Topic: life design!

[Image from when I counted the number of references to sugar in my room, back in April. All of these except the mint cone are gone now.]

I decided to start this experiment while my motivation was high, since I had a feeling that otherwise I would put it off again. Don’t worry, I’ll have an Infinite Money wrap-up post soon!

I’ve tried going without sugar for 30 days twice before, but both times I started eating it again soon after since I saw it as more of a thing that I wanted to try but didn’t really care if I made it a permanent habit. Lately I’ve been eating what I consider to be way too much of it, and I actually get cravings for it that cause me to go out of my way to buy a sugary snack. There’s that, and I think that it’s crowding out my capacity to eat healthy foods. People are generally surprised when I tell them that I don’t think I eat enough fruits and vegetables – I’m vegan after all, what else is there to eat?! I do eat them, but a large part of my diet consists of grain/starch foods and sugar. Probably not the best. I’ve started getting kind of grossed out by it.

So, I decided to make my next experiment a reduced sugar diet. ‘Reduced’ because I’m not cutting it out ENTIRELY (I have a few exceptions which you can read below), but it will still be a lot less than I normally eat, probably less than half of normal. I expect it to be easier for me to give up sugar than an average person, since I already have plenty of experience turning down delicious looking food for personal reasons (lvl 4 vegan discipline yeahyuh).

The other option I was considering for my next experiment was something to do with my social life (since I tend to alternate between money/health/money/health), but after I realised I wanted to focus on social things I’ve started accepting more invitations and putting a little bit more effort than usual into making plans, and so I already have several social events lined up in the near future. Because of this, I’m going to let this area of my life proceed without a formal experiment for a while!

What I hope to get out of this experiment, in order of importance:

1. One less dependency. I hate the idea of needing something, which I why I never got into smoking, social drinking, or coffee. It took me a while to get off cheese, so sugar and the Internet are probably my only remaining vices. It’s not that I will never eat sugar again, but I want to be able to enjoy it consciously rather than feeling like I’m suffering if I don’t have it regularly. This is the main reason I want to do this experiment at all.
2. Long & short term health benefits. Less killing of the pancreas/liver, lower risk of many of the major scary things like heart disease/cancer (I’m living ’til the Singularity, just you watch! ;) ), better nutrition, more stable mood, increased energy level, improved oral health. It’s not that I feel that I’m particularly UNhealthy, but I’d like to be better than average.
3. I’d probably NOT want to lose weight since my BMI is on the low side, but I took some measurements and ‘before’ pictures of my body and skin complexion to see if anything changes. Because that would be interesting indeed. I don’t expect any drastic changes though.

Timeline:
At least a month (August 14th-September 14th), but actually it’s unspecified because I want to keep it up until I don’t get cravings any more, however long that takes. I’ve heard that cravings are supposed to disappear after 3-4 months if you go cold turkey, but since I’m not eliminating it completely (at least at first) it might take me a bit longer. I have some milestones marked in my calendar, however. The first three days are supposed to be the worst, and it’s supposed to get easier after ten days. I also have the 21-day (habit forming) mark and the 30-day mark just for interest’s sake. After my cravings are gone I’ll come up with a controlled way to reintroduce sugar to make sure that I don’t get sucked back into it immediately.

What I will NOT eat:
Candy, desserts, sweet drinks (including sweetened tea or fruit juice), natural sugars (like maple syrup), artificial sweeteners (like aspartame – except in the case of chewing gum). The reason I’m eliminating juice is that it will be an easy way to get rid of several more grams of sugar from my day and I can get more health benefits from eating whole fruit.

I’m also going to try to reduce foods that have more than 4% sugar content (like barbecue sauce, some tomato sauces, a lot of cereals), but I’m not going to be quite as strict in this area. I’m not exactly sure what to use in place of ketchup, so I might keep that (it’s not like it’s a major source of sugar for me).

What I WILL eat:
My two exceptions for sugar will be 1. chocolate soymilk, and 2. lunabars, because I think that for now the nutrition in them is worth it (my soy milk is fortified with b12, and lunabars have delicious minerals). I’m going to limit myself to one cup/one bar a day though, but if after 21 days I feel like these are sabotaging my efforts to reduce cravings, I’ll replace those out too. I’m going to continue to eat non-sweet snack foods like chips or pretzels, and I might even give baking with stevia a shot (it’s a natural, sugarless/no calorie/no side effect sweetener).

