The most paralyzing word in our language is “Later.”
Later.
Later means “not now.”
Unfortunately, later means, possibly never at all.
Start small. But more importantly, start now. Even if it’s the smallest, tiniest effort – you’ve started.
*** *** ***
When I started doing “lessons from less,” I didn’t start with a big idea in my mind. I was just so tired come Christmas Eve that I decided not to drink any wine with my family that evening. And I got annoyed at being online when I was with my family – so I said to myself (“self”) – why don’t you take a break from facebook and gmail and twitter for a while?
And then I decided to go to bed early. I woke up 10 hours later with a more even breath and decided that morning that I would consciously do a little bit less that day. I couldn’t take another list, chore, or idea.
I talked to my sister for a long time about taking some time off – from my car, from my job, from my life, from the digital world, from writing, from exercise. And then we cultivated a plan. I decided to take a short break from a few things (my car, my online life, and my vices – like TV, alcohol, and candy) in order to make more space for other things that I shouldn’t or can’t necessarily take a break from (my job, my writing, my exercise).
And the plan was put into action. It was a small step, but I gave myself space to take a break.
The next day I sat in a chair on the couch and read nearly the whole day. I took a nap, cooked a roast, spinach and potatoes with my family, and retreated to my non-online computer to write more about “yes and no”.
Lessons and ideas started pouring out.
I began to formalize my committment to yes and no, and to more + less.
I thought about starting on January first – the symbolic nature of a calendar month appealed to me. But I realized I was too tired to wait. And that the philosophy behind the ideas that I was coming across – start small, start simple, give yourself a break, and whatever you do, don’t put it off until later – would be completely at odds with the practice if I delayed my practice another 8 days. And to some extent it was too late – because I had already begun.
More ideas started flowing. I brought my notebook into my bed to capture my ideas and brought it with me on a walk around the neighborhood with my mom.
Sometimes the smallest, most insignificant changes are really the most important.
Not all good things start with a bang. This reduction of things in my life – saying yes and saying no – is a bit of a bang. Although I’m trying to keep it reigned in, a bit. Small changes, small days at a time.
Not all things happen with a bang.
Sometimes the best idea begins with a kernel.
Sometimes that kernel comes from a place of dissonance or discontent. Something’s out of place. Something’s wrong. You notice that something is off. It’s just not quite right.
Changes happen slowly. Today, one thing, one small, very small thing, is all you need to focus on.
Perhaps you get into bed 15 minutes earlier. And you wake up 15 minutes earlier.
What is the cumulative affect of this small change, daily, on the next three weeks of your life? Perhaps in 3 weeks, you’re getting up 2 hours earlier every day.
Perhaps you want to be a runner. Think and dream big, but start small. Today, just walk. Today, just put the sneakers on. Today, just go for a short jog. Put the shoes on, take a few small steps, and then get home quickly and shower.
You did it. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Small steps.
It starts with small.
Small is better than nothing at all.
*** *** ***
Photography by Alexandra Sklar, on her blog Bancroft & Ivy.
Read the first post, “Yes + No, More + Less” about my decision to give up digital communication (for a short time), and give up a few other things in order to make more space in my life. I did this so that I can say yes to the things that really matter.
There is one thing, one big thing this year, and I am still at a loss for words. A loss for words. Not for lack of speaking, or explaining, or talking or walking or wondering or being. A loss for words.
Or maybe I’m just afraid of writing about it.
But writing, writing seems to be so, so
Final.
I only laugh because I’m so open, and I share so much with so many friends, that when I reconnect with someone far and away and we get to talking, sometimes, one of them will say,
Hey Sarah! I heard you got married – congratulations!
And that’s enough to startle me back to the end of 2009, when I was getting married and I have to stumble around in my brain a bit, and sort through some of those boxes. I mentally scroll through my calendar of this year, past the Fellowship and the three moves and the trips to Seattle and Portland and Philadelphia and Taipei, past the hospital stay for dystenery, past the triathlons and the open water swims, past the belly-aching floor-lying painful days of that month, the month when I realized I wasn’t getting married and it wasn’t happening, and then, way back there in my calendar, I look at it. I look back at my friend and then inward at myself and think,
Wait, I was going to get married?
I pull that self out from within myself and look at it, strangely, and I try to recollect where, and how, and when I could have been at a place where I thought a wedding band on my finger was actually happening.
Oh yeah. And all those wedding dresses.
