Super quick self portrait I drew this morning. I wish my hair was this huge in real life! Or maybe not. Haha.
If your girlfriend’s birthday (bat mitzvah, first day of college, you name it) is coming up, talk to me about drawing a portrait of her! Chicks totally dig them.
Edit:
Crayonification!
Posted on August 27th, 2011
Filed under: Creating, Featuring, Living (All Posts), Making Money
Topics: drawing, illustration, portrait
3 Comments »
This morning I modified my splash page (what you see when you go to allisonkoberstein.com). I’ve had this variant with the ‘portfolio’ section since I first designed this site, but I somehow have not gotten around to actually finishing my web portfolio yet. Even though I know I should have one (everyone says you need one!), people just keep coming to me with jobs via word of mouth! So finishing my portfolio is not exactly my top priority at the moment.
I still plan on posting a web portfolio eventually, especially if I decide to apply for another co-op job or in-house office job (since for those it’s probably required), but I figure in the mean time I will at least post a notice that anybody interested can email me to see my work before deciding to go with me or not, since this is what has been working for me lately.
Old splash page:
New splash (I updated the blog description as well!):
I’ve actually been pretty surprised by how many people have asked me to work with them without even asking to see my own work first (?!) but for the ones that have asked, I’ve just been throwing jpgs into a zip folder and emailing it to them. Maybe not the most professional way of doing things, but it does have the added advantage of you being able to customize your portfolio to the client based on what you think they would be most want to see.
Anyway, the bottom line is… word of mouth is powerful! Personal recommendations go a long way!
How to make clients/collaborators/coworkers/teammates love you and recommend you to others:
I really try to follow my own advice here since it makes working more pleasant for me as well! Even though most of these things sound really obvious and you’ve probably heard them before (so many times), it has taken a lot of practice and experience actually working with others in order for me to get it through my head how valuable they are and actually apply them consistently.
It’s easy to find to the motivation to be a good person to work with if you get most of your jobs through word of mouth. Since my network has grown organically, the people sent my way are tied to someone I know personally, and I don’t want to make them look bad or regret recommending me by flaking out. Every interaction is important to me!
Building your network
It can take a while to build up your network to the point where your email inbox is regularly filling up with opportunities, but it’s an exponential growth process. People in the field you want to work in know other people in that field. For the first couple years you might only get a few jobs, but then all of a sudden everyone will be calling you at once!
It’s been approximately three or four years since I completed my first paid freelance design job (though I did small illustration commissions years before that), and the person who I worked with has since referred me to at least four other people, and three of them have referred me to other people… and so on! Each job has let me gain experience, confidence and has let me build my portfolio a bit more (even if it only lives on my computer… for now). Once I gained confidence, I started feeling less shy about telling other people “yeah, I’m a designer and illustrator!” which has opened up even more opportunities.
Three years might seem like a long time to commit to something if you’re just getting started, but for me it was okay because I wasn’t in a hurry and the time was going to pass anyway. I never put tons of effort into marketing myself or pounding the pavement looking for leads, so when I wasn’t doing a job for a client, I was working on school or my own projects or off having fun and not worrying too much about it. When a job comes to me, I am excited to do it (“yay, look, I’m making money doing designy things!”) and so far all of my projects have had happy endings. That method of marketing seems to be enough.
Posted on July 22nd, 2011
Filed under: Featuring, Living (All Posts), Making Money
Topics: business, freelance, marketing
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It’s been a little more than a month since I made the first post about my Infinite Money experiment which began on May 22nd and ends on July 22nd. You can read more about it there, but basically I’m doing my best to live as though I have infinite money (even though, in reality, I’m okay financially but nowhere near unlimited) to see what insights I gain from it. It’s an experiment in practical philosophy, seeing how a different way of viewing the world actually affects how I live. I’m creating my own experience based ‘Life 101′ course.
This experiment is causing me to do a lot of reflection due to what in my life hasn’t changed. First I’ll talk about something major I’ve encountered called the Void, and then I’ll write about how the experiment affected other areas of my life like spending, diet, exercise, school, career and work. It starts off pretty grim, but the fact that I’m uncovering so much is reason enough to keep going with this experiment. It’s only the beginning.
This post is looooong, but I didn’t want to leave anything out. Feel free to skim and dip in where you need to. Maybe I’ll do some more focused posts on selected concepts later.
I’ve heard from a few sources (Tim Ferriss‘s The 4-Hour Workweek and Ev Bogue‘s Minimalist Business come to mind) that people who work hard all their lives and finally get to the point where they’ve “made it” – when they have enough money that they can effectively retire (or just coast for a long time) – they experience something that Ev refers to as The Void.
Right after I published that first article, I went and laid down on my bed and thought to myself, “Well, great. So I have more money than I could ever spend. What am I going to do now?” And I didn’t feel like doing anything in particular. I felt weird.
I felt what it must feel like to be an older executive who has fought his/her way to the top, achieved everything that they were supposed to achieve, and life somehow didn’t magically change. I had a room full of beautiful things, but I was alone.