I plan to gorge myself on fresh fruit and veggies and protein and fat and water. Some people recommend eating low on the glycemic index all around and cutting out fruit, but since I think fruit is probably one of the healthiest things you could possibly eat, I’m keeping it and focusing more on eliminating the processed/refined sugar. I will probably be increasing my fat intake (ideally nuts, avocado, coconut, olive oil) to make up for the calories.

[My last coconut ice cream sandwich last night! Om nom nom nom.]

Experience so far:
Well, day 1 is over (that was yesterday). I felt really good until just after lunch when my energy level suddenly plunged and my head felt sort of weird, and then my energy slooowwly eventually creeped up again to a ‘sort of tired but not falling asleep like I was before’ level. I wouldn’t necessarily attribute that to sugar related things though because I’ve been known to get sleepy after a meal! It was kind of weird how sudden the energy drop was though. I probably noticed it more because I had been paying attention to my body.

For breakfast I had oatmeal the way I usually make it (chopped walnuts, spoonful of peanut butter, cinnamon, unsweetened almond milk) but without the maple syrup and a glass of water on the side. It was kind of weird having it unsweetened, but totally edible. For lunch I had pasta, and the canned tomatoes I used did have sugar added (and were DELICIOUS~), but it was only around 7% or so and I’m not policing non-dessert foods as much. After that I didn’t really feel satisfied so I had… carrots and lettuce and water since I wasn’t really sure what else to have besides pretzels. Throughout much of the day I’ve felt like snacking, not necessarily like eating sugar in particular, just a sort of persistent feeling of dissatisfaction/hunger. More calories required? Likely!

Around 6:30 pm I got hungry again but wasn’t sure what to make for dinner yet so I had a banana and a coconut! I like drinking the coconut water with a straw and then eating the actual coconut inside. Coconut water has a sort of sweet flavor, so that was nice, but when I bit into that banana, oh man, a tingly feeling erupted in my mouth and then spread out through my arms and legs, and before I was half done eating it I felt much more awake. I’m not even kidding. At least being a banana addict is a step up from being a candy addict.

Then I finally made a batch of burgers and had one on a bun with lettuce and ketchup (sugar, whuh-oh) and I had my glass of chocolate milk as well (a whopping 19 grams of sugar, yikes), bringing the day to a close. I felt the same kind of tingly feeling with the chocolate milk, but it wasn’t as pronounced as it was with the banana.

It’s only the first day so it might be too early to tell, but so far it’s easier than I thought, considering comments I’ve read from other people who have quit sugar (then again, they probably eliminated it almost completely, in some cases they eliminated fruit). It probably helps that last night I watched a documentary on heroin addicts so I know that whatever this experience is like it will pale in comparison to that!! Still, since I stayed home yesterday, it was difficult to get my mind off of it. If this experiment continues the way it does, it should be smooth sailing.

—

Have you ever quit or thought about quitting sugar (or any other substance or food)? What was your experience like?

Posted on August 15th, 2011
Filed under: Being Healthy, Featuring, Feeling Awesome, Living (All Posts)
Topics: diet, experiment, health, life design

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I decided to write this because I haven’t been able to find an explanation elsewhere of what life design is that is close enough to the way I see it myself. I would consider this to be a general approach, but of course I have my own biases that I can’t keep from sneaking in. For example, inherent in my explanation is the idea that your own life experience should be the thing that’s most important to you. But is that necessarily true? Who knows! You have been warned! :)

Q: What is Life Design?

A: Taking responsibility for your life experience.

That’s what it comes down to. In fact, you could stop reading here, but you might be wondering what that involves exactly, how you do it, or why you would even want to.

So that means what, exactly?

Instead of designing some type of external object – like a poster, or a game, or an event – you are directing your attention to the thing that is (or, should be!) the MOST IMPORTANT thing for you to get right: your own life.

Think about what’s at stake. It’s how you spend every moment of every day, for as long as you’re around. At the end of the road, don’t you want to be satisfied that you gave it your best shot? You might only get one! It’s not necessarily about achievement – for me, it is about maximizing enjoyment and playing with what’s possible.

Once you accept that you are responsible for your experience (or at least, a major portion of it) and stop blaming others/the world/your luck, only then can you start to make changes to your life that matter.

I have a creative/design background, so I’m explaining this in terms of design, but there are countless other ways to approach it. I like the sense of deliberate choosing and iterative process that the word ‘design’ lends. I also like ‘life design’ over ‘self improvement/personal development’ because sometimes it’s not yourself you want to change, but you want to set up your environment to support you. It depends on the situation. While I can’t control every little thing, I want to take responsibility for as much of what enters my bubble as possible! If something’s not working for you, and you can’t change it, you can at least eject it from your reality.

