We might just not all be made for this pace. Humanity might not be intended for this (what is in the end the purpose of life? I know, too big of a question for too small of an article). Maybe we evolved too much to be happy?
Commodore 64, joystick and an even older calculator on top
So what to do?
We can’t turn back time. But restoring a healthy balance is what we can have in control. If mowing the lawn makes you relax (I admit — I’m a lawn-guy), take the time to do so and don’t buy one of those fancy robots. Say no to some evolutions, say no to your boss, so no to the fast-forward of the movie called your life. Slow down and enjoy disconnected moments. Dig up that old commodore 64 and take the time to “load”.
Yet another workweek at the office has passed by. October. A completely different color palette is starting to show and many lifeforms are preparing for a well-deserved winter-break (is it normal to be jealous at deciduous trees?). The adults were right: the flight of life shifts to the next gear when having kids – I can confirm having joined the adults with kids-group some time ago. Co-parenting seems to even have replaced my old gear-box with something cruelly more powerful.
It’s time…
Somehow knowing that things need to change -as you could read in my previous post, Why work doesn’t work– and feeling time fly by, results in some conflicts (still manageable – but an occasional eye-twitch can’t always be suppressed). My goal is to be able to slow down and have time to do what I want, yet there is an orientation phase that takes (a lot) of time, there will be an investment phase (taking time and perhaps money) and there’s the risk none of it will work out. Add a job, burn-out recovery and three kids to the mix and you’ll realize it’s gonna be a frightful fight for freedom 🙂
As I mentioned in my initial post Why – We Are But Ants, the orientation-phase -listening to podcasts and reading blogs/books about passive income streams- has some minor side-effects. Besides broken car consoles and books ripped to pieces, it really makes you wonder: am I that stupid? (Ok, I wonder about the latter more often, regardless of people making passive income by selling thin air/talking about passive income, but I guess that’s me :)). People who googled “passive income” know exactly what I mean: wherever you look, you get the same lists, with some vague explanation. No concrete examples of how much money and time you will need to invest, how hard it will be to generate revenue and how long it might take to see some light in the ant-tunnel.
I’m working on a model to at least make that initial google-search more focused and to reduce that standard list of options to a top-5 that fits your personality and your time-/money-investment possibilities. A model that gives a more concrete explanation of your top-5 earning models (risks, timeline, financial requirements,…), including links to existing, more specialized sites that can get you going. Ladies and gentlemen, my beloved 10 followers (ok ok – 9 admittedly: I follow myself – curious to see what happens on my own page :)): I am eagerly expecting the PIM! I will share ultrasounds of premature stages whenever I think it looks nice enough to get some feedback and then iterate (or abort poor little PIM if the public opinion doesn’t agree upon it being life-worthy – no intention to start any abortion debate here).
In the past 20 years I’ve already made some attempts to become financially independent, long before people started to be on FIRE 😉 In my next posts on passive income, while PIM is growing, I’ll share the scarily discouraging stories I lived as landlord, Crypto-god and stock-star (I told you I often wonder: am I that stupid – you might start to wonder too ;)). But: still standing and ready for the next series of stories.
There are many definitions of freedom, but all more or less come down to the above. There are also many different levels of limitation of freedom, as I also indicated in my post on the ongoing protests in Iran (#mahsaamini), so everything I write is so damn relative and I am fully aware of it!
Bút our day to day work-reality affects our lives, our kids, relationships, health,… and deserves our attention, so eventually there’s time and energy left to serve bigger purposes (if you feel like it). From my first post, it’s clear I didn’t study something I’m passionate about, but passionate people in my team, colleagues that did study the right thing end up on my (these days) virtual sofa on a daily basis, because they are unhappy at work. I’ll try to be as objective as possible listing the freedom-limiting factors of working for someone else and the reasons for me to escape 🙂
Time You sign a contract that says how many hours you will work. It shows the depressing amount of days a year you can take for yourself and how many of those escape-options in a row are allowed. It sets your rules, your boundaries. We’re supposed to be happy when we can slide our working time by one hour to accommodate our daily rush – evolving a bit with the age of our kids , but always intensive. We can’t do things at our pace. We feel bad about it, but at the same time there’s a guilt- and/or stress feeling when we’re 5 minutes late in a meeting because we had to clean the back and neck of our baby who just released its entire tummy-content under high pressure right at the moment we were about to race to kindergarten (been there, done that… sometimes I was really surprised by the reach). We’re trapped by our contract, our agenda,… trapped by our employer. Our time is blocked to serve a king or queen (or a board of those types). We literally lose our freedom to breathe when it’s needed.
And yes… you get paid to do so (some more than others), but also these earnings are ‘blocked’ by time. Either you work as an employee and have a fixed salary (sure some get a bonus/stock options/RSU’s/…), or you’re billed per hour, but everything has a ceiling. You’re limited by a fixed amount in your contract, by the amount of hours per week you can work if you’re paid by the hour. Your earnings are limited by time and tax (where I live, my net-reward isn’t even half of the gross).