I started thinking about how I’ve spent so much time getting good grades and working that my social life has suffered, and it’s understandable – why should I expect people to reach out to me if I haven’t been reaching out to them? If I haven’t been making the effort to accept what invitations I get? Even though I know from my research that having a great social life and meaningful friendships is one of the most crucial factors in happiness, I’ve been letting that part of my life go with not so great results. I mean, I have friends, but I mostly see them only at school (most of us live over an hour apart), and the tiny handful of friends I’ve retained from high school are either not around or we aren’t that close or we only bother to see each other a few times a year. And now that I’ve given myself permission to not focus on income generating activities, I’m looking at this big empty space in front of me. Almost immediately, I felt depressed.
The other thing is that when you extract yourself from the rat race after being entrenched in it your whole life (the treadmill of gradually increasing challenges of school, high school, post secondary, work, climbing the corporate ladder), you remove this thing that’s been driving such a huge percentage of your behavior.
Think about it – how many of your actions stem from making or saving money? “Must complete this homework so that I can get a good grade so I can graduate so that I can get a good job and make money.” “Must do this task for this person so that they’ll leave a good review so that I can continue to make money in the future.” “Must do what they say in case I have to rely on them for money in the future.” “Must get that chic sweater so that those people will think I’m ‘put together’ in case one of them turns out to be a potential business partner.” “Must read this book so that I can have this knowledge/gain this skill so that at some point in the future it might let me make some money.”
I’d venture to say that for most people, at least 50 hours a week are spent on money-generating or money-saving related activities, and that’s a conservative estimate. When you take away the incentive of money, you take away a huge force in your life, and there is nothing obvious that rushes in to replace it. And I haven’t suddenly quit school or work, but I’m fortunate that I sort of get to experience this because right now I only have classes two days a week, and I work from home on my own time, so I have a lot of unstructured hours. I had already agreed to do work for various people, and I don’t want to be that person that says they’ll do something for you and then suddenly drops it for some vague reason. When you don’t care about making money, you still have another driving force called Integrity. You might call it Social Responsibility or even just Reputation, depending on how you look at it. And of course, some of the projects I actually want to do because they seem fun.
When you have to sweat to get things you need (or think you need), you at least have something to blame for why you’re not happy. “I’d be happy if I had more time to relax and work on my art, but I have to go to my stupid job and pick up the dry cleaning. Curse this system! But hey, it’s life, so what are you going to do, right?” You have something to distract you – something that demands your attention, that fills your time, that you see as necessary. Rage against the machine. But when you extract yourself from that system and decide “actually, no, I’m going to decide how I spend my time,” and you realize that you’re still not happy, all you have to blame is yourself. You wonder if something’s wrong with you. You wonder if this is all there is. You realize that you effectively thought that making money to survive was your purpose, and now you have no purpose. If you’re used to working hard, you probably start to feel like you’re lazy and worthless.
Having money doesn’t mean that you’re transported to a magical wonderland where nothing bad or inconvenient ever happens. You still have to pick clothes up off the floor, find things you’ve misplaced, archive spam email, wonder why your software is laggy (even if you have the best equipment available, weird things still happen), commute, trip over things, you don’t feel great all the time, your body still does all of those weird things human bodies do, you still struggle with creativity and inspiration, you still have interactions with other imperfect people, people still judge you, you still have deadlines, it still gets cloudy, it still takes time and effort to learn or accomplish things, dust still appears on your desk, you still get tempted to eat unhealthy things, you still sometimes don’t feel like exercising. This shouldn’t come as a surprise at all, but I always leave these things out when I imagine what it would be like to be rich. Even though I guess I could hire somebody to fold my socks for me, that sounds like way more hassle than it’s worth. So all of these minor annoyances of life persist. It’s kind of weird how little actually changes.
All of these things sound so trivial. “Poor me, I have so much time and money I don’t know what to do with myself.” #whitegirlproblems. But it’s real. People who win the lottery or cash out in business actually experience this. I’d imagine that people who are born into money also experience this in some form. Imagine having everything you’re supposed to have, and still feeling this pervasive sense of unease, and not having a clue what to do about it. Everyone thinks that you should be ecstatic, and can’t imagine why you’re not because they can’t relate to your perspective. Since so few people ever make it out of the rat race, there is no road map for what to do afterwards. And thus, people have no advice to give you but “cheer up”. At this point, many people throw away what they’ve gained – they waste their lottery winnings, sell their companies or sabotage their success, buy a house with a big mortgage so that they have something they have to work to pay for. They go back to the situation that’s comfortable to them.
But I can’t exactly do that if I have infinite money, now can I? Great. Just great. (Yeah, I know I’m the one subjecting myself to this, but it’s so fascinating that I don’t want to just stop here. I want to see if I can push through it and come out a stronger person.)
So I’ve done a lot of reflection about how I want to spend my time. I scrawled out this list in sharpie while lying on my bed feeling miserable and trying to figure out what to do with myself. I’ll credit Ev Bogue for many of these points since I’m sure I picked them up from his Minimalist Business ebook (particularly the evolving humanity one), but I wasn’t looking at his book while I wrote this.
