Escaping the grind is wonderful and often needed. But life is long and money scarcity motivates us to do hard things that make life rewarding.
Listen to the Podcast
Recently, I’ve been increasingly conflicted by several dueling experiences and sensations:
- Reduced Stress: Since departing from the Standard Corporate Office Environment (SCOE), I’ve enjoyed decreased stress and anxiety levels. While stress has its upsides, reducing chronic stress is foundational to living a good life.
- Mounting pressure to be part of society. I’ve been working on this project for six years, but being a home-based blogger and podcaster isn’t fully satisfying some of the key pillars of a meaningful life.
- Decreased Motivation: I’m finding it hard to engage tasks not entirely aligned with my vision of a good life. Paradoxically, a good life involves doing hard things.
What the Wrong Job Looks Like
When I worked in the SCOE, I rose around 5:00 am and rushed through the morning. I ran to the bus stop with my backpack smacking my ass, commuting in the pre-dawn light to a glowing skyscraper in downtown Denver. In those marble-floored halls, I struggled to mold my natural work habits to the strict hours and rigid working environment of the SCOE.
In keeping with the principles of the four-hour workday, I do my best and deepest work in roughly hour-long uninterrupted blocks before noon. Unfortunately, in the SCOE my mornings typically began with a series of meetings instead of closed-door focus. I mostly didn’t enjoy or find the work stimulating, and consequently became frustrated and bored.
Frequently on call in the early years, I was forced to closely monitor email, WhatsApp, and other forms of asynchronous communication. I had to be available on nights, weekends, and holidays. During this period, I started sleeping poorly and grinding my teeth at night. My dentist, alarmed at my beveled teeth, gently suggested a mouthguard for sleep.
Certainly, the stress induced by a job ill-suited to my interests fueled my obsessive desire for financial independence. By removing money scarcity, I intended to pursue more meaningful work without regard for pay. I didn’t anticipate how hard that would be.
Finding a New Job
After I sort of quit my job, I vowed to take time to recuperate from the fog of work. However, I made one key mistake: I never really stopped working. I started this blog in 2018, and when I left the SCOE I went full-tilt into writing, and eventually, recording and producing weely podcasts for this platform. I should have taken at least a few months to unwind.
In some ways I wanted Clipping Chains to grow enough to justify it as my second career (or third, if you count my cooking days). Realistically, I was using this platform as a stepping stone, a way to hone the craft of writing and idea generation, consolidating learnings to expand into something else.
New Career Ideas Without Money Scarcity
Early retirement, for me, is not an option. While enticing, useful, and quite fun for a time, pursuing self-serving interests runs counter to our herd origins and is incompatible with eudaimonia, or human flourishing.
In the last two years, I’ve been prototyping new careers. Starting in the summer of 2022, I took a wild shot in the dark at fiction. While I’d never written fiction and had no formal training, I felt drawn to literature’s soulful elements. I completed a novel by late 2023. I learned a ton but ultimately didn’t feel the work was ready for the world beyond the walls of our home. Instead, I wrote and made a half-hearted effort to publish several short stories. Crickets. Fiction is a tough world and I’m a poor self-promoter.
In recent months I’ve turned my attention to journalism and academia. You, dear reader, may have noticed my tinkering with style and content here in this blog, which I use as a training and testing ground for new concepts. What do you think?
Science Journalism
I’ve always loved long-form and investigative journalism. This work integrates newfound writing and interviewing skills with my academic research background. Mostly, I want to begin working with editors who aren’t my wife (love you!).
That said, there’s a lot of soulless journalism: heaps of shallow listicles, clickbait nothings, and borderline (or outright) propaganda. Generally speaking, I also find the mix of social media and journalism a tragic soup affecting the quality of discourse, however useful the platforms are in promoting work or gaining sources. It’s not just me: 80% of surveyed journalists agree.
Academia
In 2009, I was nearly 100% set on continuing school and being a professor. Perhaps you recall the shocking headlines of the 2008 financial crisis? Well, the global financial meltdown decimated funding in the earth sciences—I was a geologist—and PhD programs became increasingly competitive. Plus, I feared the post-doc shuffle and tenure-track slog. Facing an economic winter, I reluctantly put the idea on ice for a sweaty Houston, Texas internship with an oil and gas company. That internship and subsequent job offer led to the decade of SCOE described above.
Now I’m considering switching gears entirely, pursuing a graduate education in the social sciences. As you may have noticed, I love the study of human behavior, bias, and decision-making. However, I don’t want to be a tenure-track professor. I want to write. And that’s an awfully tortuous path to writing.
Furthermore, I mean, let’s be real about academia. According to some really intelligent people, even among academics, science is getting less bang for its buck. The burdensome administrative model pushing grant collecting and publication numbers undermines research quality. Finally, I watch just enough news to be alarmed by the “Us vs Them” political and social climate on American college campuses. What the hell happened to nuance? I have some theories. Anyway…
Motivation and Money Scarcity
My biggest hurdle isn’t a lack of ideas, it’s motivation. The dirty little paradox about financial independence is that it, in theory, erases money scarcity. And that’s wonderful news, right? Yes, of course, it’s comforting to know that one of the world’s top stressors is (again, in theory) cared for.
