Back in control of your life, in just 12 hours.
You have invested time, energy and expertise into your career and find yourself working 9-5, Monday - Friday (at best). You receive a monthly salary, you’re able to put a little aside and you have some left over to do a few nice things like eat out, happy hours with friends and pay for a gym subscription.
Then your boss demands you complete a project over the weekend. They ask you to meet the deadline. They say you have to come into the office because remote work isn’t productive enough.
It’s then that you finally realise 80% of what you are doing is for someone else’s gain and you feel your stomach clench.
This is not the life you had envisioned for yourself.
We want our efforts to be for ourselves and our family. We want to be able to decide when, where and how we spend our time, money and days.
You have now awoken to the idea that you can improve your life by making a new decisions.
This article will show you how to start prioritising what truly matters to you and even if you are incredibly busy, start to live a life that you desire, not one that someone else dictates.
Common belief
Most of us start out this way; learn some theory (study) - build some skills (entry-level work) - (hopefully) get promoted and earn more money.
We end up spending 30% of our lives working (for someone else), trying to make time for enjoyable ways to make our life more pleasant.
Some call it the "rat-race". Some call it the "career ladder". Whatever you call it, if you’re not happy with something, change it.
We are conditioned to believe :
Life = Work > Earn > Save > Spend > Enjoy and repeat.
Most people’s cycle looks like that.
What if we reverse engineered it slightly? What would happen if we directed more focus to our enjoyment, love, fun and then found ways that sustained them?
Is it possible to conceive we would actually produce better, more, in less time and be better compensated?
YES!
So if you have a full schedule right now and you want to reverse the cycle and put your freedom first, here’s how we do it.
Freedom First
Going freedom first is the ad-hoc management solution to our life. It’s like cutting out the financial advisor because we've become financially literate and take responsibility for your investment decisions.
These are the steps towards it and how much time you need to allocate to doing them.
Step 1: Define freedom
Freedom is different for everyone. I live on an exotic island, travel 5-6 times per year and do work I love 4 hours per day, 4 days a week. I prioritise my family, fun and adventures.
You can see, for me, freedom is:
Being able to live and travel anywhere, anytime
Have full control over my time
The possibility to increase my income when I want to
Do work I love, when and how I wish.
Schedule half a day where you can be alone. Go somewhere quiet and peaceful that allows your mind to relax. Get honest with yourself and enquire as to what really matters in your life.
(There are many excerises to help you with this. Search online or email me).
I’d love to hear what your version of freedom is. Email me.
Time: 4-5 hours. (It’s wise to revisit this activity a few times)
Step 2: Create Freedom
Knowing what is important to you is the first step, the second is to create more of it.
There are two principal ways to do this: reduce and increase.
Reduce - anything that hinders or stops you from your priorities needs to go.
These can be both direct or indirect blocks eg work meetings going past scheduled times (direct) or feeling too exhausted and demotivated to create change (indirect).
Increase - Schedule your priorities before anything, especially work.
Time: 2 hours (to list and schedule). Doing the actions themselves will be implemented over time.
Step 3: Protect Freedom
Having your freedom defined and clear is a powerful filter and decision-making tool when it comes to saying yes or no to opportunities.
Ultimately, does the promotion, investment or other, contribute to or reduce your freedom?
To protect what’s important to you, you need to clarify what is and isn’t acceptable for you.
For example, here are some of my non-negotiable boundaries:
My work must always be fully remote
I schedule date nights, monthly adventures and overseas trips
I start each day with 1 hour for myself
I decide my “freedom number” - how much money I want to earn (and how that contributes to others and my freedom)
I choose clients who inspire me (and raise my game)
I do not take client calls the last week of every month
I do not work more than 5 hours per day
I do not work on Fridays
Decide what is and isn’t acceptable on your freedom journey. Set your boundaries, share them with others and watch as your freedom expands.
Time: 1 hour
Step 4: Sustain Freedom
Freedom first isn’t just a nice idea, it’s a lifestyle and if you want to sustain it into the future, it needs to become part of who you are and how you show up in the world.
Freedom has a cost and one way to ensure we continue to increase freedom over time is through the work we do.
The first step here is to identify our “freedom number”; the amount of money we need to pay our expenses and ideal lifestyle.
We either need to ensure that is coming from our salary, business, investments, side-income or all of the previous.
Most people’s salary doesn’t match their freedom number. If yours doesn’t, you need to add one of the previous to your freedom equation.
The best tool I have used for myself and clients is solopreneurship. By starting a side-project, you can quickly earn a supplementary income and test the grounds to develop a full-time business, all with little to zero financial risk.
By embracing solopreneurship, we aim to create our freedom number while reducing our working hours and/or leave our full-time employment completely (optional).
Calculate your expenses, ideal lifestyle costs and identify the gap between your income and your freedom number. Then decide which tool you want to use to fill the gap.
Time: 1-2 hours
Step 5: Expand Freedom
You’ve hit your freedom number and you’re on your way to cutting your working hours right down. This is absolutely amazing, you’re in the top 5% of people in the world!
I want to stress that you do need to wait to hit your freedom number before expanding your freedom, in fact, if you embrace the freedom first philosophy and put what you love first, you’ll quickly find that by incorporating more of what you love will accelerate your progress further still.
At this stage, you will have experimented a lot and discovered things you like and dislike and maybe even adjusted your freedom definition.
Awesome.
Continue to being, doing and having more of you love. I perform quarterly energy audits with clients to identify elements that are draining or creating eneryg in all areas of their lives.
Do the same and combine with the increase / reduce exercise and you’ll compound your freedom expansion.
Time: 1-2 hours
Final thoughts
Remember, freedom first isn’t a formula or framework, it’s a way of life.
Be an ambassador for yourself and others. When you live this way, you will inspire others and yourself, reinforcing the joy you experience on the journey, creating an addictive, upward cycle.
If you have any specific questions, email me.
Wishing you the absolute very best,
Stefano