Technical
Experiential
Social
I could make a whole other post explaining this list, but suffice it to say for now that I wrote out a few things I wanted to do in each category, and it did make me feel better. It’s good to know that you still have interesting and exciting things that you can work towards. I had the idea to make this into a worksheet so that it could be helpful to other people – but let’s face it, not a lot of people have this problem. Then again, maybe I should make it, since it’s a great problem to have. If society keeps moving in the direction it is, lifting more people out of poverty, creating more freedom through technology – and if we do manage to break the endless cycle of consumerism that is keeping the middle and upper classes on the treadmill – then more and more people are going to encounter the Void. Wouldn’t that be an interesting niche to work within? “Helping new rat-race escapees learn to deal with their new found freedom and get the most out of life.” Hmm.
Spending
Here’s the breakdown: My online banking tells me that from May 22nd to June 22nd, I’ve spent $193 (CAD). I did spend some money in cash and by paypal, I’m guessing it’s only around $30, but I’ll add $50 to be safe and say that my total spending money for the past month was $243. That’s about $60 per week. Out of that money, $136 of it was on food while out of the house (70%). I’ll also clarify that since I’m still in school, I live with my parents so I don’t buy most of my groceries, though a few times I picked up some extra things I wanted and I included those in the total. And I already paid for my school tuition earlier in the year so that doesn’t factor in – I guess I would consider this total to be my “do whatever I want” money rather than things I’ve already committed to and budgeted for.
How do I feel about this? Well, on one hand it’s kind of alarming to me compared to what I was spending before, but on the other hand, it’s not that much. Last year I was allowing myself around $30 a week of spending money, so this is just double that. It’s enlightening – and strange – to realize that even in the face of infinite money, all I really need to have my ideal lifestyle is an extra $30 a week, based on this data. That’s only like three hours at minimum wage. I don’t know if I would have ever realized this if it weren’t for this experiment. I thought it would be more.
It might have been more if I were going to school more frequently since most of my meal purchases are at school. I haven’t felt a strong urge to go on a trip or upgrade my cellphone and none of my tools have broken so I haven’t incurred any larger expenses.
If I keep spending the way I am, then by the end of the experiment I will have spent around $750, which would be approximately $375 more than I would have otherwise spent. Would you pay $375 to have infinite money for 3 months? Sounds like a great deal to me. ;) I think that the things I’ve learned so far are worth it.
In fact, I’ve actually received plenty of offers for work within the past month, including a rather large commission, and I’ve just now (literally in the middle of writing this article!!) been contacted about two more design opportunities. So in the end, I should still have more money than when I started. Yeah, I might have had more if I hadn’t done this, but it doesn’t feel like a loss. Maybe the universe wouldn’t have delivered these projects to me if I hadn’t been feeling so abundant already.
As predicted, I HAVE been spending a lot more money on food. I haven’t been buying more stuff or going shopping more often. I still feel like I have way more stuff than I use already, and I’m still wearing a limited wardrobe by choice. I’m virtually certain that the minimalist/anti-consumerist (wow, I sound so hip) tendencies I’ve developed have gone a long way toward keeping the number this low, otherwise I might have bought a lot more objects. Then again, part of the allure of shopping is wanting things that you can’t afford, so when you can have anything, you actually lose part of the reason to want things. I did get some new backpacks and a comic book though. I surprised myself by donating a few dollars to creators of awesome things I found online, such as this webcomic, Minor Acts of Heroism, which I wouldn’t normally have done.
I don’t think I’ve been able to succeed in completely reprogramming myself in this area. When it comes to other things I might buy like digital products, service subscriptions or event tickets, I’m still less likely to go for things that cost a lot of money over things that cost less or are free. For example, when someone took the payment barrier off of joining their forum, I joined immediately, even though I’m not really an internet forum type of person. (The fact that it used to cost money made me want it!) And when I saw an online training program that looked interesting, I didn’t go for it because there was a payment barrier, even though I spend hours reading free material online. Even though I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything I really wanted, if I truly believed that I had infinite money, it shouldn’t have made a difference. The thing is, I use other reasons to justify not getting something – resource efficiency (environmental reasons) or “I don’t have time/space for it right now”. It’s hard to know exactly when I use saving money to justify resource efficiency, or resource efficiency to justify not buying something… aarrgh! Aversion to wasting money is really deeply ingrained.
If I weren’t doing this experiment, I might not have gone to the Mini Maker Faire. Even though the ticket price wasn’t that much, I would have seen it as just another reason not to go. But then I wouldn’t have gotten to see giant spiderbots and I wouldn’t have found out about Draw By Night, a free art event that looks awesome! So this experiment has given me permission to try some new experiences.
Diet
Interestingly enough, I’ve actually been eating worse. For one, I’ve been eating out more, which means more refined grains, more sugar, salt, and fat. Since I’m not worrying about money, buying food where I am is easier than preparing something to bring – I don’t have to plan it or carry it around with me. I have eaten at restaurants, but food court food is still tasty, it’s faster and sometimes I’m with people who don’t have infinite money and I don’t want to make them feel they have to spend more money to hang out with me. I’ve also been snacking on a lot more junk food, out of boredom and rebellion and trying to find something that will make me feel happy and satisfied. I haven’t gained weight, but it can’t really be good for my health in the long run. It’s not a good habit.