Safety feeling Working for an employer gives you a safety feeling. You have something to rely on every month. It’s not enough to be free, but it pays the bills. You’re protected. Letting go of this is the struggle for most people, including me. I’m currently living a conflict phase between following my heart, breaking free or keeping that safety net. I have a family to take care of, a mortgage to pay. It feels a bit like chosing between knowingly, golden-handcuffed crawling back into that cage every day or jumping out of a plane with something on your back, hoping it will open timely to save you and give you the rush of your life (I’m not a fan of jumping out of an airplane, but I did so. The chute opened. I was glad I did so once in my life. My girlfriend asked the instructor if she could go up again, before she even landed 🙂 People are different, we need each other to balance… but in the end I did it. Now ooonly the figurative jump is left). Just saying, the safety feeling is limiting chances to obtain freedom in several aspects of life. With my blog I will share how I deal with my jump and perhaps I will need your help and virtual safety feeling to do so.
Limiting pyramids
Timeless, familiar Images
The power pyramid Power is a bitch. Yes, hierarchy is needed, but 99% (perhaps I exaggerate a bit) of the cases I’ve seen in my 20-year career, people moving up become politicians, opportunist, ego’s (nerds with an ego in my sector). They lose spine, because the way to the top is obeyance. And it seems at every stage there is a growing fear to have or express another opinion than the one above or even to table the obvious truth. I can’t imagine this gives a feeling of freedom either. It gives a precious title to show and brag about on Linkedin, being of course publically congratulated on that same platform upon achievement by the people sitting next to you in the office – so their titles get some attention again as well or their chances of climbing up increase by 1 point. This pyramid (often also rectangle or reverse pyramid, depending on the amount of managers) is limiting your freedom in many ways, but if you’re willing to follow, who knows you might go up one level and get some more crums.
The competence Pyramid I’ll keep it short on this one. When googling for this, one will find a pyramid going from knowing/vision to doing/execution. This is not necessarily parallel to the power pyramid and in many cases has been proven even to be exactly the opposite, when high level management starts to “do” without knowing. I can elaborate a lot on this, showing how destructive this can be to a company… Probably I will in the future, which is the main reason for writing anonymously, as I’m halfway up the first pyramid and the upper-crows wouldn’t really understand (anymore). I literally asked not to get promoted by the way, as I don’t think my competence level matches my precious title on Linkedin 🙂 Still they did – hence present tense in the previous sentence. I show facts and reality tho, for as long as it lasts. On topic: wrong competence management and incompetence above you can really be limiting your freedom (even the limited freedom within the job-cage) and your development options.
The Lencioni Pyramid This time I’ll really keep it short. All the above in a team leads to a lack of trust. At least as long as I’ve witnessed, whenever there’s politics and ego-centrism in an organization, there is no trust between people. It limits a lot of things, ultimately even the freedom to enjoy results.
Employees are numbers… or ants Even though a job feels safe (and for sure it offers a lot of safety nets, even when you lose it), the higher you go up in hierarchy, the further away the people that actually do the job and the more those people are considered as numbers in excel. Your name and competences disappear, you become a job-title, a labor cost, an FTE-%,… in an excel file.
It is without too much discussion assumed that you’re willing to work evenings and weekends to meet a deadline even without extra compensation. Just because you adore your company and caring leaders. You are assumed to sacrifice your personal life and your family time, to (possibly) have issues with your partner for doing so. For the queen ant. I had people in my team doing so. It literally made me cry how devoted they were… one year after I was asked to make a list and bring a message to some of them. To me they are people.
Purpose First of all, the purpose of my writing is not to depress my 2 followers (if I did: so so sorry… but I’m really grateful to you for being there :)) The purpose of this purpose-topic is to highlight that for many people the true purpose of what they are doing all those hours a week is missing. Often the purpose offered by management is the achievement of revenue and the realization of the fabulous motivational hockey-stick. To be honest, it makes many people wonder about their purpose in life more often than it gives purpose to their jobs. And for the believers… as long as I’ve seen it, the hockey-stick miracle keeps on shifting to the right.
The moving miracle
Limiting creativity Last year I went to a career-coach for the second time in my life. The evaluation showed I was a highly creative person. I was flabbergasted. Moi? Creative? After some talks with the coach, it looked like I lost all my creativity (or rather the believe herein) during my professional career. For me this is an obvious limitation to develop my potential (and fun). I won’t generalize too much, but in many cases the revenue-purpose tends to kill or limit many people’s creativity.
How to get out? This will be one of the core-topics on my blog and it’s my upcoming path I will share. I am convinced that passive income generation is key. My next work-oriented blog will list the options I will try. The steps towards my second free-fall-jump.
We Are But Ants 