(The following is an excerpt from the book, Hacking Normal by John Stevenot available on Amazon.com)
Below are are three “Pillar Definitions” the important areas to control to live achieve a Hacking Normal life .
Time
Time is the one resource that you can’t get back. You only have so many seconds, minutes, hours, and days in your life. Find a way to make sure that you are using time how you want to use it.
In a working environment, I want to control exactly when and how long I work. When I work is very important to me. I don’t know anyone who can say that they work best only during the hours between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. There are times when I want to work at 5:30 in the morning or 10:30 in the evening.
How long I work dutifully follows suit with the idea of when I work. There is a mental trick that people play on themselves when they are in an office for eight hours a day. It’s called Parkinson’s Law.
Essentially, Parkinson’s Law states: a task will balloon in size in order to fit the time constraint given to the task.
For example, give someone a week to get a PowerPoint presentation done and you will see the presentation on your desk at the close of business on Friday. That’s just how humans act.
I hate working within the constraints of Parkinson’s Law.
I’m all about getting the task done now. But that is only true if, when the task is done, I can be free to focus on or do something else. I want to be paid for efficient use of my time, not how well I can waste it. If I don’t have something to work on, I’m not at my desk or at the office.
Location
Speaking of not being at the office, this brings us to my second area of control: location. I will not spend my days in an office.
Period.
Unless I must be in the building for a meeting or important task, I work elsewhere. There is no reason to be in an office for eight hours a day. I am most productive when I can work in an environment that stirs my creativity.
Sometimes, that means I am working next to a waterfall or by the ocean. Most of the time, though, it means working quietly at my home office at 6:00 a.m. while listening to a podcast or soothing music.
Having control over my location has many benefits, such as saving myself from traffic, getting to exercise when my body is ready, to live where I want to live, and, if I had kids, to spend time with them when they aren’t at school. All the things that people feel like they are missing (and are missing), I get to experience daily.
Income Streams
My financial goal is to have multiple income streams; somewhere around seven would be optimal. Those income streams can come from anywhere: jobs, investments, my own company, book sales, etc.
The point, though, is that I am not dependent on one company or one source to meet all my financial needs.
As an employee, I want to work for two or three companies at a time to provide an income buffer. To most people, that sounds like a lot. But if you have control over your time and location, having three jobs is not that bad. You work for each company when each company needs you to work; no more, no less.
If a company has a problem with me spreading my time and focus over multiple sources, then, well, it’s not going to work out.
The beauty of multiple income streams is two-fold.
First, I have all the leverage. I no longer must take a crappy employment deal because I am desperate for money. If I’m just adding another company to the list of companies I am already working for, the company has no power over me. I can accept or reject their employment offer at will. That is an amazing power most people never get to experience.
Second, I have protection. Let’s say that a company thinks I am under-performing and decides to fire me. If my only source of income was from that company, I’d be up shit creek. But, since I have multiple sources of income, I can be fired (or I can quit) from a job and still retain a source (or multiple sources) of income, due to my work with the other companies. Simply put, it’s not a disaster if I get let go or quit my job.