Exercise
One of the things you can do with your time is learn new skills and/or train your body. I’ve spontaneously taken up dancing. WTF. Read my article on Performance for more on this. I also write about the odd coincidence of shifting from material based activities (craft) to action/experience based activities (performance).
Living Quarters
I thought that I might feel more of an urge to move out, but I’m still in my room at home with my parents. So far, the annoyances of living with family (even though I love them!) seem less daunting than the prospect of packing everything up, finding an apartment and moving out on my own for the first time. So I’m here by default. Also, my room is pretty.
School
I’ve kind of been losing interest in some aspects (not all aspects!) of school. Part of this might be due to the fact that I’m around the halfway point and already getting work. I still feel committed to my team mates, and obviously I don’t want my grades to drop, but I feel less motivated to do the assignments I don’t want to do, and this whole “deadline” business is grating on me. The way I see it is that I’m going to learn and practice the things I genuinely want to learn and practice anyway, and I don’t want my career to be based on the things that I don’t enjoy doing anyway, so the school regime is starting to feel forced and artificial.
There are parts of school that I still like – I’ve really been enjoying my Philosophy of Education class (relevant!), and I wouldn’t have learned about this subject at all if I weren’t forced to take elective credits. Writing the philosophical essay for that class was fun, kind of like writing one of these blog posts, but with academic references. It gives me a reason to leave my house, see and meet other people my age, my grades are good enough that my school practically pays me to attend it. It provides some motivation to complete projects I otherwise wouldn’t complete or even attempt. I still feel like I should complete my degree because my parents expect me to, even if I don’t really see myself relying on it in the future. At least I’ll be able to claim that I’m a university graduate, for what that’s worth.
Career
Related to my thoughts on school, I’ve heard so many examples of people doing what they’re doing because they’re passionate about it and that lead them to do it so much on their own initiative that they genuinely became really good at it. They would probably do what they do for free, and the money is a bonus, and that makes people want to work with them – regardless of whether they went to school for it.
I don’t want to settle for anything less than doing exactly what I want. I’ve developed even higher standards for how I want to make money/spend my time than I had before, which is great but also kind of scary because the thought that “you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to survive” is so ingrained in our culture. I’m also wary of this thing called “entitlement” that I’ve heard used to describe our generation in a negative light. Why should I expect to be able to do what I want when so many other people suffer just to stay afloat? I’ve always held “having a career I love” as one of my top priorities and I’m clinging to the hope that I can figure this out, and using people who have found their dream careers as my beacons.
Many people think that if people didn’t have to work for money, they would just lay around all day and watch TV. Not so for me. I want to be a multipronged artist/designer/entrepreneur/maker of awesome things. I guess I would call myself a serial-project-maker. There are so many things I want to do, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to settle on just one medium – at least, I don’t foresee that in the near future. I do want to help people, be of value to society, and leave my mark. I want to make beautiful things that make people go “wow!” I want to tell stories and show people that things aren’t always what they seem, and that there is so much more to life than what they realise – than what I realise. I want to design a better world. I want to inspire others to do it themselves. I want to do work that matters. I want it to be in alignment with my values.
I don’t care about fame, I don’t care about being in galleries, I don’t care about making gobs of moolah (though that could be fun) but if people would enjoy and benefit from my stuff, and if I enjoy doing it, then that would be wonderful.
Way of working
Since I’m not worrying as much about payment, I’ve been more focused lately on optimizing how I work for the most enjoyment. As great as my work is, it’s still a cause of stress. Having others waiting on me, feeling like I owe things to people, and having to follow precise directions and feeling like sometimes people aren’t satisfied with what I give them is kind of blah. Since the money doesn’t matter, I’ve been accepting offers for jobs at whatever the person can afford, and requesting more time/freedom/leniency in return. It’s kind of nice, but I still feel like things aren’t ideal.
I’ve been wondering for a long time if the service model might not be the ideal way for me to work. Wouldn’t it be better to make things first and then sell them? That way, if people like it they like it and if they don’t, they don’t. You won’t have deadlines except for those that you impose on yourself. Kind of like how this blog works, actually.
My logic says that it would be harder to make money with the make-first-monetize-later method – but if I’m not worrying about money, it wouldn’t make sense to do it the other way, unless I felt I could contribute more value by doing custom things for people. My intuition says that the people who enjoy their work the most and don’t care too much about what other people think tend to be successful. I guess I’ll have to test that one out. Who would have thought that “just do what you want” would be do hard to grasp and implement? I’m trying, but it’s taking a while to unravel.
Perspective on Society
At times I managed to see the world from an alternate perspective – like I was part of a futuristic utopia where when I needed something, it wasn’t like I was spending money – it was like the world was a buffet of services and products where you could just pick up what you wanted, check them out with your ID (paying with credit card) to keep track of resource use, and leave. It’s a subtle difference – the experience in the store was the same, except the vague negative aura of spending your hard earned money was lifted. I felt appreciation for all of the choices of goods and services available to me. In this utopia, all you had to do in return was to live your life in whatever way you wanted, and contribute/help others however you were inspired to, using your own unique talents. And then I would blink and my mind would shift back to seeing society/economics as I normally see them (everyone for themselves, struggle). Do you think that if someone lived this way within capitalist society, would they contribute enough/help enough people that they would ultimately make enough money to support themselves?
