How reading has changed my life

About a year and a half ago, I canceled my cable subscription and gave my TV away.  I had decided that nothing that I was watching had really provided me with anything of substantial value in my life.  In fact, all those hours I had spent in front of it had only taken away time from activities I could have spent learning something or improving myself.

Watching television is kind of like eating potato chips.  You tell yourself that you are only going to watch for one hour or eat “a few” chips.  Before you know it, you’ve spent 3 hours watching TV and have killed about half the bag of chips.  With television gone, I found I had much more time to myself after work instead of feeling like there weren’t enough hours in the day.

I am now quite a voracious reader of books, both self-improvement and non-fiction.  Every book I read opens my mind to ideas I had never considered or educates me on periods of history I had little knowledge about.  For example, I am currently deployed to Afghanistan, but knew embarrassingly little about the country.  After reading Ghost Wars, the voluminous, Pulitzer Prize winning book about the CIA and our history in Afghanistan, I developed a much clearer understanding of all the events leading up to our current occupation here.  Like an addiction, each book leads me to explore other titles, which I make a note in my head to read in the future.  Although I could do better at applying more of the techniques I learn about, even if they are not implemented, they are now additional tools that can be recalled and applied to my life as necessary.  Any topic that you can imagine has been addressed by many people in great detail and opening a book is like taking someone’s life work and gaining all that knowledge in the span of a few days.  To me, this is invaluable and will continue to shape my view of health, fitness, finance, personal relationships, and life for years to come.

 

The importance of developing actual skills

I am a big fan of the blogs Early Retirement Extreme as well as I Will Teach You to be Rich.  The former, written by Jacob Fisker, teaches you how to become financially independent within 5 years by saving 75% to 80% of your income, maximizing the use of your resources, and cutting expenses to the point where the revenue generated by your saved income exceeds those expenses.  The latter, Ramit Sethi, believes that you can only cut expenses so much and that at a certain point, you should concentrate on earning more.  He has a course called Earn 1K on the Side in which he shows his students how to generate additional income through freelancing without quitting their full-time job.  Although the two authors differ in how best to achieve financial independence, they also share a common thread that made me realize something.  I am highly lacking in actual skills.

In his book, Jacob Fisker talks about the difference between the Salary Man and the Renaissance Man.  The Salary Man is something that most of us are.  We go to work day in and day out, living from paycheck to paycheck, and use the money that we earn to purchase stuff that we use (food, housing, clothes, etc.).  In turn, the more stuff we use, the more we have to work in order to pay for that stuff.  It is essentially a cycle with no end unless you change the fundamental structure.  The ideal solution is to have enough assets saved so that the dividends received from those assets is able to pay for the stuff that you use.  It is at that point that you have achieved financial independence because you have eliminated the need to work to pay for the stuff that you consume.  Essentially, the work produced by others is now paying for your expenses.  However, there is another problem with being a Salary Man.  The main problem is that he has essentially put all his eggs in one basket.  If he loses his job, the scramble is on to find another one because his only source of income has been eliminated.  If the economy is good and he is able to find a market for his skill, then all is well.  However, especially in today’s economy, it could take months if you even end up finding another job.  It can be pretty stressful given the fact that you could be laid off at any time and be forced into a tough situation.  With unemployment at 10%, many Americans are currently in this predicament.  The Renaissance Man has no such problems.  Rather than being specialized in one skill, he is relatively proficient in many.  Since his skills are varied and not directly tied to one another, losing one source of income is not a big deal because he has multiple options and other sources of revenue that he can sustain himself with.  Skills can include things such as watch repair, bicycle or automotive repair, construction, carpentry, etc.  Since we have evolved into a society in which we pretty much pay someone to do even the most mundane of tasks for us, having such skills can prove to be even more valuable than many white-collar skills that are typically associated with more earning power.

Switching gears, one of the first exercises that Ramit’s Earn 1K on the Side Course asked me to do was to think of some skills that I could potentially freelance with in order to earn money.  I must admit, this was an extremely difficult exercise for me.  Yes, I could tutor or provide financial advice, but this exercise really made me realize that I had few actual skills.  In essence, I was not a true Renaissance Man who would have no difficulty coming up with at least 5 skills he could effectively freelance with.

