Is This the Life You Really Want?

Nik Finance, Happiness, Life, Psychology, Quora, Self-Awareness, Work, Writing

This is an excellent question, as long as you don’t ask it too often. I think everyone should answer it once or twice a year. My guideline is this:

My personal formula for happiness

Right now, I’m dedicated to figuring out the work part of this equation.

Here’s where I want to be with it:

Make $100k/year as a writer, while retaining full control of my time.

Why? On $100k you can live comfortably while feeding a family almost anywhere on the planet and life’s too short to do work you don’t like.

Here’s where I’m at:

I have full control of my time, but I’m about to make <$30k for the third year in a row.

Why? If a mean genie (a meanie, if you will) popped up and told me I could only ever have one of the two ($100k/year or full control of my time), I’d of course choose time.

Clearly, this is the most important aspect. So it has to come first.

  1. In 2015, I sold all of my time and just did freelance work.
  2. In 2016, I got 75% of my income by selling my time, the other 25% I made “passively,” building on work from before.
  3. In 2017, I’ll make 33% of my money from selling my time and 67% passively.

Moving sideways to the outside world is what happens when you’re trying to jump a step on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and I’m perfectly fine with it. Not least because I’m also back in school to secure the bottom half of the pyramid and save 30 cents of every dollar I make.

I think the only way to get the life you want is to learn to want the life you currently have.

Right now, I’m shoveling the dirt that’ll become the foundation of my future and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Nik

Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.