—
Anyone could try this
The amazing thing was that I got to experience all of this without actually going through the process of winning the lottery or building a fortune 500 company. I took a shortcut – I just imagined what it would be like, and committed to living like I was there, wrote off my losses and watched what happened. Technically, anybody with a certain amount of will and courage (and a small buffer of cash) could do this. Anybody could do this for a single day, or maybe a week. I’ll be interested to see what else I uncover as time goes on, and the things I retain after the experiment ends. So far, it’s proving to be an effective method for reflecting on how you want to spend your life, figuring out what it really takes to make you happy and questioning the roadblocks our society places that prevent us from doing this in the first place.
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I’m not sure when I’ll be posting the next experiment update, so if you want to make sure you catch it, the easiest way would be to subscribe with RSS or follow me. Glad to have you!
Posted on June 29th, 2011
Filed under: Featuring, Learning, Living (All Posts), Making Money, Socializing
Topics: experiment, life design, log, money
5 Comments »
[So, this is what happens when Allison feels like her life is too easy and she's not growing fast enough. Experiment time!]
What would your life be like if you had infinite money?
No, seriously. In your day to day life, what would you do differently?
Being rich is a common fantasy for many people, but what is being rich really like? In other words, what is it that we really want when we think we want to be rich?
To me, being rich means:
Notice that those things don’t have to do with specific numbers or possessions, they’re more like attitudes, or ways of approaching life. Technically, it’s possible that someone could possess all of these attitudes without actually having millions in the bank. It’s about not letting negative beliefs about money affect how you live your life when, in reality, they could just be self imposed limitations.
—
Lately I’ve been thinking about my relationship to money and how I feel about the system I’ve been using up until now. For the past few years I’ve done a lot of accounting and tracking. I have a spreadsheet that I fill out yearly and adjust throughout the year that calculates all of my savings, what I expect to earn, what I expect to spend, and calculates how much money I would have left over for spending money. I have another spreadsheet (spreadsheets for everything YAY!) where I note down everything I spend, and I give myself a weekly “allowance” in order to pace myself so that I don’t burn through my extra cash before the end of the year.
This method has been working pretty well in terms of causing me to not spend too much money. But it does have some downsides.
It’s focused on the future rather than the present. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I can’t predict the future with a high amount of accuracy, but still I try to budget as if my predictions were accurate. My system is vulnerable to fluctuations, and large fluctuations can break it. I remember last year there was an error in my spreadsheet which lead me to think I had about $2000 more than I did, and when I fixed the error I found that I was supposed to be spending -$3.45 a week. (Yeah, negative.) Even small negative fluctuations could lead to me having to go a few weeks without spending anything in order to ‘catch up’. And then later, I would unexpectedly come into some more money (like a scholarship or a contest or a new gig), which would make the whole thing moot. In retrospect, it seems like a lot of hoops to put myself through, since all of these rules are self imposed. It’s like adding layers of mindgames on top of something that could be as simple as “I have $x. … now what?”
Overall, the system doesn’t make me feel the way I want to feel about money. Two weeks ago I wrote this in my Evernote:
How does my current method of tracking money make me feel?
What do I want to feel?
So I thought about it. What would be a better method that would get me those results?
A while ago, I lightened up in terms of trying to track and obsess about what I eat, and so I decided to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and just trust that it will work out. Well, I’m not dead yet. I haven’t gained weight either. (Sidenote: I’m vegan! Not sure if that’s a factor.) So it appears that trying to have strict control over my actions wasn’t really doing me any good. My body just processes what it wants to process automagically.
If letting go works with my diet, why can’t it also work with money? This thought lead me to create the framework for my current experiment.
Rules/Specifications
Predictions
I expect the amount I spend to go up a little, but not by a whole lot. I think that for day to day spending, I will just spend more on food and snacks while out of the house.
The biggest expenses I could expect to incur over the course of this experiment would be: 1) deciding to go on a random trip somewhere, 2) getting a smartphone, or 3) moving out (I currently am living with my parents while I’m in school). But I don’t know if any of these will happen.
I’ll also be curious to see exactly how much spending money I would use per month under optimal circumstances, and how difficult it will be to change my thought patterns.
I’ll be more free in my business to try and target the kind of work that I really most want to do, since I won’t have to worry about just doing what’s profitable. I’m curious to see whether my attitude towards work will shift more towards being a service to others, rather than making money for myself.
I’m aware that this experiment goes counter to the conventional wisdom about how you’re supposed to deal with money, but I’ve really thought about it, and I don’t think I’ll burn through my savings or go into debt by the time the 3 month period is over. Here’s why:
Having infinite money =/= spending infinite money
There are valid reasons to not buy stuff even if money is no object, like ethical reasons, quality of life reasons, personal preference, not having the space/time to use or appreciate the thing at the moment, not wanting to put effort into acquiring something, or just not feeling like you need something.