I believe the fist step in transforming yourself into a more versatile and, in essence, more interesting person is to start learning about something that you think you’d be interested in.  Rather than wasting time watching TV or playing video games, you could spend that time developing those skills until you are relatively proficient in it.  Jacob suggests that it takes approximately 1,000 hours to go from novice to journeyman (competent in your skill) and 3,000 hours to become a master (proficient in your skill).  Being competent or proficient in a variety of skills has the following benefits:

• You open your mind to new ways of thinking that you can couple with existing knowledge in different and interesting ways.

• You make yourself recession-proof by being able to earn money in a variety of ways, not just one.  However, if the dividends achieved by your savings can cover your expenses, this is a moot point.

• Your can cut your expenses because you are able to do more things for yourself rather than having to pay to have them done.  You become self-sustaining and independent.

I have to emphasize that developing such skills shouldn’t be all about money either.  Although they can be used as a source of income, I believe that being versatile and self-sustaining (being able to build your own house or grow your own food, for example) is much more important.  I don’t know about you, but I need to get started on becoming a true Renaissance Man.

 

Why your job will never make you happy

There are two fundamental reasons why I believe your full-time job will never make you happy.

1) You are working for a paycheck that you need in order to live in today’s society.
2) You are working on projects and on a timeline (M-F, 9-5) that is important to someone else, not you.

When you work at a job because you need the money, it places a certain amount of stress on you.  A stress to spend the majority of the day in an office you may not like.  A stress based in the fear that you could potentially get laid off at any time.  A stress to deal with the daily bullshit that you may experience in the workplace.  In order to eliminate #1, you first need to achieve financial independence.  You accomplish this by having enough saved income to replace your expenses.  Obviously, the greater your expenses, the longer you need to work in order to achieve independence.  This is why living simply will allow you to achieve your goals a lot quicker.  Once you have eliminated the need for the paycheck, it is easy to fix #2.

Do you dread Mondays?  The reason for that is because you are working on someone else’s schedule.  Someone long ago decided that you should have to work Monday through Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM.  For some of you, this may even be a conservative estimate.  I am willing to bet that this is not the same timeline you have for yourself.  Weekends never seem long enough.  Even if you are passionate about what you do, I am willing to bet that you would enjoy the freedom to do it or not do it according to your own schedule.  True, some people work this much or maybe even longer on projects that they are really dedicated to, but once again, that is the schedule that they have set for themselves after financial independence is achieved.

One exercise that most people have heard of to determine where you’d spend your time if you had unlimited funds is to imagine that you have $10 million dollars or some other outrageous sum of money.  How would you spend your time if you had that much?  Would you continue working at your current job?  For most people, even those that may like what they’re doing, the answer is no.  You then start to imagine what you would do with your time if that was the case.  Maybe you’d fix up antique cars.  Maybe you’d volunteer some more.  Maybe you’d write and read more.  Regardless of what it is, it is probably significantly different from your full time job.  The problem with thinking about this is that the reality is that you don’t have $10 million dollars and the thing that you imagine doing probably won’t give you enough income to live on.  You don’t need $10 million or close to that amount.  How much you need will vary amongst individuals depending on the type of lifestyle you are willing to accept.  Achieving financial independence at an early age allows you to pursue those interests long before someone else gives you permission to do so (right now they say that you can only do this starting at age 65).

Don’t get me wrong.  There are definitely people out there that enjoy what they do.  However, for the two reasons above, their full time job will never be as fulfilling as it can be.  If you had the ability to eliminate Reason #1 from the equation, you would, in turn, be able to re-adjust your timelines and priorities as you see fit, eliminating Reason #2.  Therefore, if you are doing work that you find fulfilling on your own schedule and not because of the money, that is a true indicator of how you truly want to spend your time.

