I’ll admit the initial few weeks of my first job after graduating felt pretty odd. My schedule had changed from late night study sessions to early morning commutes. Weekends no longer signified homework time, but empty space that I could fill as I pleased. Overall, I felt I had a lot more choice over where I invested my time, but no idea how to use that perk. In a way, I felt I should be studying from an Intro to Life 101 book, except I didn’t have one. So, where to begin?
I’m an engineer, and I like to optimize things. To me, optimization consists of solving inefficiencies, sometimes by using unconventional ideas that may not be intuitively obvious. After transitioning to having a job, I needed to find a new starting point to search for these inefficiencies. I sought out what was different now that I had a job, and I realized fairly quickly that a job implies a paycheck whereas college is usually the opposite. I decided to start researching finance basics to fix the mistakes I suspected I was making as a naive graduate. I’m glad I got a grasp on the topic early on, because it plays a core role (for better or worse) in most people’s careers. I found that despite the bad rap that budgets and finances have, there are some personal finance blogs out there that I actually found entertaining! Another surprise was a number of tips that I probably never would have thought of on my own, and it was these unconventional thoughts that I found most interesting.
While browsing various finance blogs I happened to learn about travel hacking. When I heard this unconventional thought of signing up for multiple credit cards could get me free airfare, I knew I had to learn more and determine if this was some sham. But sure enough, it’s an inefficiency that appears to offer tangible rewards to those who utilize it. And it was a certain segment of the population using this unconventional thought that I found oddly enlightening.
Soon after learning about travel hacking I read about digital nomads, and soon after that the term “lifestyle design” entered my vocabulary. Among the writers I saw using the term, I found a host of people with interesting life trajectories demonstrating a strong drive to mold their life into one that suited them. And among these interesting life stories I encountered many more unconventional thoughts, some which I might gawk at and others that I would try and implement immediately. I thought the process of learning and sharing lessons that the online community had was insightful and helpful, which is one of the underlying reasons I started this blog.
It was through this process that I felt I found some answers to my initial question of “now what?”:
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One starting point was experimenting with new ways to use my time to find out about other interests that I didn’t know I had. If I enjoyed a certain activity, it was a great learning, if not, I could quickly move on. At one point, I realized how many outdoor sports I had yet to try and started testing them out. I’ve looked at this as a trial-and-error approach for exploring all the opportunities that life has to offer, and I continue to collect those that I enjoy.
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I never felt much confidence in predicting my path over the next 5-10 years, but by seeking out other people with a 5-10 year head start, I could learn about specific paths and the result of those paths or choices may be. By finding different blogs that clicked with my mindset, I borrowed a mix of ideas for opportunities and goals that I could experiment with. With so many extreme life options already tested out by others, I figure I should embody the sentiment of “good artists copy, great artists steal”.
As the experimentation continued, I naturally came up with new goals that I would like to achieve, and those goals became the underlying motivator for daily actions. In short, there’s no easy answer to determining what you’re supposed to do now. Fortunately, by seeking out some mile markers and signposts, you can always find an interesting direction to take and explore next.
Weekly Extreme Exception
This week’s subject is Ueli Steck, one of the world’s top mountaineers, and the Eiger North Face. For those unfamiliar, the Eiger is one of the most iconic mountains in rock climbing lore. Though it may be cliché to mention goals right before a video about mountain climbing, I hope you’ll appreciate the mental and physical drive this guy has as he powers up the North Face like a pure machine. For reference, the speed record up Eiger was 4 hours, 40 minutes in 2003, but in 2007 Ueli casually brought it to a respectable 3 hours, 54 minutes. After deciding to actually put some effort in, in 2008 he demolished his own record with a new time of 2 hours, 47 minutes!
