What Is A Productive Day When Your Focus Is No Longer Earning Money?

I thought that when we reached a base level of financial independence (living in Florida is Stage 2, where we can pay our minimum living expenses by moving to a cheaper location), I would gain more clarity about how to spend my time. I have always been money-focused – not driven to make a lot of money, but I equated money with security and had a high bar to feel secure. My first career was in banking and consulting, two highly paid industries where you have little to no personal life. I wanted to be self-sufficient in New York City, a high cost-of-living area, and didn’t even think about making a career choice based solely on my interests, with no consideration for money.

Now that the money part is less of a concern, it still dominates my decision-making. After FI, I expected that my day-to-day plans would revolve around my interests, irrespective of their financial potential. However, a few years into hitting our FI number, I find myself still prioritizing activities with a financial payoff, or feeling guilty when I don’t.

Recently, I had a very pleasant day, where I hit my morning routine (meditation, journaling, a walk outside), cooked a couple of Filipino comfort meals (for my Flip readers, I specifically made chicken nilaga and baked tilapia) to take over to my mom’s and cleaned the apartment – all before noon. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being unproductive since these were “just” personal activities and not paid work.

Health is wealth, but preventive care feels like a luxury

I do believe that health is paramount, and you can translate good health into real dollars – e.g., costs saved from medical expenses avoided, income generated from more energy and focus. Since January, I’ve been on a 300-day personal development program that has a rigorous healthy living aspect, including whole food eating, 10k steps per day, digital sunsets (i.e., getting off electronics early in the evening) and more. These activities aren’t expensive, but they’re time-consuming, especially if you’re like me and coming from an average level of activity and wellness. (The bar for healthy living in the US is low, with obesity affecting over 40% of the population, so average isn’t saying much).

Happily, I can say that I’m exercising more, eating better, sleeping deeper and feeling like my efforts are 100% worth it. Still, I have to keep reminding myself that I’m being productive and to stay the course, when there isn’t the immediate result of a check to deposit or a figure to insert in my business books. I know some people get a rush from tracking steps on a fitness device or calories on a diet tracker, but these don’t motivate me much. Spending my day focused on health and wellness feels luxurious, not productive – even though intellectually I know that it absolutely is!

Inflation even makes downtime more expensive

Cooking more of my own food is not only healthy but also beats the cost of eating out. However, you can still see inflation up close and personal on trips to the grocery, and that keeps money issues front and center. Inflation has already changed our overall plan (see five moves we’re making in response to inflation). On a day-to-day level, it makes me second-guess myself when I choose anything but revenue-generating activities. Go for a walk or finish that proposal? Gee, that proposal pays for the double-digit increase in hotel rates we’ve been noticing on our road trips.

Our portfolio is pretty well-insulated from inflation because a large portion of our assets are rental real estate. Rents are rising even faster than inflation. Still, I already have that tendency to be money-driven, and inflation makes me want to pad the cash account just a little bit more.

Deciding and doing are indeed two different things

I recently finished a fascinating book about decision-making – Decision Time: How To Make The Choices Your Life Depends On by Laurence Alison (psychology professor) and Dr. Neil Shortland (world expert on military decision making). One favorite takeaway:

Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left?

Answer: Five.

Why? Because there’s a world of difference between ‘deciding’ and ‘doing’.

I keep their reminder front-and-center: a true decision requires that you stop deciding and move on to doing. I decided to work less as of 2019, when our youngest went to college and we could move to Florida and a simpler way of life. Now I just have to do that – work less and simplify, adopt a new metric for productivity than income earned. It’s much harder than I expected.

What makes for a productive day for you?