Everyone designs their life to some degree (such as choosing which career to pursue, whether or not to take out a second mortgage, whether to have the Big Mac or the McChicken), but life designers are a bit different. Because they’re dedicated to designing all aspects of their lives consciously, their knowledge and experience and choices accumulate over time to propel them miles ahead of everybody else.

What does a designer do?

Great designers (not just life designers, but in traditional disciplines such as graphic design or architecture) look at what has been done before, question it and ask ‘does it have to be that way?’ They know how to use all of the helpful guidelines but aren’t afraid to break rules for the sake of experimentation or creating a greater impact. Though they don’t always know exactly where they’ll end up with a project, they have an idea of the direction they want to take it, and what values they want the project to embody. It usually takes a LOT of experimentation and refinement to get to a high level of quality, and it’s never really done, but through this process something emerges that is much more beautiful, clever and infused with meaning than if they had not been designing at all and had just been on autopilot. Most importantly, everything they do is a deliberate choice.

I don’t claim to be the best designer or life designer – I’m constantly learning! But this is an ideal I strive towards.

Life design explores questions to do with living as a human, such as – what do you believe about yourself? How do you see the world/reality and your relationship to it? How are you choosing to spend your time? How do you make money? Do you even need money? What makes you feel happy and fulfilled? How will you choose to appear to others? Where will you live? Who will you be with? What do you want to work towards? What kinds of experiences do you want to have? What are your values? What is your purpose? What is your personal idea of success? What do you want? How will you get it? What standards have you set for how you’re willing to feel? And where did all of these thoughts and beliefs come from, anyway?

For example, when choosing a career, instead of just saying “well, being a dentist doesn’t sound like it would be too hard and they make a lot of money. And I can’t really think of anything else I could do, so I’ll go with that.” Life designers would then stop and ask, “Waaaait, hold on just a minute. Is that what I really want to spend my life doing? How much money do I actually need to be comfortable? Is that job in alignment with my values? Will I be happy in that job? Do I want to work in an office environment? Does this fit into what my ideal day would be? Do I actually want to be a dentist, or do I just think I want to be a dentist? Is this actually what my parents want? Is it because I think that other people will see me as successful? Do I even want to go to post secondary or am I doing it because I just always assumed I would? Do I think that post secondary education is necessary for success? Is that even true? Did I go with ‘dentist’ because I don’t have confidence in my ability to pursue the career that I really want? What does that say about how I see myself? Is that the kind of person that I want to be? Do I want to care what other people think?” And so on. Lots of thinking, reflection, analysis!

But it doesn’t end there. When life designers are done considering all of these questions, they actually use their conclusions to shape their decisions which in turn shapes their life, hopefully for the better. Sometimes their decisions involve taking a lot of action. Sometimes it’s just a different way of seeing the world. It depends. And maybe it takes them a lot of tries and adjustments to get it right, but asking these types of questions is the catalyst which starts everything in motion.

Life designers continuously broaden their perspective and keep on a lookout for new ideas and ways to improve themselves. They keep asking themselves, “What do I want?” They question things that most people wouldn’t even think to question, and this leads them to pursue paths that many people would be afraid to pursue. They don’t just apply this project to the big milestones like what career to pursue or whether to get married, but they apply it to every area of their life, in every moment if they can.

It can take a long time to get to this point, however. For many people, it starts with a general sense of dissatisfaction. Maybe you wish you had more time, or you feel tired, or your relationship isn’t working out and you just want to find some quick tips on how to deal with that. Eventually it can turn into a lifelong path of self discovery.

Where do you start?

While some aspects of life design can be approached scientifically (for example, diet and exercise), a lot of it has a lot to do with your own values and subjective experience – no one can really tell you what to do. But figuring it out for yourself is part of the fun (and the challenge).

You could just start randomly trying things on your own, or you could start by analyzing someone who has already tried things and is a bit further down the path than you. I think it’s probably a good idea to read things from a number of different teachers to get an idea of what’s out there. They might come in many forms – neighbors, parents, spiritual masters, health gurus, business people, artists, talk show hosts, even fictional characters from stories. A lot of the teachers I keep up with are bloggers and/or authors, but you can probably apply lessons learned from almost any field to your life design practice.

