Many of the patterns are focused directly or indirectly on money – primarily how to wisely steward money and how not to waste it. You might get the impression that I’m advocating that you think about money all of the time. I am not.
I advocate that you think intensely about money all of the time for a short period of time, and internalize good behaviors, so that you can then mostly not think about money at all.
In The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin relates how beginner chess players learn “the numbers” – a numerical value for each piece – that they use to calculate whether the risk and benefit of any given move. A beginner chess player will be constantly and consciously running the numbers in their head. Advanced chess players do not do this. Their attention is on “higher” levels of chess strategy.
However, it would be a mistake to assume that since the advanced players don’t run the numbers in their head, beginner players shouldn’t either. Advanced players don’t think about ‘the numbers’ because they have internalized the numbers. They did so many calculations in their head for a period of time that the ‘sense’ of the numbers became intuitive and they were able to free up attention to place on other, more complex and sophisticated elements of chess strategy.
Think about thinking about money in the same way. The object of all of this intentional thinking about money is to solve money and to mostly not think about it. I spent my twenties and much of my thirties not thinking about money much at all. I carried consumer debt for most of that time and had very little in the way of emergency savings. I had no real economic freedom and zero fuck you money.
Then, I spent a little less than five years thinking about money quite a lot. Mostly I thought about how to not spend money. I also thought about how to be a wise steward of my money. I built an enormous spreadsheet, tracked my expenses and income, made projections into the future, read books about micro- and macro-economics and investing, checked my accounts several times a month, and followed financial blogs and podcasts.
At the end of that five years I had solved money. What I mean by that is that I had built a system for myself whereby when I need some money, it is just there. I spend almost none of my time thinking about money anymore. I don’t do things in order to get money, like “have a job” or “take on a project” if there isn’t some other really good reason to do it in addition to earning money. I update my spreadsheet once a month (this takes about fifteen minutes) and maybe will move some money from this account to that account (this takes about ten minutes) and then I go back to not thinking about money.
For a time, I was unconsciously incompetent with regards to money. I didn’t understand how stupid I was being with my money. It seemed normal to me.
Then, I became consciously incompetent, and the knowledge of how badly I was dealing with money stressed me out. This motivated me to start thinking about money and improving myself. Soon enough I became consciously competent – I began managing my money well, but it required conscious thoughtful effort.
After enough of this conscious effort, I became unconsciously competent. I’m good (enough) at managing my money and have internalized good habits that I don’t need to think about it that much.
Much of these patterns, then, are about becoming consciously competent at money so that you can become unconsciously competent at money and then not think about it, so that you can spend your attention on cultivating and delivering your gifts to the world while making your dreams come true.
If you try to deliver your gifts to the world and make your dreams come true before becoming at least consciously competent at money, you will almost certainly be at best distracted by money problems and at worst entirely stymied by money problems. You will be constantly running out, or stressed about how to get some more of it, if only to pay the bills, buy food, and keep the lights on. And that would be a shame, because the world wants your gifts, and you want to make your dreams come true. I want that for you.
Don’t, however, get stuck in the consciously competent phase of money stewardship. This is a trap that a lot of people get stuck in because they aren’t really aware that there’s anything worth thinking about besides money. They have no vision of what they could spend their attention on besides money and the things money can buy, so they spend the rest of their lives fiddling with their money systems and farting around with toys and distractions that they buy with their surplus money. This is not the move. This is a trap.
On the far side of thinking about money is a life full of creative expression, collaborative projects, artful endeavor, and rich relationships unfettered by money problems or money obsessions.
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