I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I believe that change should be done as soon as you decide to do it, not because of some date in the calendar. When I saw a video of Ramit Sethi on how he sets a theme at the start of the year, I was convinced that this is the way to do it.
Why is this different from setting up a New Year’s resolution? The traditional way makes you identify what you need to change in your life
(better diet, better sleep, financial recovery). In contrast, a theme sets the direction, or what to focus on. Instead of highlighting your shortcomings (binge eating, sleeping late, no financial plan), a theme allows you to both re-align your priorities, as well as double down on your strengths that point you in the direction that you want.
I am smack in the middle of my expected lifespan (if all goes well). All those years come with habits, possessions, and ideas that no longer serve a purpose at this point in my life. For this reason, my theme for this year is The Year of Freedom. This is hard to describe in just a few words, so I will expound on the main ideas:
Information
Having built my career in the technology sector, I unsurprisingly became a digital hoarder. Bumped into a website that seems remotely interesting? Bookmarked. Someone in Hacker News mentions a good book? Add to cart. Visited a website or newsletter that seems cool? Join the mailing list. And so on. As you might expect, I never revisited, bought, or read about roughly 90% of this stuff again. At some point I had thousands of unread emails in my inbox from newsletters that I just kept putting off for another day.
The logical solution is to (1) stop piling up these kinds of information, and (2) do some house cleaning. For (1), I unsubscribed to all of the newsletters I am receiving, and will not sign up for new ones this year. Next is to trim your digital data to things that are necessary in the near term (e.g. within one year). Anything that might be needed beyond that can be purged.
As with the usual (physical) hoarding, the rationale is that “What if we need it in the future?” We all know that almost always, the things we store “for the future” aren’t needed at all. Digital hoarding is much harder to rationalize, as the information is readily available online whenever we need it. Also, this information may even be obsolete in case we need it in the future. All the more reason to be more unforgiving in deleting the data we don’t need.
Obsessions
I have habits that, admittedly, are just a waste of time. The table needs to be set this way, or this is how this part of the house needs to be cleaned. While on the surface, these seem like a good thing by keeping your surroundings neat and organized. In reality though, this is a waste of both time and emotional energy.
Nature will always win given enough time. You have to sweep the floor regularly since dust and dirt accumulate, regardless of how clean the other parts of the house are. Your garden needs to be tended as weed and insects will inevitably come. Dirt and weed are not bad things, they are natural. Instead of becoming upset that something needs cleaning or organizing, we need to realize that what we are doing isn’t even natural. We are in essence, going against nature, and so we should be grateful that we have the opportunity to them in the first place.
You do not even have to do them on your own! There is no “best” way of cleaning the counter, as nature will take over regardless. And if there is no best way, why are you upset if it is not cleaned based on your standards? Why are you wasting time and energy on something that is transient? Ask for help from the people around you. Be thankful for their efforts and not judge them based on your idealized outcome.
Financial
I was deep in the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement that ingrained in me the goal of being financially independent. Financial independence means that your savings and investments are sufficient enough to sustain your living expenses while you are alive. There is a rule of thumb called the 4% rule that says you can withdraw 4% of your total portfolio safely without running out of money. There are a lot of nuances regarding this rule (which I will not discuss here), but this is a good heuristic so you have a defined target amount that you can aim at.
I am not close to being financially independent and I accept that I will likely not reach my target number. However, financial freedom is more achievable. Financial freedom is about living without constraints or stress about money. You achieve this by saving and investing wisely, optimizing expenses, and minimizing or eliminating debt.
The beauty of this is that financial freedom does not depend on the absolute amount of wealth you have. A person’s 1 million portfolio can mean financial freedom for them, but can be insufficient for another person. The goal therefore is not to accumulate more wealth, but to reach what is enough. The definition of enough is different for each of us, and we should think very hard on what that means if we want to be free financially and escape the rat race.
Ataraxia
Epicureanism, the philosophy founded by Epicurus, often gets a bad rap as it is a hedonic philosophy. The goal of this philosophy is the pursuit of pleasure, which is attained by the absence of pain. Because of this, it is incorrectly equated to a life of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”, but this is a gross oversimplification of its concepts.
Epicurus taught that our desires can be categorized into three classes:
- Natural and necessary – needed for our survival, like food, shelter and clothing. These take the highest priority as we will experience pain without them.
- Natural but not necessary – a grander version of our natural needs, such as delicious food, a big house, and sex. These just amplify our desires, and not necessarily needed to eliminate pain.
- Unnatural and unnecessary – on the surface, these seem to contribute to our happiness, but in reality just give us more pain than pleasure. Examples are the pursuit of wealth, fame, and power.
Our goal therefore is:
- To focus on things that are natural and necessary
- It is fine to desire unnecessary things as long as they are natural and does not bring us pain
- Avoid unnatural and unnecessary desires altogether
This ties to the concept of enough in our financial freedom goal. If your basic needs are met, then pursuing a bigger, better version of what is already in our possession is an unnecessary desire. Striving for an even greater version is unnatural, and thus will prevent us from being free.
These are the main points of my Year of Freedom. I do not have any expectations that I will be able to implement all of them perfectly, but having focus on the desired outcome leads to better decisions. Do you have other themes that can help you live a better life? Do you want to pursue your freedom as well?