work lean

Take Imperfect Action.

How regularly screwing up can help you get stuff done.

By Brad Beckstrom

I’ve always liked taking action. Getting stuff done. A friend once told me, “The best way to fall asleep is to lay in bed and think of each thing that you did that day from beginning to end. Include the little stuff, washing your face, taking the dog out. If you’re like most people you probably do a lot of things even though at times it doesn’t feel like much. By the time you get near the end of the list, you will be asleep.” This trick didn’t work too well for me, sometimes I would lay there and think of the things I forgot to do which was a great way (not) to fall asleep. It’s okay that it failed. I was trying to do something that would help me fall asleep. I’ve learned something by trying this out, it didn’t really work, I’ll try it again, I took imperfect action.

What’s “imperfect action”? My first thought was doing something that didn’t work or trying something like a shortcut that just made the task longer. It could be something that was unproductive but got you 1% closer to reaching your goal. Maybe it wasted a good chunk of your day but you learned something from it.

Taking imperfect action is something that can help both the perfectionist and the procrastinator. [Read more…] about Take Imperfect Action.

Creating a Freedom Plan

10/18 by The Frug 2 Comments

Image. Fog Rolls In. Brad Beckstrom

By Brad Beckstrom

“The message here is that people need a freedom plan, not a retirement plan. The traditional work until you’re 65 to cross some imaginary finish line is going away fast”

It’s never too late to start, but start now.

My knees burned as I climbed up the hill. It was 103° and I was hiking up a steep trail in a jungle north of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Lightheaded again, need more water. What if I just keeled over right here on this trail? How long would it be till someone found me? I have a family at home, I have responsibilities.

As I slowly got my stride back, it hit me. It’s not unusual for my knees to burn, or to feel lightheaded in hot weather. Hell, this happens when I’m walking our dog on a trail at home. But it happens more than it used to.

The Question

This is where I came face-to-face with the question…. what if I waited too long to do this? I mean, not just this trip or this hike. How late is too late to set out on that big audacious quest?

What’s a big audacious quest? That thing in your head that you’ve always wanted to do. Most likely It’s been lingering back there since high school. Not some short trip or vacation but a quest. Something that may take years and requires focus and dedication. Something you don’t want to wait too long to start. [Read more…] about Creating a Freedom Plan

Life in Spendy Town: Can Living in an Expensive City Sabotage your Dreams of Financial Independence?

01/18 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Who knew? That’s what I keep telling myself. When I was in my 20s, I drew a circle around the Washington DC Metro area including Northern Virginia, Baltimore, the Eastern Shore, and surrounding areas. I said, “This is where I will live. This will be my zone of influence.” (I actually said that. Not sure why, maybe it was business related, or I was reading some Dale Carnegie books at the time). Little did I know that red circle I drew encompassed 4 of the 5 richest counties in the United States and 6 of the top 10. Literally, all within a one hour radius of Washington, DC. This area really does make San Francisco and Silicon Valley look like chump change. LA, New York, Honolulu, forget about it. Washington, DC is where (a lot) of the money is. Not convinced? Just take a look at the U.S. Congress and the money machine that supports it.

There are some advantages to living in a wealthy part of the country: jobs, great schools, museums, sports franchises, bays, lakes, rivers, beaches, mountains all nearby. So, it’s a great area to live right? Unfortunately, a lot of people feel that way. So, not only are we beating LA and New York in spendyness, we also regularly beat them with some of the worst traffic in the country. Real estate is equally ridiculous, along with property taxes. High-paying jobs and expensive real estate spillover into everything. Most restaurants are fancier and more expensive. Real dive bars and affordable local spots are getting harder to find, often being priced out of their locations even in the close in suburbs. Everybody, grocery stores, retailers, parking garages, jacks up their prices because they can (or need to.) Good deals become harder to find.

When I start comparing Arlington, Virginia to cities like Raleigh, North Carolina, Tampa, Florida or Boulder, Colorado using online calculators (links below), I start to see a trend. Housing is really driving the majority of cost-of-living differences on these these calculators. I’ve tried to use other online comparison calculators (see list) but once they add housing, it throws everything off. For instance, it might say something like a $100,000 salary in DC is worth $170,000 in Raleigh, but this has very little to do with the price of milk or taxes and everything to do with the fact that house in the DC area will cost you 3X.

Arlington, VA. vs. Raleigh NC. From CNN Money, Cost-of-living calculator.