There is a folder of photographs, on my hard drive, of my sister and I. I’m standing on a box and I’ve tried on seven different wedding dresses and she’s next to me in purples and pinks and blues, and all I can think is how awkward I felt standing up on that box, and how the dresses made my swimmer arms look fat, and how they squeezed tight in the middle and made me feel like a big poofy ball of cinderella lace and glitter. Enough to make me want to barf. The matching bridesmaids’ dresses – all I could think was that they were all so ugly.
And that I hate wedding dresses.
And I’m not so keen on the idea of weddings, in general.
Who wants to spend $50,000 on a wedding?
But it happened so fast.
I suppose I’m afraid to write about it, because it’s as if I write it, in one story, in one way, then that’s the only way that it happened.
What story do I start with? What comes first?
Should I work backwards, and tell you how it is now, now that I’m standing up? Now that I’m laughing, living, talking, and brighter than I’ve ever been? I can kiss your ass with rose-colored glasses and tell you the moral first, the moral that is the hard things in life really do make you better, and, sweetheart, don’t worry, because you’re gonna get through this just fine, because you know that I did. I’ve laughed my way straight through dysentery and death and rib removal and all the other stuff you think I haven’t been through, because it’s been one of those years. And I can smile, annoyingly at you and still not.really.get.it, because to be there, to be in that place, is something that only you can pull yourself out of.
Maybe I can tell you about a time in my life when things weren’t fine, and I really was quite upset. It takes a lot of digging for me to find that place again, because I don’t feel that mad or sad or lonely or anything anymore – I guess I just am. I am where I am. But then, then, then.
Oh, then.
The kind of what-the-fuck-just-happened-to-my-life upset, where I drove around in my car just to drive and I couldn’t make eye contact with the drivers around me because I was afraid if they looked at me, not only would they see that tears were streaming down my face, but they would see that my mouth was open, wide open and I was bawling. Bawling so hard I couldn’t barely keep my head above the steering wheel, hiccuping in that disgusting get-yourself-together kind of way, so I would just pull over at the next stoplight or drive in and park and sob. I would pull over the car to any side of the road, even the freeway sometimes (I’m sorry Dad, I know it was dangerous!) and stand and drive and stare for a very long time and just wonder. Wonder who I was, and why I was, and where the fuck I was going if I couldn’t even figure this part out.
Somewhere in the middle of the very loud silence that is the world when two people separate, a tinny noise came out of a strange technological device and I could hear my friends talking to me, consoling me, calling me, telling me that this was for the best and that engagements are broken more often than most people talk about.
I just remember being really cold. It was a cold, brisk water-front month in Sausalito. The kind of weather that makes the grass stand tall, brown and still, where the water on the bay moves so little the ripples almost apologize for being. I wore a sweater that wasn’t warm enough for the season and leggings and my gray flats, the shoes I bought from downtown San Francisco’s DSW to wear as a bridesmaid in my other friends wedding. It’s stupid to wear flats at all – who wears shoes without socks when it’s cold? Girls do, I guess. Girls can be stupid, I suppose.
The brutality of a break up is that you’re ripped out of forward thinking and shoved straight into the present time. It’s as though someone has robbed you of all your future memories that you have yet to make, and after they’ve stolen them, they run circles around you with your dreams and wishes and fantasies tied up in their little goblin bag, and then they make sure to come back and hit you and prod you when you least expect it.
Then, then.
I kicked the rocks on the waterfront, angry at the water, telling it to move out of my way.
Now I just stare at it.
So fuck, I can’t think of one word for 2010.
One word?
Well, how about a hundred.
Because 2010 was the year I became a writer.
And I thought I wouldn’t be able to write about this.
*** *** ***
Photography credit: The amazingly talented Alexandra Sklar, who blogs at Bancroft & Ivy
When was the last time you said Yes to something you really wanted?
I’m guessing the last time you thought of something fun, fantastic –or even somewhat unreasonable — you quickly swatted the thought down and countered with a NO-based thought.
I can’t do that … I don’t have time.
I can’t do that … I’m not ready.
… I haven’t done _____ (insert some arbitrary barrier) yet.
… I don’t have enough money.
… I’m too tired.
When was the last time you said Yes to something important?
It’s a simple thought, really. It’s about an attitude change. What matters to you. What really matters?
Sometimes, saying Yes is really about saying Yes to the things that matter and No to the things that don’t matter. Say YES to more time to yourself. To alone time. To exercise. To the things that you really want to do. To long-term goals over short-term pleasures. To helping others. To having less.
If you were the only person on this planet, and the only person with whom to spend the rest of your life, what would you do?