 

“You can afford to eat that” and other things I hate hearing

Most of the time when someone offers me a doughnut or some other type of unhealthy junk food, I’ll politely decline.  It is at that point that they say something along the lines of, “Oh, you’re skinny.  You can afford to eat that.”  This brings to light some underlying, disturbing beliefs that we have as a society.   Most of the time, changes to behavior are a result of a reaction to a negative event rather than being proactive.  Let’s take, for example, two things that I like to discuss here, health and finances.  Have we come to a point where the only reason to eat healthy is to lose a few pounds for the summer or that you should seek to cut expenses only when you find yourself mired in debt?  The problem with doing those things is that they are short-term solutions and do not address the root problem.  People who seek reactionary solutions to their problems may reverse course for a short period of time, but are bound to fall back on their old habits after the crisis has been averted.  In that sense, it becomes a never-ending cycle.  In order to stay consistent you must be motivated by higher ideals, such as a desire to stay healthy/fit or become financially independent.

The people who get the proactive mentality are the ones who continue to exercise and eat healthy even though they are in top physical shape.  They are the ones who continue to save and live within their means even though they can afford to blow it all on fancy things.  That is what, in my opinion, I call progress.

 

The Myth of Monogamy

Is monogamy a human trait?  With the string of recent infidelities constantly bombarding us in the media in addition to the experiences in our personal lives, I believe this is a question worth asking.  While on a plane, I had the pleasure of reading a book called Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha that blows many of our long held assumptions out of the water.  In their groundbreaking book they suggest, through an enormous amount of anthropological data, studies of our closest evolutionary relatives (chimps and bonobos), as well as through studies of existing and past hunter-gatherer societies, that we are not, in fact, a naturally monogamous species.

How was life back then?

Monogamy is not found in any social, group-living primate except-if the standard narrative is to believed-us.

In early foraging and hunter-gatherer societies, people lived in smaller groups of no more than 100-150 individuals.  Sharing, not an “every man for himself” mentality that we grew up with, was the norm.  In order for early humans to be successful, it was necessary to share food, resources, and yes, also sexual partners.  Human females are unique in that they do not give any outward indication of ovulation as  most animals do.  It is believed that this occurs in order to hide paternity.  With no social restrictions on female sexuality as we have today, women mating with multiple males in the group was the norm.  This was obviously beneficial for men since the ability to mate with any woman in the group lowered aggression and competition.  The belief that the fetus is “made up of accumulated semen,” which therefore leads women to “seek out sex with an assortment of men” has been found independently in cultures around the world.  This was also beneficial to females because there was now a chance that any one of the males could be the father.  Raising children, far from being the job of only one family, was the job of the whole group since paternity could have been with any one of the men.  Any hint of jealousy or possessiveness that might have developed would have quickly been eliminated by the group.  It is widely known that sperm compete with each other fiercely within a woman’s body.  Since this natural selection war takes place within, there is really no reason for competition amongst males for females outside.

What changed everything?

Recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.
-Jared Diamond

One word.  Agriculture.  In addition to sabotaging our diet, agriculture singlehandedly changed our views on sex as well.  Agriculture allowed populations to explode as more food could be harvested.  As land and food became a commodity, wars were fought in order to control resources and consolidate power.  Female sexuality, in turn, also became a commodity to be exploited and controlled.

Haven’t we evolved past this?

This is probably the number one question people ask when confronted with such information.  “We are more intelligent/civilized/evolved than primates and hunter-gatherers,” people say.  Although we have evolved in a certain sense, to overlook or deny where we came from is to be short-sighted, to say the least.  Any argument that doesn’t consider the fact that we are, at the basic level, still primal creatures or that ignores evidence of our origins cannot be comprehensive.

So what does this all mean?

We know that many female readers aren’t going to be happy reading this, and some will be enraged by it, but for most men, sexual monogamy leads inexorably to monotomy.  It’s important to understand this process has nothing to do with the attractiveness of the man’s long-term partner or the depth and sincerity of his love for her.

We all know that men seek out an enjoy a variety of sexual partners.  What this also tells us is given a different place and time, without the constraints of modern society, females would function in much the same way. Does this information give men and women a license to be dishonest in their current relationships?  Absolutely not.  What this research does provide, however, is a framework for understanding why we are the way we are as well as the constant conflict between who we are and who society often wants us to be.  If anything, this should open up a dialogue amongst members of both sexes and partners and to realize that monogamy, far from an ideal to strive for, is simply a societal construct.

There is no way I can do this book justice in a simple blog post, but I encourage all of you to read it.  It is wonderfully written and had me hooked so much that I was able to finish this 314 page book in just one day.