Real Estate [Read more…] about Life in Spendy Town: Can Living in an Expensive City Sabotage your Dreams of Financial Independence?

The Last Safe Investment

11/17 by The Frug 2 Comments

By Brad Beckstrom

There’s this constant buzz, the stock market is overvalued, a major crash is coming, interest rates are going up, homes are overvalued. If you read all of these headlines, you get the feeling there are no “truly safe” investments. If you’re striving for financial independence, these types of alerts and headlines can really get to you. They used to really bother me.

Over the past few years I’ve been steadily working on what I call the high quality, low information diet. The 2016 election set me back a bit, but I’m on the road to recovery. The news notifications are off, emails are being rounded up and unsubscribed, I’m getting higher quality news and information on my own terms.

Traditional Investing

If we can free up time, by removing distractions, then we can invest it elsewhere. Let’s start with traditional investing. I used to subscribe to multiple investing e-mail newsletters. I think I even paid for a few of them! I’ve unsubscribed manually, and using a tool called unroll me. Once in awhile they still find me and I marvel at all of the investing advice out there. Everything from, microcap stocks, crypto currencies, precious metals, the list goes on. What I take away from this deluge of information now, is to go in the opposite direction. Instead of expanding into new areas of investing I’ve chosen to vastly simplify my investing strategy, 4 low fee index funds, freeing up even more time for safer investments.

The Safest Investment
[Read more…] about The Last Safe Investment

Finding Clarity in Simplicity. How to stop reacting and focus on what’s in your control.

05/17 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Have you noticed a big drop off in any part of your life?

I’ve been noticing a real drop off in the number of (non political) blog posts I’ve been seeing since November of 2016. At first I thought it was the election, the holidays etc. People have been distracted. I figured at some point we would stop discussing politics and get back to talking about anything but that. Well, the drop off has continued. You see, I don’t follow any political blogs or news publications in my feed reader. So, a lot of the blogs I do follow have dropped off, from maybe a post a week to less than one post per month. This is across a wide variety of blogs I follow, personal finance, photography, financial independence, minimalism, small business, creative writing etc. What’s going on? I feel like I already know the answer because my own writing has dropped off at about the same level, from once a week to once a month. It has a lot to do with many people, including myself, being totally distracted by all of the stuff outside of their circle of control.

The Circle of Concern vs. Circle of Control

A circle of concern is simply a big circle with all of the things you’re concerned about scribbled inside of it. Inside of that circle is a circle of control. The circle of control is things that you have direct control over, what you read, where you live, what you eat, essentially your actions and thoughts.

image credit Jamesclear.com

Focusing inside versus outside the circle of control

Stephen Covey, author of the 7 Habits series, said that people with a large circle of concern become reactive. [Read more…] about Finding Clarity in Simplicity. How to stop reacting and focus on what’s in your control.

Tap into the power of habit. How to design your ideal day then duplicate it.

05/17 by The Frug Leave a Comment

The working world has changed. The traditional thirty-year career, company loyalty, great health plans, company cars, and pension plans are all but gone. More people are working from home, pursuing side gigs. They are taking a more entrepreneurial approach to work. Entrepreneurial adventures have become the new pension plan.

There’s some great news here. For those of us who are stubborn, who refuse to live life by someone else’s rules, who are comfortable with uncertainty, lies opportunity. If you’re one of those people, it doesn’t matter if you’re 25 or 55: if you can do these things, you can redesign your life to take advantage of the current uncertain environment.

Reinvention, one day at a time

Yeah, that sounds easy, just redesign your life. No problem, right? As anybody who’s tried it knows, completely reinventing yourself is extremely hard. I’m recommending a different approach. In his book The Four Hour Workweek Tim Ferris talked about designing your week so that there were only four hours of work (that you didn’t enjoy). A lot of people misunderstood the title of the book to think that this meant only working four hours a week and sitting on the beach of the rest of the time. The book’s cover even had a guy on the beach in a hammock! The book’s actual premise is that If you’re doing something you really love then that is not work. Make no mistake, you will be doing something. A lot of something, often for less than you’d make in a traditional commuter/cubicle job. This doesn’t necessarily mean quitting your job, it means redesigning your entire workday to eliminate the distractions and poor use of time that are getting in the way of your perfect day.

Let’s look at a slightly different approach. Instead of trying to figure out what type of lifestyle, business, or new invention would be needed to support a four hour workweek, we should start smaller. Let’s start by simply designing a perfect day. [Read more…] about Tap into the power of habit. How to design your ideal day then duplicate it.