Where would you go? What would be important to you?
Perhaps you have a big, gutsy, terrifying dream. It doesn’t matter what it is. If you’re saying No before you’ve even begun, then you have no hope of getting to your dream.
The first part is Yes. So say yes to the possibility.
Enjoy the whimsical fantasy.
What would happen if you really said Yes to everything you actually wanted?
*** *** ***
This month, I caved and I started saying Yes to Saying No. This simple thought led me to a decision to take 30 days off – while still working – and deliberately choose to spend the next 30 days of my life as “30 days of less.”
Read the first post, “Yes + No, More + Less” about my decision to give up digital communication (for a short time), and give up a few other things in order to make more space in my life. I did this so that I can say yes to the things that really matter.
Your true self is screaming to get out. Your essential self, as described so eloquently by Martha Beck, will stamp it’s feet and come out in ways that aren’t apparent to you yet. If you don’t listen to it now, you’ll have to listen to it later. And later might be harder, not easier.
No one can pick your journey for you.
No one is waiting for you to give you a ride to the life you’re meant to live.
You must listen to yourself. You must listen to your desires. When you stretch and run and scream and bend, when you wander the hallways wondering what to do, when you turn to a glass of wine at night or stare stupidly at the television for an extra hour, ask yourself:
Why?
Why are you doing what you do?
What is it that pulls you, compels you, motivates you, excites you?
Listen to yourself. Follow your instincts. Do what’s not been done before. Be daring. Be different. But most importantly, listen to what’s in your heart.
Your heart won’t stand up and shout to the world what it wants. You have to be ready to listen to it. Find spaces to listen, and listen carefully, to the teacher inside yourself. If you can’t hear what it’s saying, find a quieter place to listen.
Practice listening.
Listen to yourself, above all else.
***
My spaces for listening are during swimming, writing, and yoga. I gave these elements up in a big way during the last few months, and the dissonance in my life was too loud to bear. I was busy for the sake of being busy, without a clear goal, direction, or understanding of why I was doing what I was doing.
I’m trying to get back to a place where I know what I want. All I know right now is that this means saying YES to yoga, swimming, and writing. I write a lot more now – at least these past few weeks – and I’m much happier for it. I can’t tell you how you will work best – all I know is this truism: find a way to listen to yourself first.
If you’re curious, and want to send me an email with ramblings, I’m always happy to listen.
—-
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I’ve been playing around with the ideas of “yes” and “no” a lot lately. I’ve been saying yes a lot to things that don’t help me make progress on my goals, and I’ve had a terrible time saying no.
Saying No to the things that matter, and saying Yes to things that keep us busy. Before I knew it, I was a busy bee, doing … busy-bee things. Pointless things. Things with no direction or purpose.
Without priorities, we can’t build our habits. Without goals, purpose, and direction, we can’t cultivate our daily thinking and actions.
How can we change these habits? By breaking them, slowly. Habits take a long time to form and take an equally long time to unwind.
Before we can know where to go, we have to know what we want.
Before we can know what we want, we have to slow down. And listen.
30 days of less.
And so I’m trying to re-boot. I’m re-formatting my machine.
I’m currently undergoing the worker’s version of a retreat. I can’t take the month-long hiatus from work that I’ve been dreaming of, so instead, I’m doing an experiment: 30 days of less.
My retreat will happen in-house, at-work, in the days that follow. This month, I’ve given up or significantly reduced several things that seem to be taking up space and time in my life. In particular, these are things that are cultivating bad habits, or preventing me from achieving the larger goals that I have in my life.
The first 10 days I am taking a digital hiatus to reduce the distractions around me and focus on three things: wrapping up the 2010 year and reflecting, revising my bucket list and life-list of goals, and putting together a calendar and thoughts for the year to come: 2011. (And perhaps I also spent some time starting my new e-book and dreaming and scheming up new projects!)
If you’d like to join me in a month of less, here’s my commitment:
Less wine. Less alcohol. My original plan is to go 30 days without any at all (and really, that shouldn’t be too hard), but I’ve been cautioned by several wise friends to start small and build up rather than try to tackle anything huge all at once. So the goal is less. And my target goal is 5 non-drinking days and 2 choice days each week (whereby I can continue to choose not to drink if I so desire).
No coffee (good lord). I’ve got the jitters. Luckily, I already started and so the worst is over (good-bye, headaches!)
No car (WHAT?) I’m in the midst of a big debate (with myself, mostly) about whether or not to sell my car. Yes, my new car. So, to test it out, I’m leaving it at work for the next 30 days and taking the bus instead.