 

Goodbye Hawaii

As I leave Hawaii, I can’t help but reminisce upon all the experiences that I have had during my three years here on the island.  They have been varied, unique, and unforgettable.

Oahu

-Living in the blue house

-Learning to ride and purchasing my first motorcycle

-Running my first marathon (Honolulu)

-Halloween (you just have to be here)

-Completing 30 hikes around the island (Top four are: Olomana, Stairway to Heaven, Ka’au Crater, and Kuli’ou’ou)

-Skydiving at Dillingham

-Getting divemaster certification

-Riding in an Ultralight

-Aloha Run

-Crossfit

-Deploying to the Philippines

-Paintballing at Bellows

-Partying in Waikiki

-Parkour

-Parasailing

-Shipwreck diving

-Jet skiing

-Starting my Master’s

-Vacations to Australia and Thailand

-Learning to sail

-Climbing to the top of Chinaman’s Hat

-Snorkeling in Hanauma Bay/Shark’s Cove

-Movie Museum

-Actually learning to swim the right way (Thanks Team Jet)

-Hawaiian Adventures Water Park

-XTerra 10K Trail Run at Ku’uloa Ranch

-Rock climbing at Makapu’u and Mokule’ia

-Kayaking the Kahana River

-Walking out to Ka’ena Point (Western most tip of Oahu)

-Two promotions

-Swimming out to the waterfall in Waimea Valley

-Luaus

-Hanging out at the beach

-Booze Cruise on the catamaran

Big Island

-Volcanoes National Park

-Ahalanui Pool (ocean pool naturally heated by volcano to 90 degrees F)

-Green, Black, and White sand beaches

Kauai

-Waimea Canyon

-Na Pali Coast hike

Maui

-Sunrise on top of Haleakala

-Zip lining

Molokai

-Hike down to Kalaupapa

And last but not least, all the countless friends that I have shared these experiences with.  Without you, they just wouldn’t have been the same.  Thank you.  May we run into each other again.

 

Why do we overlook the keys to our happiness?

I once read the the key to happiness lies in three aspects of our lives: health, wealth, and relationships.

While some might argue that there more characteristics that contribute to our overall happiness, I tend to believe that this covers most of it.  After all, if you are lacking in any one of these categories, you are probably not living as happy or fulfilling of a life as you can.  So why is it that so many people are content on living their lives ignorant of these topics when there exists a sheer wealth of knowledge that can improve your life?  Enter the importance of reading blogs and books.  I feel fortunate that in this technological age, there are tons of bloggers out there who have a vast amount of knowledge to share with the world on these topics.  Most of them put out thought-provoking posts every week and introduce me to new ideas I would never have found out about otherwise.  New ideas and concepts are like wildfire and continue to lead you on different paths of learning and self-discovery.

Health

There are those who are born with the misfortune of chronic ailments.  For them I feel bad.  But for the majority of us, our ailments are simply a result of a lifetime accumulation of self-imposed mistreatment of our bodies that come back to bite us in the ass one day.  Yes, you might have been able to eat like crap in high school and college and get away with it.  However, I can almost guarantee you that if you continued that trend through your career after college, you probably look in the mirror and wonder who that fat ass is staring back at you.  No, it’s not your metabolism slowing down.  It’s the fact that you didn’t feel the need to live a healthy lifestyle and your body is only going to deal with that for so long.  Don’t know where to get your nutrition advice from?  Try the link below.  It is to Mark’s Daily Apple.  It is excellent blog on everything primal.  He touches on just about everything related to health in our lives and is an excellent source of material.  If you doubt his word, take a look at his pictures and ask yourself if you’d like to look like that in your 50s.  I know I do.   I highly recommend his book as well.  Double You Gains is a great site that focuses more on lifting and strength training.

Mark’s Daily Apple

Double Your Gains

Wealth

Just like most people, I really started to find out about the importance of managing my finances after college.  Before that point, there was really no need.  My only requirements had been to study and get good grades.  Welcome to the real world where ignorance is no longer an excuse.  Don’t know what a Roth IRA is?  Google it and find out.  Don’t know where to invest your money?  How about getting some good financial books from the library or Amazon and reading up on it?  Everyone has to start from somewhere.  Although getting financial advice once in awhile can be helpful, there is absolutely no reason why you cannot manage your finances yourself.  And seriously, who’s going to care more about YOUR money than YOU?  There are even more financial blogs that I can recommend to get you started.