I’ve already acquired the attitude of quality over quantity, and since I’m actually trying to get RID of stuff, I’m really selective about adding new objects into my life. I still think that buying things secondhand is preferable to buying them new for environmental reasons (energy spent to make them, transport them, produce the materials). I don’t have or want a car because I don’t like driving and don’t need the added complexity in my life. I’ve never been much of a traveler (that may change in the future!), and since I quite like how my life is set up right now, I don’t feel any particular urge to go on a vacation. Most of my hobbies are free, or close to free (drawing, reading, blogging, taking photos, geocaching, Astrojax, working on my business, walking, surfing the internet).
Money is for Making
I want my primary relation to money to be about making it, not about spending it. Making money is fun. Landing gigs is fun. Completing projects that people appreciate is fun. Creating neat things that people want to buy is fun. Pushing my limits in this area is fun. (It’s kind of like playing those iPhone or Facebook games where you manage a restaurant or a hotel or what have you – work can be fun if you enjoy the process and are not too attached to the outcome.)
Spending money? Well, acquiring a shiny new object is cool I guess, but I’d rather the whole spending part be automated rather than spending time tracking or worrying about whether I can afford something. So if I spend less energy worrying about acquiring objects/being able to afford stuff, and more energy on having fun making money, wouldn’t that result in me actually having more funds overall? It seems plausible. We shall see!
Safety net
I’ll have some fail-safes. If I notice that I’m about to go into debt, I’ll call off the experiment, since I hate the thought of being in debt. (I’m paying for school without loans, and am currently ahead with my savings.) Also, I’ll stop myself from doing anything stupid like buying a house (though I don’t even know if I’d want that).
I’m pretty sure that in the absolute worst case scenario, like if I somehow didn’t realize that I was burning through thousands upon thousands of dollars, if I ate all of my savings I would just get a couple thousand dollars under, and I could just pay that off by working for a few months while living cheaply with my parents. Even from a blank slate, if I worked full time I could build up my savings to where they currently are within a year, max. But for the reasons mentioned above, this situation is really unlikely, especially since I don’t plan to stop making money during the experiment.
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I realize that some people are in situations where they would feel like they couldn’t take a risk like this (maybe they have children, or are already deep in debt, or they don’t have a family to fall back on if things get out of hand), and so I count myself fortunate that I’m able to run this experiment. Maybe what I learn could benefit somebody that wants to try this but is unable to.
It also helps that I’ve acquired the attitude of not caring so much about money, since I’ve seen how little my happiness depends on it.
See, life is a game. It’s about the experience. If you’re playing a videogame and you lose some of your points, do you become terrified? No, if you need more you just make more. You trust that just around the corner there will be opportunities to collect more. Not really big deal. And since it’s a game, making more should be fun. If it’s not fun, you’re doing something wrong. (Spending too much time grinding at your job? ;) So, can you understand how I don’t see this experiment as a big risk?
And what do I have to gain? Infinite money, for all intents and purposes. A major puzzle of life solved. I think it’s probably worth it. Even if I fail, at least I’ll learn something.
—–
I’m already a week into this experiment, and so far so good. I think I might be spending a bit more than usual, but not orders of magnitude more. As expected, mostly snacks.
The most difficult thing is trying to circumvent my normal thought flow of immediately considering what things cost. This is challenging since it’s such an integrated part of my thought process, my brain automatically leaps to it before I even realize I’m doing it.
For example, I was in Chapters yesterday while waiting to see a play (Hairspray! <3), and a book on a table caught my eye.
Ooh, that looks cool. What is it?
Oh, short story comics from different artists, neat.
Wow, it’s just $5.99.
Wait, I’m not supposed to consider price. Right.
Hmm. Do I want this? It’s cheap. Wait, I’m not supposed to consider price. Uhh. It does look like something I’d be interested in reading.
I know I’m trying to get rid of books, but this doesn’t look like something that would likely be at the library.
Could I go without this? Well, sure. There are probably tons of other comics at the library or online that I could read instead, and that wouldn’t involve me taking on a new possession/consuming resources. I wouldn’t have to lug this book home with me.
But I probably can’t find this exact one online. And shiny full-coloured pages. And maybe it will give me inspiration for the short comic that I want to write.
And if it turns out that it’s not worth keeping, I can just give it away. It wouldn’t be a big loss anyway since it’s cheap. I mean-
And so on. The monetary cost of the object just kept sneaking back in. I’m hoping that with time and practice this will get easier.
(FYI, I bought it!)
I might even try to develop some external thought direction tools (predefined thought flowcharts or something) to help me arrive at the correct decisions. I might have to resort to listing pros and cons and deliberately crossing out those to do with cost and then trying to make an objective decision that way.
Otherwise, my life is the same as always, since I spend very little time actually dealing with money.
While working on a graphic/web design for a client today, I actually slowed down and took my time trying to get it right, instead of rushing to get it off my plate like I was initially inclined to do. I’m not sure if that was because of this experiment, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I shifted towards caring more about the quality of my work rather than just shipping it. If I’m not doing it for money, and I’m doing it just for the sake of making something, for the sake of exercising and stretching my skills, and for the sake of helping somebody, wouldn’t I care more about quality? Why make mediocre stuff?
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If you’re interested in following my progress in this experiment, subscribe to my RSS feed. I’ll post any revelations I have, difficulties I encounter, or unexpected happenings. I don’t have a regular schedule for updates in mind at this time.