Different teachers have different methods and entry points for approaching life design. Here is a quick summary of a few teachers who have influenced me at some point, in no particular order. Many of them don’t even use the term “life design” (though a couple do), but I think all of them are relevant because they offer a method for taking responsibility and improving your life. Of course, I’ve vastly oversimplified huge bodies of work here, and these individuals may disagree with what I have written here as their core principle/jumping off point (in fact, if you disagree, tell me!), but here is how I see them:

• Leo Babauta – First, make small changes and simplify.
• Ev Bogue – First, throw out all of your stuff.
• Jessica Mullen – First, start lifestreaming.
• Gala Darling – First, love yourself.
• Tim Ferriss – First, start a small business that runs on autopilot.
• Steve Pavlina – First, optimize your physical body (based on this article). (Or, try anything for 30 days. Or, realize that you’re dreaming. … Steve has such a huge and diverse body of work it’s hard to pick.)
• Abraham-Hicks – First, realize that we are all part of the same source energy.
• John Halcyon Styn – First, be yourself.
• David Allen – First, get organized.

They all have something valuable you can learn from them (and it’s nowhere near an exhaustive list), but I don’t give all of these teachers equal weight at all times. For instance, I first read Allen’s Getting Things Done either in grade 11 or 12, when I was more into productivity. At the time it was a great system, and it met me where I was, but lately I’ve been more into pursuing task management from a point of view of enjoyment, inspiration and simplicity. Just choose a teacher (or source of wisdom – it doesn’t have to be a specific person) that makes sense to you and experiment with it, see if it helps you or improves your experience. Don’t be afraid to replace things you learn early on with better things you learn later.

So, it’s possible to start on the life design path from perspectives of business/income generation, owning your time, perception of self, perception of the world, spirituality, or specific methodologies (starting small, lifestreaming, 30 day trials), but I don’t think it matters exactly what way you start. I really think it comes down to taking responsibility to direct your own life and going from there.

After you take responsibility, you can deliberately shape your life to be more like what you want, trying out lots of different perspectives and methods. You might start out with trying to “get more work done” or “lose weight”, and then later once you have your life basically under control you might move on to questioning deeper things like “wait, is this the kind of work I want to do? Should I care about how much I weigh?” And then perhaps deeper questions. “Considering my place in the universe, are those things really important anyway?”

Be careful, because once you get started, it never ends. It’s a hard rabbit hole to get out of – there is no substitute for the high you get from feeling like you’ve cracked the code to life!

***

Do you have any favourite teachers or life design resources that I didn’t list above? Tell me about them in the comments!

Posted on July 16th, 2011
Filed under: Featuring, Living (All Posts)
Topics: life design

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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.

The Void

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.

What to do when you already have everything:

Technical

• Physical Activity + Training
• Master Skills
• Direct Creative Projects

Experiential

• Experience the World
• Life experiments + personal development
• Accomplish dreams, conquer fears

Social

• Socialize + Love
• Serve + Give to others
• Evolve Humanity / Change the World

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.

Other Effects

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.

—

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

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[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:

• You don’t have to worry about having enough money, or where your next paycheck is going to come from.
• You can be yourself and do whatever you want. (Since you don’t need to worry about getting fired or anything. You’ve got it made already!)
• You can buy whatever you want whenever you want without thinking about the cost.
• You can spend all day doing what you want to do. Time affluence.
• You’ve solved one of the main puzzles in the game of life.
• You can focus on quality over quantity/hoarding/buying stuff just because it’s cheap.
• You don’t have to worry about planning as much in order to feel secure (if you forget to pack something on a trip, you can buy it en route).

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.

—

My system – until now

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?

• restricted/limited
• like I have to micromanage/control it
• losses hurt me
• like I HAVE to make X amount or I’ll be behind
• not expecting good things to happen later on
• like I know everything that’s going on – I have a clear picture (positive, but not true)
• makes me think about the future a lot and try to predict the future
• like I don’t have enough
• money is complicated

What do I want to feel?

• good!
• unlimited
• in the moment
• trusting the universe, everything will work out
• like I have enough
• like I can buy whatever I want, when I want
• like I have more money than I can spend
• money is simple

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.

The Experiment

Rules/Specifications

• The trial is to last 3 months. Starting date: May 22. End date: July 22. (I’m already a week into it.)
• I’m not allowed to consider cost as a factor when deciding whether or not to do something. (The most challenging part.)
• Buy everything possible with my credit card so that tracking is automated. (Obviously, I pay off my credit card every month and never carry a balance.)
• I’ll check into my online banking every 2 weeks like I normally do just to make sure nothing fishy or apocalyptic is happening.
• If I have to buy things in cash or with paypal, I’ll only record it if it’s over $50.

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.

Are you crazy?! What if you permanently screw up your finances?

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.

—–

Risk

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.

—–

Observations so far

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?

—

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

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