Less (or NO) TV. I’m not a big fan of TV – I think it’s a waste of time and sucks you into other people’s stories, rather than creating your own stories – and so I’m going to try to live more carefully and watch less TV (I currently watch about 4 hours of TV per week.)
I’m doing this to stretch, to learn, to grow. To find out what’s a habit and what’s a necessity. And, above all, saying no to some things means that I say yes to the things that matter.
And I’m saying yes.
Yes to writing.
Yes to reading, slowly.
Yes to sleeping and resting.
Yes to being better at my job.
Yes to more yoga, and more reflection.
The journey started a week ago. My patience is already tried, occasionally. But I’m finding a lot of solace in the spaces I now have available. I’m thinking clearer, already, and I absolutely LOVE it.
I have so many notes to share with all of you. It’s as though the more space I make for writing, the more easily I can do it – and the more I want to do it. Abundance grows when you give it space.
What follows are the Lessons from Less – I’ve broken these lessons into a short post for each, so you (and I) can savor them a bit.
I thrive on to-do lists, activities, and fun adventures. I usually hate being bored at work, and at home, I invite people over for dinner parties like it’s my job. It’s so much fun.
That said, I’m experiencing something entirely new to me, and I’m not sure what it is.
I”ve recently had these extensive, terrifying to-do lists that completely overwhelm me. The notebooks on my desk literally leave me out of breath. I get anxious, scared, overwhelmed, and terrified. I look at my notebooks and the tasks that are – as always, it seems – not crossed off, and I start to freeze up.
A to-do list for everything?
And then, the weirdest thing happens. Once I start freezing up, I do nothing. I LITERALLY DO NOTHING. I stare – I just STARE! – at my notebooks and drawings and screens at work. I feel like a zombiebecause I look at my screen and click my mouse a worthless ten times each hour, more or less accomplishing nothing. I have been sucked into the vortex of procrastination, and the results are more paralysis and fear.
Procrastination feeds the problem, and I’ve been procrastinating big time.
Here’s the clincher. I’m even working with a great mentor right now – someone fabulous who is giving me lessons in life design and life coaching – and I’m even procrastinating on replying to their emails. Those are marked as “to-respond” in my inbox, and I ignore them. Daily.
(For people interested in this kind of thing, I would highly recommend Jen Gresham, Jenny Blake, or Brett Kunsche as three starting points. These people are fabulous. As a future life-coach-in-training, going through the exercises over the past year – and figuring out what’s working and what’s not working in my life – is phenomenal.) That said, I’m still procrastinating.
procrastination is avoidance …
My sister, on our holiday trip to visit my Dad’s family in Southern California, remarked how strange it was that I was sleeping in late, staying up late, and not being my usual self.
I wish I could say that I have it all figured out, but I don’t. I’m working on it. I struggle. I fail. It’s a process. Learning new things excites me and it also terrifies me. I struggle to constantly challenge myself to grow, but sometimes, dammit, it’s REALLY. FREAKING. HARD.
(Sorry for swearing!)
I haven’t experienced this paralysis before. What follows after the onset of paralysis is a defiant middle-finger attempt to ignore the pressure of the things I have in front of me. I stay up late, drink copious amounts of coffee, and struggle to get one simple thing done. The addition of facebook and gmail and twitter and blogrolls builds, so that I spend an hour (or two!) each day mind-numbingly consuming information from friends
Mmm…late night facebook, anyone?
(and, although I love it all, I must admit that most of it is irrelevant. I don’t care that you’re at the airport, or that you took a pretty picture, or that you have announced to the world that you drank a glass of wine. Sometimes reading facebook is like digging through a pile of garbage to find an engagement ring: I’m thrilled to hear about the engagements and the glories, but the moment is ruined by all of the clutter it’s surrounded by).
But it’s not your fault. It’s my fault.
My tired, sleep-deprived, task-oriented, goal-setting crazy Sarah Peck self has done this, to myself. (Good lord, she’s talking in third person again.)
How can I write this? How am I writing, right now? I don’t know. I don’t understand it, to tell you the truth. The only thing I can do is listen to the voices in my head. And listen to what they tell me to write.
what voices in your head?
(Shut up, you know you’re there.)