What do you think will happen over the next 3 months? Will I crash and burn or will I wake up from the Matrix?
Posted on May 29th, 2011
Filed under: Exploring, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts), Making Money
Topics: business, experiment, life design, money
7 Comments »
[Thanks cobrasoft!]
Do you ever think about your thinking?
A belief is just a thought that you think automatically, over and over again. Some beliefs limit you. They’re tricky, because you almost certainly have them – we all do – and don’t even know it. It’s that nagging voice that says, “no, that’s not a good idea, because the world works like this“.
These kinds of thought patterns can hurt you or at least slow you down because they have you convinced that you can’t have everything you want. Wait a minute, did your mind just pipe up to tell you that you really CAN’T have everything you want because the world doesn’t work that way? Ding! Limiting belief. Probably a deeply rooted one too, so just ignore it and move on for now if you’re feeling resistance. :)
Maybe the belief is that something you want to do would lead to a negative consequence. Limiting beliefs affect so many of our everyday decisions that over time, following them blindly can lead to an unfulfilling life of playing it safe and doing “the smart thing” or “what you are supposed to do” out of fear. The belief just seems like it IS true, for whatever reason. This is unfortunate because much of the time, the beliefs are questionable or simply NOT TRUE!
But once you figure out how to recognise them, question them, and ultimately obliterate them, it can be really fun. It takes courage to question your own beliefs, but exercising your courage muscle is a good thing! I get better at this every time I try it.
A limiting belief that I tackled recently
The other day, I was sitting on the SkyTrain heading to school, thinking about how I’ve been getting so many requests for design work lately. My thoughts turned to an in-person consultation I was going to have later in the week with a new client that I had never met before. Many of my business connections are either from people I’ve only worked with over the Internet, or that I met first in an unprofessional setting (such as school or out in the big wide world). So I was thinking about how I should probably try to dress professionally to meet with this new client.
Then I started to get a negative feeling about how doing that would be a drag, and I thought that maybe working for myself isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be if I have to do things like I would in an office. But isn’t dressing like a business person part of what you have to do to be successful?
I stopped myself. I tried to analyze where the negative feeling was coming from, and decided that it started with thinking about having to dress ‘professionally’, and what I thought that meant. I realized that I’ve actually had this belief about how “grown ups” have to dress for a long time but never really thought to question it before. I wrote this down:
In order to be financially/professionally successful, I have to dress a certain way *cough* corporate drone *cough*.
This was the limiting belief that was causing me distress. But is it true that in order to be successful, you HAVE to dress a certain way? Is it really a requirement?
Next, I listed out some evidence to the contrary.
Evidence:
Since the above evidence seemed pretty compelling, I decided that the new thing I WANT to think is:
I can wear anything I want AND be financially and professionally successful.
I’m going to try to practice this thought. Whenever I catch myself thinking the old thought, I’m going to replace it with the new one. Instant happiness.
The worst thing that could happen is that I lose a few opportunities for jobs, but I think that it’s reasonable to say that most of those jobs would be ones that I don’t particularly want anyway. And there will always be more jobs out there. The great thing is that I can always reverse my decision if I feel it’s necessary. I think that I would lose more by never giving this a shot than I could possibly lose by trying it.
Here are a few more of my own limiting beliefs that I’ve identified that I might work on at some point in the future:
I’m sure I have hundreds more, but dissolving your limitations is an extremely rewarding experience. So much so that for me, it’s more fun than overwhelming. It’s like peeling back layers of reality.
Here’s how you can try out the process yourself.
How To Remove a Limiting Belief
Step 1. Recognise when a limiting belief is exercising itself.
You can usually tell that you’re thinking a limiting belief when you feel a negative emotion. You might not even know why you’re feeling bad at first, but this should be a red flag that gets you to examine your thoughts more closely.
What am I thinking about specifically? Why am I feeling bad? Am I imagining that a situation might play out negatively, am I feeling unhappy with my options, or am I making any assumptions about the world? Try to pin down exactly what it is that’s bothering you. Try filling in the blanks: “I would be happy if _________ was actually like ________.”
Step 2. Define the limiting belief.
Once you figure out which thought is causing you to feel bad, put it into words. Be concise.
A few examples of common limiting beliefs:
Write it down and look at it. Recognise that the belief ISN’T YOU. It’s just a thing that your mind has latched on to, you could have picked it up from anywhere. You can choose to change your collection of beliefs at any time.
Step 3. Think of as much evidence as possible that the belief is false (or as least, questionable).
Write down a list of as much evidence as you can think of that brings the belief into doubt. Evidence could be things that you’ve read, research that you’ve done, examples from your life or the lives of others that prove that there are exceptions, or other beliefs you have that contradict the first belief.
Step 4. Decide on your new belief (what you want to think instead).
If the world were perfect, what would you want to be true instead of your old limiting belief? Even if you feel some resistance to this new thought, in my experience the best results occur when you go straight for what you ACTUALLY want.
For example, if you want to lose weight but are always hungry, your limiting belief might be I’m fat because I’m always hungry. You may THINK that the belief you WANT to have is I don’t have much of an appetite, but what you *really really* want is I eat whatever I want and still have the perfect body. See the difference?