Get Rich Slowly

Bargaineering

I Will Teach You to Be Rich

Relationships

If there’s one book I recommend on improving relationships, it’s How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.  Originally published in 1937, the book is a classic and is probably the definitive guide on how you should treat people in both your professional and personal life.

There are a ton more resources that I reference daily and probably more than a few I haven’t heard of yet.  If you have any good ones, I’m always open to hear them.

 

A dramatic shift in priorities

As I come to the end of my three years here in Hawaii, I realize how much my priorities have shifted from even a few years ago.  Inspired by the such blogs as Early Retirement Extreme, Almost Fearless, and The Art of Nonconformity; the books of Henry David Thoreau (Walden) and Rolf Potts (Vagabonding); and movies such as Into the Wild, my goals have shifted singularly to the following:

1) To live as simply as possible

2) To achieve financial independence as early as possible

3) To retire from full time work as early as possible and get started on my dream of long term world travel

I list them in that order because each one necessitates the other.  For example, one cannot achieve financial independence early, short of being born into a rich family or winning the lottery, without living simply.  We live in a consumerist culture in which we are always conditioned to buy more and more without a second thought as to what we actually need.

Housing is the biggest expense that most people have.  I have come to the conclusion that I will never purchase a house.  I grew up in a pretty large house in the suburbs of Maryland.  The more I think about it, the more I cannot understand the need to purchase a house for hundreds of thousands of dollars when you only really need a fraction of the space.  Let’s forget about housing as an investment for a second.  I’m talking about being tied down to one location in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for a house that you don’t even need.  The more space you have, the more energy you expend cleaning and maintaining it.  A more economical solution, especially for a single person like myself (or even a couple), is to live in the cheapest, furnished studio that I can find.  I say furnished because I also never want to purchase another piece of furniture ever again.  As I get ready to move to Japan from my apartment, the move will be extremely painless.  That is because I do not own 95% of the belongings in my apartment.  No need to worry about moving furniture to my new location of getting rid of it at a fraction of what I paid for it only to begin the cycle of wasted money once again.  I can fit all my possessions into a small bedroom.  In fact, I own so few belongings that I can tell you from memory just about every item that I own.

I also never plan on never having any children.  I always get weird looks from people every time I tell them this.  I guess having children is so ingrained in our DNA and culture that many people cannot fathom being childless.  To me, the concept is simple.  Children once served a purpose long ago in ancient and agrarian societies when kings needed an heir to the throne or families needed children to work on the farm.  In today’s modern society, where all our needs are provided for, children serve no purpose other than an emotional one.  The only reason you should have a child is if you truly desire to raise another life and take on all the sacrifices that come along with that.  I hear all the time that people want children so that they have someone to take care of them when they are old.  That line of reasoning is unbelievably asinine.  There is absolutely no guarantee that your children will take care of you when you are old, and if that is your only reason, you need to re-examine your priorities.  In addition to sacrifices to your time and freedom, be prepared for the monetary sacrifice as well, with estimates for raising one child in the ballpark of $200,000.  When parents decide to have lots of children, it’s no wonder that they struggle financially.

Doing the following will help me achieve financial independence well before the official retirement age of 65.  The idea of retiring at 65 absolutely appalls me.  While people can still live active and meaningful lives at that point, you are also closer to the end game than you are to the beginning.  Health concerns will also start to play a role as well.  The only reason why people have to retire at 65 or later is because their savings strategies are horrible and because they believe they are entitled to all the nice things in life.  In reality, if people started living below their means and made smart decisions with their money, such as saving much more than the suggested 10% of their income (aim for 50% or more) and starting this earlier in life (2o’s instead of 50′s), they could achieve financial independence decades earlier.

I do not, by any means, do this perfectly and still have a lot to learn, but in the long run I know it will be worth it.

 

Incorporating yoga into your rest periods

We all know that as important as it is to work out, it is equally important to give your body the rest it needs.  Constantly pushing your body to the limit without any rest period doesn’t allow your muscles the proper time to rebuild and recover.  Over-training thus leads to injury and performance deterioration rather than performance enhancement.