Think of all those times you struggled to get an A in class, or went the extra mile for a promotion. Scarcity requires us to push against the grain, to swim upstream. In our youth and careers, we do a lot of tasks that we don’t like because doing so leads to growth and opportunities. After all, sweating it out in Houston paved the path to an even better and high-paying job in Denver, a city much more suitable to my outdoor lifestyle and collection of jackets.
Scarcity is a motivator, however insignificant. One could have multiple years of living expenses saved and still need to generate income. As a friend recently reminded me, necessity is the mother of invention. Without money scarcity, it’s easy to get lazy. It’s easy to fall into a sticky cognitive web of saying no more than saying yes. Some hungry early careerist needing to make rent will happily do what I find uninspiring.
Not convinced? Here are some musings by other prominent voices in personal finance:
“I’m working through losing money as a motivating factor…it made me think maybe the ideal savings goal [is] to save enough so that all your essential expenses are covered and then continue working to fund your discretionary expenses.”
Mad Fientist (source)
“Almost nineteen years into early retirement now, I’ve come to realize that the complete freedom of this lifestyle can be a double-edged sword…If I can indulge you to play me a brief Tiny Violin of First World Problems solo, even this perfect life comes with one flaw: I never have to do anything I don’t want to do…In these last few years, I have started slowing down, and it has become more and more difficult to wrangle and focus myself.”
Mr. Money Mustache (source)
“I want to leave my children enough so that they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing.”
Warren Buffett
Finally, I keep returning to an old favorite quote, by a (surprisingly) brilliant source:
“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but ain’t nobody want to lift no heavy-ass weights.”
Ronnie Coleman
It’s time to start lifting some weights, but the proverbial couch of financial freedom sure is comfy.
The Good News on Finding Work You Love: Keep Some Money Scarcity
So, here’s the good news: Don’t go all the way. Save less money.
If you intend to use financial independence as a launching board to a better career, the 4% rule is less relevant. Leave some room for scarcity. That means you have to save less money. And because you’ll still need income, you’ll stay hungry. Do you still feel like you need to go all the way? Here’s a direct quote from my wife:
“Just take a cue from me and have a scarcity mindset no matter how much you have.”
Mrs. CC
Going 50-80% of your financial independence target is suitable. That way, you probably have enough to pay the bills. Your new hobby, passion project, invention, or career interest will eventually pay for discretionary spending. Plus, if the market tanks, your resume—and employable skills—won’t be dated to the Obama administration.
Moonlight on the side and try new things. Prototype ideas and gather as many opinions and experiences as possible. I’ve learned that impressions are often illusions and predictions are often wrong. Experiment and explore broadly.
Stay hungry, my friends.
Affiliate links are used on this page. You will incur no extra charges if you purchase a linked product, but we will receive a tiny-baby portion of the sale. Those minimal proceeds help us keep the digital lights on around here. We wouldn’t link to a product we wouldn’t buy ourselves.
Thanks for this article / episode!
I’m right there with you regarding the diagnosis.
Here’s a catch regarding your proposed treatment, however. I did leave my corporate career on grounds of having enough to fund essentials. For extra income, I had a self employed gig lined up. Worked well in some sense, loved the new freedom. So far, so good.
Two aspects didn’t go as planned though. I found out the hard way, that I deeply disliked the increased responsibility / risk of my new venture. It opened up my life to new tail risks that felt neither wise nor worth it.
The gig also turned out it be more work and more income than planned. Plus stock markets rallied.
So I got out after just a few years. Given the positive financial development, the motivator of residual money scarcity is gone. I know, it’s certainly not the worst problem to have certainly. My point is, for anyone considering the approach of only covering essentials, which some might call “barrista FIRE” or “coast FIRE”, be aware that those can easily develop into at least lean FIRE much more quickly than one might expect (but also much more slowly than one might hope).
To be clear, my point is not to caution anyone not to go this way. But it might not last long as a motivator.
Now I find myself *sort of* wanting to do more useful work (paid or not), but really struggling to find the motivation to start anything. I’m fascinated by people who have enough and are still driven. How to you do it?
Does your wife feel motivated to earn extra money that most likely will never be spent? Or might she be tempted to spend a lot less than she could? Maybe both?
As a side note, having gotten a PhD, which I do not regret, I do believe you have the right Idea of not pursuing a regular academic career. Even before post doc limbo, the PhD program itself can be quite difficult psychologically. If it weren’t for my career prospects, I quite possibly might not have found the motivation to get through the deep valley of frustration. If you don’t need the money / career, you can probably find ways to play in academia without having to go through the series of pressure cookers.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful reply, Bob. I’ve seen your experience repeated with the Coast FI approach: Folks still need to work, but still aren’t satisfied with what they thought would be a dreamy part-time existence. Perhaps the truth is that the seemingly harmonious, zen-like balance between work and life is mostly an illusion. Some days, months, or years feel good, and then the pendulum swings again. Speaking for my wife, she seeks comfort in a steady paycheck. It’s not about material ambitions. It’s simply safety. And I appreciate the thoughts on the PhD. Those reflections are well-aligned with the other opinions I’ve gathered.
You may be on to something with the pendulum! It might be driven by getting used to positives while becoming increasingly aware of negatives.
Also, humans apparently are very bad at predicting what will make them happy. So perhaps it’s all just an inefficient trial and error process.
Well said!