… and I am slave to follow their whim and fancy. I listen to them more and more, and lately the voices tell me to stop working, stop busy-ing myself and just tell stories and dammit, get the stories out quicker.
the gremlins in my mind …
I know that I want to be a writer – a better writer, a fiction writer, a researcher – and sometimes, I feel so deflated by pre-occupying myself with other things during the best parts of the day (hello, mornings, sorry I missed you again – it’s been too long) and by the time I get to the evenings, I’m tired and the voices and stories in my mind have relegated themselves to the virtual couch.
As I sit in front my computer at night, I try to coax them back out and say, please, come out, let’s do some writing! And they slouch sideways and har-umph back at me and whine, why didn’t you play with us when WE wanted to play? We’ve been talking to you all day!
They’re like little goofy gremlins who clamber all over my brain during the day (Oh Sarah, please focus) – and then when I finally, exhaustedly, turn around and shut down my design computer and write out the task list for the next day, they recoil and squeal and laugh and run away from me, devilishly encouraging me to chase them in their whimsical, adventurous play-field that is my writing brain.
So I’m paralyzed and I’m overwhelmed and I have a bit of writer’s block –
You don’t have writer’s block! You’re just too busy doing stupid stuff and chasing someone else’s dream of success.
(Yes, I know, gremlin, I know).
So I did what every smart twenty-something does.
I called my parents.
My mom said that she was insanely proud of me.
And my Dad gave me some good advice.
I love parental wisdom.
And then life was roses and chocolates …
My dad’s advice, for any entrepreneur, is that you only need to do 5 things every day to make sure you’ll make it.
sleep
eat well
exercise
be social
get the work done.
It turns out you can’t do # 5 without the other 4 things. You need sleep, good food, exercise, and interaction with others to really get good work done. For some reason, I’ve been burning the fire without putting the fuel in, and the lack of sleep and good nutrition makes for a poorly-run Sarah machine. This engine needs an overhaul.
Burnout, it turns out, is a condition of long-term exhaustion and diminished interest in the things around you. Characterized by exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy, the people subject to burnout are often slow to realize what’s happening, and may find themselves overwhelmed by stress and workload, and thereby unable to mitigate the problem.
Hmmmm.
The other piece of advice I got from my Dad was this:
What’s first?
Time is a limited quantity. We can make more money and have more stuff – heck, even make new friends – but we can’t make more time.
So instead of listing everything – list only what’s first. What’s the first, and only thing you want to get done? What’s the first thing you want to get done today, right now, and this week? How do your short term actions play into your long-term goals?
It’s time for some life-editing.
What’s first, for me, is rest.
Rest comes in many forms: more sleep, less work, and less procrastination. Which brings me to:
A digital hiatus.
And so, I bid adieu, for a short hiatus. I am taking a ten-day digital hiatus from social media and email until January 3, 2011.
(To keep myself honest, I actually de-activated my facebook account.)
I need to be making a conscious effort to spend less time on things that don’t matter and more of my time re-fueling the tank. Because I have some great stories and writing itching to get out of me. And I’m not any good to you – or to me – if I can’t write. So I must rest.
I will be responding to emails if and only if they are productive to my current projects. But I need time to think, time to sleep, and time to be. I will be writing, thinking, scheming and dreaming.
The next 10 days are mine. I hope you enjoy yours, too. Feel free not to email or call – and see you next year!
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Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, everyone. To a great 2011.
Do you speak retirement? Most people don’t. Personally, I like to sit around a campfire and talk about compound interest and exchange rates, but I sometimes get distracted by the chocolatey-smores and marshmallows – Oh wait. Perhaps that’s just me?
Retirement is something you probably don’t want to think about or talk about. It’s kind of boring* and it’s usually full of complicated numbers, jargon and equations that don’t make too much sense.
(*Or is it boring? I now find it really interesting, but it took a while of struggling to understand the concepts before I got the hang of it.)
401-k-what, Roth-how?
So you just graduated. You’re more excited about your paycheck (and the fact that you have one), and paying your rent – than you are about understanding that 4% your HR department keeps talking about. Quite frankly, it’s a lot easier to ignore retirement and leave it until later – but how much later?
In the beginning, all of the numbers and jargon are really confusing. But being confused isn’t a reason to wait until later.
If you don’t get it now, you probably won’t get it later, either.
At my first job, we weren’t eligible for retirement benefits until after our first 6 months of employment. During that time, I spent many, MANY hours setting up sessions with our Vanguard representative and talking to HR about our employee benefits. I read the entire employee manual, and, still confused, pestered our finance department and HR about economics lingo, profit sharing, and retirement benefits. I read a whole bunch of books. It is confusing. I learned a lot. I probably annoyed more people than I would have liked, but sometimes you have to pester people with questions to understand what it is that you’re trying to do.
