Off Topic: Day One – Where am I going?!?

They say where you end up, has a lot to do with where you begin.

Where did I begin, where did I come from?

In March of 2009, I panicked because of the state of the world wide economy and ran back to my comfort zone of a 9-5 job. The 8 months prior, I had worked and traveled the world (read this post for more background information Day Zero (for this blog atleast) ). When I jumped back into a ‘grown up job’, as my father pointed out to me at the time. I ensured I did it deliberately (with some lifestyle design in mind) and not put myself back to where I was years earlier, a depressed cubicle dweller. Sure I was back in a cubicle, but with some big differences from a quality of life stand point (more on that in a future post).

Where do I want to go in 2010? What direction do I want to be headed in; personally, professionally, and even spiritually when 2011 hits?

By the close of 2010, I want to be working on a 4 month rotation (cycle); 3 months work, 1 month for other pursuits, mini sabbaticals like travel and/or focused learning and/or life affirming project.

Some ideas I am toying with for my one month sabbaticals are:

volunteer to help build a school in Africa
volunteer at a inner city school (K – grade 6)
learn to surf in Hawaii
learn to ride and race a motorcycle
volunteer with habitat for humanity and build someone a house
volunteer with the red cross or some organization like that and go aid in disaster relief

While I am on sabbatical, I plan on working (for myself) no more than 2 hours a day, and dedicate the rest of my time to these other pursuits.

To accomplish this, I need to evolve my professional (revenue earning) existence. It is all about expectation management. I need to manage what others expect from me, what I expect from others and how I resolve the conflict that will arise when these two expectation are not in alignment.

To a degree I started preparing for this at my current job, the day I started 10 months ago. I have improved my quality of life within the organization by fixing the root cause of many reoccurring problems that plagued my predecessors. I have systems and procedures in place that I can now do my job 100% remotely. More importantly unlike my predecessors, I have no need to be a hero at work. By fixing these root causes, my job over the last 10 months has become very mundane. I can do it in 10 hours a week, leaving 30 hours or so to do other things (seemingly looking very busy to the casual observer); but always available when the problems do happen. I have a properly configured black berry (internet with note book tether) coupled with a few custom applications I have written has aided me in that. I can do 90% of my repetitive tasks from my blackberry, and I batch my work up (ala the 4HWW these lessons learned from Tim Ferris’s book has already improved the quality of my life 10 fold).

But I digress.

To get to what I want a few things can happen:

Option 1 - Current employer lets me work remotely for one month in four.
Option 2 - I develop outside income sources, muses (ala the 4HWW).
Option 3 - I develop outside income sources through more traditional freelancing/consulting activities that rely on my core technical competencies (such as Oracle, Linux, Web).
Option 4 - A hybrid, for example my employer gives me unpaid leave, so I have a job to come back to, and I have also developed enough of a muse or freelancing activities that over a 4 month period (two hours a day) would subsidize the one month without the day job.

Note: I want to be the one choosing the best option for me out of at least 2 realistic options come September/October… not the only option choosing me.

I don’t have the latitude that a lot of life hackers have to just “dam the torpedoes” and go for it. I have a 16 year old daughter, and those with teenagers know, they don’t come cheep. I also need to be ready to put my daughter through University in less than 18 months. I have to consider more than my own existence and version of happiness. I don’t want my daughter to have the burden of a student loan. That is a choice I have made, a personal commitment, it is therefore a necessary component of my “lifestyle design”.

Over the next 8 months, I will be pursing all three main options and see where I sit come September 1^st. I also plan on taking a month of vacation time while pursing these initiatives and doing absolutely nothing about anything for anyone other than myself.

photo credit: Vincent Montibus