Yet, for people in good shape, sitting around and doing nothing during your recovery days can leave you feeling lethargic and low on energy.  You can’t wait for your next workout day so that you can feel good and get the endorphins flowing again.  Hence, I am experimenting with incorporating yoga into my rest periods.

The benefits of yoga are well documented.  A quick search online will reveal that it has some of the following benefits:

1) Increased flexibility, strength, and energy

2) Detoxification

3) Mind/body awareness

4) Improved circulation and respiration

5) Enhanced mood and metabolism

The list goes on and on and are really too numerous to list here.  Seeing as how I enjoy challenges and hazing myself, there was really only one type of yoga that intrigued me, Bikram Yoga.  This yoga is practiced in a 110 degree heated room of 40 percent humidity.  Sessions last for approximately an hour and a half.  After the session, you are literally drenched in sweat from head to toe.  It is quite challenging, but leaves you refreshed afterwards.  The purpose of the heated room is to help with the detoxification process, allow the muscles to warm up and stretch more easily, as well as develop mental fortitude.  I was first exposed to it in Maryland, but have not done it for awhile.  I find that getting back into yoga is a perfect complement to any strength or conditioning routine that you have.  It allows to you still recover on those days, while reaping the enormous benefits of yoga.  Try it and see how it feels.

 

How to dial in your diet, save money, and time

1) Only buy natural foods

This can easily be accomplished by staying around the perimeter of the grocery store.   All the fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, and meats are located around the perimeter.  There are few food items that you should be purchasing from the middle of the store, which is where all the processed, unhealthy foods are located.  The only things I ever purchase from the middle isles are walnuts and canned vegetables.  The rest of my grocery cart comes from the perimeter.  If the unhealthy food never makes it into your cart in the first place, it makes it pretty easy to eat healthy at home.  After all, you have no other choice.

2) Keep your recipes simple

I used to purchase cookbooks with the crazy idea that I would be making all these delicious recipes.  Of course, each recipe in a cookbook has about 15 ingredients, which you also feel compelled to buy.  Unfortunately, once you use a small amount of most of these ingredients, the rest of it either sits on your shelf unused or gets thrown out.  To add to the frustration, the last thing you want to do after a long day’s work is prepare a complicated recipe that will take up the rest of your evening.  My dinner routine now consists of marinating two chicken thighs in barbeque sauce, honey, and garlic salt, wrapping it up in tin foil, and baking it in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.  I then either steam up some frozen mixed vegetables or microwave some canned vegetables.  Dinner is done.  By keeping all your recipes simple, by which I mean limiting it to a couple of ingredients, you save money by eliminating extraneous products and save time by preparing food that can taste just as good will a lot less hassle.  This leads me up to Point #3.

3) Eat the same thing every day

This seems extremely boring, but let me explain.  If you’ve gone grocery shopping long enough, you probably have a good idea of the types of foods you actually finish consuming during the week and the foods that go bad and that you have to throw away.  Every item that goes bad and that has to get thrown away is money wasted.  If you’re shopping on the perimeter, you’re buying highly perishable items.  There’s no need to fill up the refrigerator just because.  At any given time, you will only see berries, grapes, apples, oranges, and eggs in my refrigerator.  In my freezer, I have a bunch of frozen chicken and vegetables.  Eating the same thing every day doesn’t mean that you have to limit the types of food you enjoy.  You can still purchase a variety of healthy foods, and you will probably notice that there is a certain range of food that you eat anyways.  For example, here is my typical day.

Breakfast

handful of walnuts
cup of raspberries/blueberries
one apple or orange
whey protein shake with a splash of chia seeds

Lunch

bowl of salad
bowl of fruit
serving of meat w/ cooked vegetables

Dinner

two marinated chicken thighs
side of mixed vegetables

I thought I would get sick of it, but I haven’t yet.  And I’ve been eating this Monday through Friday for months now.  This makes grocery shopping painless when I already know exactly what I’m going to buy.  It also makes me very aware of the types of food I consume.

4) Give yourself a cheat day

Don’t go overboard, but everyone needs to cheat once in awhile