The point? First, ask lots of questions, and if you don’t understand the answer, keep asking people questions until you are confident in what you’re doing.
Second, I learned a lot, and I kept good notes, so this post should help you learn a bit without necessarily having to do quite as much work as I did.
What is retirement?
Retirement is that wonderful time when you get to stop working and do nothing for the rest of your life. Well, that’s how some people look at it. Not everyone wants to retire – many people will continue to work part-time well past age 65 and into their 70’s and 80’s. The idea, however, is that saving for the future will afford you financial independence, give you something to live off of in your old age if you do choose to stop working, and help to finance all those pesky medical expenses that tend to appear as our bodies get older and weaker.
How to save, how much to save, where to invest, and how much you need are the essential questions of retirement planning.(Some great resources I like are listed more extensively below. I am not a financial expert so if you want to talk to a financial planner or retirement expert, try another blog.) This post is just a frank recount of what I’ve learned over the past year from reading and experimenting. If you’re new, confused, or struggling to understand some of the basic tenants of personal finance – particularly about retirement – this post tries to keep it simple and relatively easy to understand.
How much are YOU currently saving?
With a few exceptions, when I talk to my friends in their 20’s and 30’s – most of my friends admit to not having anything saved for retirement or not knowing anything about what, how, or why to save for retirement. I don’t care if you think you’re going to work until you drop, or if you’re in between jobs – having savings for the future is going to be crucial.
Having savings is having freedom.
Saving for the future means you have the option of doing what you want.
But for some reason, most people aren’t saving money. They don’t know how, they don’t know why – or they aren’t aware of the implications of not planning for the future.
I’m scared. You should be scared.
From what I can tell, there are several big problems our generation is facing:
You make less than your parents did at your age. “The average salary of 25 to 34 year olds has fallen 19% compared to 30 years ago (adjusted for inflation).” (From Forbes Blogs, Sept 2010)
Benefits aren’t the same. Not all jobs come with great benefits packages. Read the fine-print: is your job covering your needs?
Government social security and medicare aren’t sufficient to cover the costs of your retirement needs.
We are going to live a lot longer in retirement than our parents or grandparents will. They are going to kick it around age 80 or so. You might live until you are 100. Or later.
For an internet-savvy generation, and for a set of self-made talent with lots of smarts, this surprises me.
You’re the ONLY one who can put you first. Put yourself first. Save smart. Saving for retirement is putting pennies in the bank for your future self. Plan for your financial independence. Enjoy your freedom.
What’s the point of retirement?
Why do you care about retirement? Why should you bother thinking about it today, right now, and get it figured out?
In short, here’s what I came up with: we are going to work for about 30-40 years of our lives, give or take a few years. Then, around age 65, you’re probably hoping to “retire.”
Answer this question: how are you going to live from age 65 to age 100+? Not only does your current income have to support your lifestyle now, it’s also somehow supposed to fund 35+ years of your life when you won’t be working anymore.
If you work half your life, and are retired for the other half, does that mean that 1/2 of your current income should be saved for retirement? (And if so, are you currently saving 50% of your income?)
Fortunately, the answer is no; you have time, compound interest, and probably a few employer programs working for you, especially if you start saving at a young age.
The general estimates suggest that you should save between 10% and 20% of your income each year for retirement. And if you are planning on taking any significant amount of time off – say, to have a baby, travel, or go back to school – you should factor that into your planning and bump up your savings accordingly.
Barrier # 1: Not knowing about retirement (or saving).
Hopefully I lit a fire under your ass with a bit of fear-talk above. I worry about my future. I want to achieve financial independence, pay down all of my student loans, and never HAVE to work for anyone because I need the money. I want to work doing work I love, because it makes me happy – not because I need the money. (I assume you have similar goals).
In simple terms, retirement means saving for the future.
The first barrier to successful decision-making is information. People just don’t know much about retirement. Retirement is confusing. There is a lot of information out there. Not understanding it is not a reason to not think about it. As with anything else, start learning.
So, stop being stupid. I was stupid at first – and I felt dumb not knowing any of this. So I’ll save you the trouble by compiling some great resources for you. Here are some useful tools (none of these are affiliate links) to start learning:
Great Resources:
I Will Teach You To Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi. A powerful, motivational thinker and speaker. If you read anything, check out “The Psychology of Money,” and learn why we don’t do the things we should. Then, learn how to automate your finances.