For beginners, it can sometimes be a bit tricky to figure out what you actually want, or the thing that you want might seem completely impossible. If that’s the case, just pick a belief that feels better to you than your old one. This way, you’ll be more likely to accomplish step 5.
Step 5. Resolve to practice the new thought.
From now on, whenever you catch yourself thinking the old thought, stop and think the new thought instead. If you do this diligently, eventually you will start to think the new thought automatically, over and over again. Belief installed!
We all have tons of these limiting beliefs, and if we take responsibility for our own thoughts, we can greatly improve the quality of our own lives. Everything begins with a thought. Try it!
Additional Resources:
Posted on May 19th, 2011
Filed under: Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Living (All Posts), Making Money
Topics: beliefs, career, fashion, loa
11 Comments »
(Thanks artoz for the base photo! And Jessica for the inspiration to try combining images like this. :) )
For the past two years I have set New Year’s goals for myself – longer term goals that I wanted to take a whole year to work on. I do it in conjunction with New Year’s not because I think that the time is particularly special, but why not tap into the collective energy of everyone else who is setting goals at the same time?
In 2009 my major goal was to run 5 days a week, slowly increasing duration. I also had a secondary goal of trying 20 vegan recipes over the course of the year. In terms of running, I went from being about to jog for about 5 minutes to a whole 40 minutes!
And deciding to do the recipes was instrumental in my going vegan, since otherwise I would not have any clue what to make for myself! (Also it proved to me that vegan desserts are awesome.) It turned out that I liked 16 of the 20 recipes enough to make them again, and it gave me exposure to the different ingredients and techniques frequently used in vegan cooking and baking.
ProTip: If you’re thinking about a diet change, but aren’t sure if you want to go at it full tilt, commit to at least trying a certain number of recipes that fit that diet! You might be surprised! It makes it so much easier to switch later if you decide you want to.
In 2010 my goal had to do with freelance income. I pushed myself to increase my freelance income by 5.5% every month. I used a spreadsheet to calculate my target income for every month.
Even though I didn’t actually make “a lot” in terms of what a full time freelancer would make (I already had school and a day job), this was a big deal for me because it forced me to actually seek out these jobs and make sales every month, and it actually gave me a target to hit. Before I set this goal for myself, I might not have even done any freelance work in a given month. I was forced to get creative and ask, “okay now… I have 8 days left, and I have to sell $X worth of services/stuff. What can I do to create that?”
The result was that I made about 50% more than the goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I’m sure that I made at least double what I would have if I had never set this goal. On top of that, I got experience trying different kinds of offerings and promotions. The best part was that I gained confidence in my ability to support myself with my freelance design and illustration work once I leave school. Based on these results, I would encourage anyone thinking about freelancing or running your own business to try a goal like this.
On the morning of December 31, 2010, I was sitting in my hotel room in Hong Kong, looking out the 11th story window to the bustling street below and thinking about what I might do for my 2011 New Year’s goal, or if I even wanted to have one. I had gone through some major realizations during the past six months about the purpose of life and the way I want to live it. (Here’s the answer, the short version, straight from the back of the book: The purpose of life is to feel awesome, enjoy yourself and have fun!) A few of the influences which helped me reach this conclusion, in various ways, were Jessica Mullen, Kelly Cree, Steve Pavlina, Abraham-Hicks, Dan Millman’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior
I wanted to transition to living more in the moment, in the flow, enjoying everything I already have that’s awesome rather than worrying about the future. Sure, I think that planning can be helpful, but you can’t ever be certain where you will end up. The only thing you can truly commit to is enjoying the journey. This is a big step because I usually plan EVERYTHING down to the detail.
I had also recently encountered the concepts of minimalism and simplicity (mainly via Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits & mnmlist, and Everett Bogue’s Far Beyond the Stars), and had been trying in small ways to incorporate the concept of “less is more” into my life. For the first time in several years (maybe since 10th grade in high school?), I had stopped trying to maintain a task list for my personal life. I would make short lists day to day if I thought it would help, but no tasks carrying over or systems like GTD
I found that it freed up a lot of mental RAM. I didn’t have the constant weight of 45 undone tasks looming on my mind – at most I would remember the top 3 that I actually HAD to accomplish over the next few days, and I did this just fine without needing a task list to remind me. Many of the things I would have put on my task list, it turned out I didn’t have to actually act on.
One of my friends used to say, “All problems resolve themselves if I just ignore them long enough.” We had laughed about it, but now I was actually beginning to see truth in it, at least on some level. As someone used to having a tight grip on things, this concept felt scary.
Leo Babauta’s article “The Best Goal is No Goal” really threw me. Go read it, it’s not long.
Could I accomplish the same thing I did when I threw out my task list, by tossing out my goal list? I saw the reasoning behind it. But how could I deny how much my previous experiments had helped me? I wasn’t sure that I was ready to give up the idea of goals completely. Still, I was too curious to let this idea go. Maybe I would try something in between?
So what did I actually decide to do for 2011? STAY TUNED!!
Posted on February 26th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Learning, Living (All Posts), Making Money
Topics: books, exercise, freelancing, goals, minimalism, new years, simplicity, veganism
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