“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
-- Bill Gates
Ok so I mentioned this yesterday. I got a comment asking what motivates me to optimize my life.
Simply put, I'm lazy.
So to me, it's all about efficiency.
A simple example.
Most people spend around $500 per month on groceries, assuming $10 per hour, that's 50 hours a month spent working.
Alternatively, I could put in 3 hours a week (12 hours a month) and do some freegan activities and I could get free food for the whole week. Furthermore, these 3 hours I am probably enjoying what I'm doing. Which is usually just going to a location talking with a couple of friends and getting free food.
The per hour "earning" of getting free food is... $500/12 = $41.66 per hour.
Yes, when working, we can earn money and store the value for later use. I agree.
And I already did that for around 10 years of my life.
But for me, if I had the choice, I like the efficiency.
So I rather spend zero effort and get enough to eat. Almost infinite returns per unit of effort. Considering when I do freegan activities, I don't even consider myself working.
As compared to to spending effort and getting a lot more. Example working.
Cos when working, you can't choose to be efficient with effort and earnings. Most of the time, we have to work 40 hours a week for a fixed pay. We can't just stop when we feel like it, for example a lawyer may earn $200 per hour, but he can't say he works 5 hours a week. Usually jobs don't work that way. He would have to work regular working hours. And that's usually ok during the accumulation phase of financial independence. Cos that's when we need to earn more and store more.
But now, I have the option to be efficient. To optimize how things work.
So I do things that require little effort, or a little bit of set up, but will give me fair amount of returns.
Like setting up my bank accounts and credit card spending.
Or living with my $3 per month phone plan. It's hardly any effort but it saves so much.
It's something like value hunting.
Getting good returns, tangible or intangible for the least amount of cost, tangible or intangible.
So like... It's easy to find good food with an unlimited budget.
If you're willing to spend, then just throw money. Eventually you'll find some awesome restaurants at ridiculous prices.
But a more realistic view would be to look for good value. To eat good food without breaking the bank. So that with the same amount of money, one could eat reasonably good food for a longer period of time, instead of just one occasion.
And I try to incorporate this aspect in all facets of my life.
When I was in school, I wasn't the best. I studied reasonably hard, but at a certain point, I knew that any more effort to study wouldn't give me much better grades. So I went to go and play.
When I was playing "Magic The Gathering" card game, I made it a point to build a deck using cheap cards with the potential to beat more expensive decks.
Cos similarly, if one has unlimited resources, building a strong deck is so easy, but yet unrealistic, cos not everyone has unlimited money. So I had to be creative to build reasonably strong decks with cheapo cards.
And it became a challenge to always get more by doing less.
To get similar results as someone else, but incur less costs (tangible or intangible).
Example, I feel that I live a good lifestyle like many of my neighbours, but we spend less than all of them.
And maybe as I kept doing it, it became second nature, cos I realized as I'm typing this... is that... I look at everything from a value perspective.
Optimization IS about looking at returns vs cost...
I want to put in little effort to get good results.
This isn't only about money and investments.
It's not only about being frugal and buying value and looking for discounts.
I now realize that I subconsciously do this cost benefit analysis for almost everything in my life.
Even for the intangibles.
But it all boils down to... I'm probably lazy. Or maybe efficient is a nicer way to put it.
Cos when diminishing returns kick in, I find that I lose interest, unless it is an absolute necessity. For example working to accumulate wealth is a necessity, but after a certain point, when I have the option to optimize, then I'd prefer to have better "returns" for the lowest amount of effort.
So this post was quite cool cos as I was thinking about it, it made me realize that I value optimization a lot in my whole life. It's quite a core value, and I find it has worked pretty well for me for the many years of my life.
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