Get Rich Slowly, by JD Roth. One of the best personal finance blogs out there – possibly my favorite.
Man Versus Debt. Adam Baker’s mission to sell his crap, get out of debt, and do what he loves. Great motto, great inspiration.
Okay, so now you have a vague idea of what retirement is and why you might need to save money. Perhaps you’re now so psyched to save money that you’re ready to do it – NOW, TODAY.
Good! But how much should you save?
Well, that’s step two: Figuring out your personal financial goals.
Is retirement for everyone? Not everyone needs to save for retirement. Figure out what YOU want to achieve in your current, future, and elderly retirement ages, and then put that plan into action.
Some people suggest that retirement – and working a 9-to-5 job for 40+ years and then not working – is an outdated model. There are a couple of schools of thought on this regard.
Some people don’t plan to stop working at age 65. This is called the “work until you die” mentality. You don’t neccessarily have to plan for retirement – just plan to keep working until you kick it. For some professions, this makes sense (many construction jobs have a high death rate in just a few short years after retiring, unfortunately, and so even though they have pension plans and built-in retirement benefits, the workers have a low rate of realizing their deferred earnings). For others, they want to live within their means their whole life – and they plan to work through retirement. If you don’t mind working until you’re 95 and in a walker, do nothing.
Wealth Accumulation. Some people want to be millionaires before they hit the big 4-0. These are your frugal, penny-pinching, or otherwise regular friends who set themselves up for success with goals, automated finances, and direct deposits. Saving money and accumulating wealth is about spending less than you make (by saving more OR by finding ways to earn more), measuring what you do spend and learning about your spending habits, and figuring out a realistic plan that works for you – often through automated finance plans or thrifty money-making plans. Alternatively, many people promote minimalism as an alternative to excessive consumerism (and thereby can earn more money by spending less), or alternative lifestyle designs.
Saving just enough. Other people want to strike a balance: they accumulate enough to live off of but not so much as to leave a legacy or will behind. This plan does not mean you don’t save money. You just aren’t interested in accumulating excess wealth. (See Chris Guillebeau’s description)
Here’s the point. Write down your financial goals. Here are some good examples of great goals.
Pay down your [school, car, loan, house, credit card] debt. Basically, get out of debt.
Save an emergency fund.
Save 10% in a retirement fund each year.
Have $100,000 in retirement savings by age 35.
Build an investment portfolio.
So, Sarah, what does that mean for me right now?
A general rule of thumb that helps me figure out my retirement savings (and I am not a financial planner, so go to one if you’re confused because they are experts and they are great – and by all means, take my words with a grain of salt):You should *roughly* have the equivalent of one year’s salary saved in your retirement fund by the time you reach age 30. If you’re hoping to make $50,000 a year by the time you are 30, then aim to have $50,000 in your retirement account by the time you hit age 30.
For example: if you start working at age 22, with $5000 in the bank, you’ll need to save about $400 a month to reach $50,000 by the time you hit age 30. There’s a handy tool on wallet pop that I like to use to calculate my savings over time.
(Note: the inputs I used were $5000 to start, 5% interest, $400 per month, ignoring taxes and inflation for simplicity). Go plug in a few numbers and see what you get. It will get you on track.
And if you read this far …
You’re the ONLY one who can put you first.
Put yourself first. Save smart. Saving for retirement is putting pennies in the bank for your future self. Plan for your financial independence. Enjoy your freedom.
… Saving for retirement is sexy.
Sexy, I said it.
Sexy, because being smart is hot. And people who know what to do with money and how to plan for the future are smart. Because it’s YOUR life. And if you’re frittering your money away on things and people and excess, perhaps you’re not thinking clearly. It’s your life, your choices, and your future.
I strive for financial independence.
I will get there one day.
I want to pay down my student loans in the next 6 years (by age 33).
I want to be a millionaire by age 40.
I have an insance amount of gratitude for the financial gurus and blogging pioneers that talk honestly and openly about debt, saving, making mistakes, tracking your spending, and achieving financial independence. I only wish I had learned more and started younger.
So, hop to it.
Start saving.
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This weekend I went running through Griffith Park in Los Angeles. It took a while to climb up to the base of the park, and then I wandered off the main road to a set of amazing trails that took me to the height of the hills overlooking the Los Angeles basin.
Once at the top, I got to turn around and view the city from afar. Just being able to escape the city and look back on it let me start to fall in love with cities again. To tell you the truth, I was getting tired of cities, just as I sometimesget tired of working. It’s hard to keep it up, to stay focused, to stay motivated. It’s as though every Sunday is calling for a day of rest (or whatever day you choose), so that you can reflect, look back, and appreciate what you’ve done and where you’ve come from.
