Money Diary #65

Morning: Dad texts me around 6:45, I lay in bed for a few minutes, and then get up. Brush my teeth, go check the mail, and walk around a bit. Air fry bacon and drink cold pressed orange juice for breakfast. Play Sabrina in the background while I cleanse my face with Clean & Clear. Switch over to I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched and put on a clay mask. As it dries, I catch up on reading. Here is what I learn:

• "I don't want to be a girlboss. I don't want to hustle": "I simply want to live my life slowly and lay down in a bed of moss with my lover and enjoy the rest of my existence reading books, creating art, loving myself & the people in my life."

• Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough: Just do what you can do as much as you can. 

• "I'm for the easy life": "Paper pushing is the way to go for easy."

• Find "comfortable" hours: "Not all hours are the same. Much easier to spend 8 hours doing mindless work over drafting or analyzing complex issues."

• "Your current self is responsible for buying time for your future self": "Don't let your future self down. Say you worked until 60 and retired with $40 million. And now on your death bed (say around 75 or so), you were offered a deal, for $30 million, you can 'buy' an extra 15 years of quality life in retirement (joints work, you can travel, spend lots of time with loved ones). Well, that is the deal which will be in front of you one day. What will you do?" 

• What a healthy (work or personal) environment looks like: "Everyone, keep being yourselves and don't edit yourselves."

• On authenticity: "Something felt like it was off. A lot of the content didn't feel authentic -- it didn't feel real."

• This is me: "I just feel awkward when someone is curt with me when I've done nothing to bother them."

• Kill with kindness: "I don't like rude people in any context and I'm sensitive to being snapped at. But I also don't know what kind of day a person has had and I'm not going to make my day any better by matching their attitude."

• Abundant vs lean: "When things are abundant, it's easy to get along. When times become lean, however, our biological tendency towards self-preservation takes over. Perceived scarcity triggers our unconscious mind to take over and react without reasoning."

• How tech products are built: "Her eye for detail and perfectionism -- so essential to her way of thinking -- was fundamentally at odds with the way tech products are built, which is to get it out fast and fix it later."

• What you need is already inside you: "It's all about how you present it. You have subject matter expertise so you know how to understand complex ideas, and your writing skills means you're good at communicating them in digestible ways. Given your background, you know how to talk to their audience and that alone is a huge selling point for you!"

• What is work: "The notion rejects work as a basis for identity and instead frames it as an act to pursue out of financial necessity."

• The joy of working from home: "You don't have to put on a false persona and pretend to be someone that you're not."

• Why people keep interacting with you: "You share your thought processes and actions after you get advice, you don't get defensive, and you're open to receiving more advice."

• Because the work world is small: "Always leave situations on good terms (even when things go south)."

• On reallocation: "He has seen mothers cry for joy when they're given soap. The small, commonplace things we often take for granted can make a world of difference when reallocated."

• Red flags (both at work & in life): "People who prioritize always feeling 'wanted' or validated are likely to cheat."

• The ultimate goal of financial independence: "It's about not settling for a job that diminishes quality of life."

• On accumulating money: "It's about survival and feeling safe. I get more joy from that than spending it on something at the store."

• Why a company of one makes sense: "The people who are constant innovators are not the same people who typically want to run a thousand-person company. His own exit came when he realized he was 'solving HR issues, not creativity issues.'"

• The antidote to burnout: "Carve out another space, an activity outside of work and family that brings happiness and meaning. The kind of experience that makes you say, 'I can't believe I just did that.' Walking does that for me -- I do not care about losing weight. I just like the way I feel afterward, the rush of euphoria, then calm, the sudden revelatory sense that a tough work issue wasn't really a big deal after all."

• On negotiation: 

• "In the corporate world, you have around 10% room to negotiate, even if you walk on water. They will happily reject you if you ask too much. I've seen people try to renegotiate after an offer is made, and it makes them look ridiculous. It was step one of a long road leading to getting fired."

• "Everyone leaves money on the table. Every employer has a line in the sand number, call it n, over which they won't pay you. Your changes of landing a penny under that line are vanishingly small. To not leave money on the table, you'd need to nail n - $0.01."

Afternoon: Eat a very early lunch of air fried chicken tenders and tres leches. Do a coconut oil pull. Watch The Brady Bunch and then go shower. Eat a coconut parfait with grapes and move the work computer back into the bedroom. Decide to do the longer work project tomorrow. Eat a coffee cracker and several Ritz crackers.

Evening: Spend the evening reading Money Diaries, one of which remarks how the diarist "lives a simple, quiet life but meaningful to her." Watch Munsters and walk around a bit. Dinner is cauliflower fried rice, egg curry, cauliflower, and air-fried shrimp. Do a coconut oil pull, brush my teeth, and bed around 10:30.