Griffith Park, Los Angeles
I feel like I haven’t had enough time to run lately. In fact, I feel like I haven’t had time for much of anything – for writing, for reading, or for just being. I feel so rushed and busy and overwhelmed by the rat chase, by the endless tasks I’m doing at work, and by the worthless cycle that is addictive communication (read: addicted to facebook and gmail). I don’t have time to do it all – and I’m not trying to do it all. I won’t read every blog, I won’t catch up on all of the news, or even get every square inch of work done that’s outlined on my desk.
Lately, things just haven’t been happening – because I don’t have the time.(I am kicking myself for saying that, because time is what you make of it and I KNOW that. And then I ask myself, why don’t you have time, Sarah? What are you doing to make yourself so busy?) I get home – tired – and the project that’s been put off for after-work, after-the-other-big-project-I’m-trying-to-finish, just isn’t happening. I feel like I’m dropping the ball, and I feel like the things I want to do – truly want to do, like read, write, and run – don’t have enough space in my life.
So on Sunday, when I came back from LA, I gave up. I turned off my phone alarm, I refused to get out of bed until 10AM, I refused to make a to-do list, and I refused to pick up after myself. I shoved my work bag in the closet and I let go of the anxiety associated with a huge pile of magazines that I *ought to* be reading.
I drank coffee.
And I sat.
The art of sitting is a lost art, it seems. Leo Babauta talks about white space and how we need it in both graphic arts as well as in our lives. Space to live, breathe, and be.
Why don’t I have enough time? What am I doing that’s preventing my time from being mine? Where am I being aimless, unproductive, or focusing my energies on things I should be letting go of?
I sat some more.
And then, starting from scratch, from a small space of quiet and more regular rhythm of breathing, I picked up a book. A book I wanted to read, not one that I felt obligated to read. The difference seems subtle, but felt huge. And when I got tired, I set the book down and stared around the apartment for a while, choosing to do nothing but listen to my thoughts as they tumbled down out of the organized, stacked spaces I was trying to keep them in for the sake of efficiency and productivity. Productivity, it seems, is useless is you’re productively creating crap.
I made soup.
Long soup, the kind that takes hours.
Chicken soup, from scratch.
I didn’t berate the soup for taking a long time to cook, because I know the value of letting the flavors seep together in a wonderful stew.
I didn’t rush it; it just was.
I ignored absolutely everything on my mental to-do list and I canceled dinner with friends.
The lost art of sitting (Paris, 2007, photo by Sarah)
***
I would much rather have one goal than many, if the goal were one I loved and cherished and could spend my focused time on. Working hard doesn’t have to leave you exhausted. In fact, if you’re exhausted, perhaps you’re working too hard – or not working the right type of hard. Perhaps your work should leave you both exhausted but also exhilarated.
I found, too, that the shield of “busy” is an armor I put up against the fact that I’m still unsure of where I’ll be in two, four, or seven years. Sometimes I feel as though I have no idea what I’m doing. When in doubt, or insecure about what I’m accomplishing and who I am becoming, I grab onto tasks and busy-ness and jump into the whirlwind lifestyle of a productive workaholic. Except even when I’m that busy, my heart still knows that it’s just an armor. It’s a front, it’s an idea I put up in the place of patiently listening to the small inklings of ideas that I’m truly passionate about. It’s as though I still believe that if I stamp my feet louder and try harder, maybe I’ll end up liking what I do more.
It doesn’t work like that, unfortunately.
So this blog, this post, is an ambling, wandering post, a message that it’s okay not to know where you’re going and that I, like you, am learning as I go. I am learning about writing, about blogging, about life design and personal development and courage and wisdom and all the space in between.
I wish I could neatly and succinctly summarize how to make a busy life less stressful and more relaxed, but I didn’t master those ideas in my single day of rebellion. I know that anything worth doing takes time, slow time, and it’s a process that builds momentum over a series of repeated steps – not an instantaneous change that happens all at once. It’s hard for me to post this, in fact, because I wish I did have the answers and could tell you exactly how to make it all better. But that would be delusional, because for me, and for you, it’s a process. Today, what I know right now is that busy-ness is not fun for the sake of busy-ness. This is a process, a long process, and it turns out in the art of quiet and stillness, I’m a slow learner.
It’s life. I’m here for the ride.
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