Behavior #1: Choose more time instead of more income

Time

Jan 17

Conscientious and intelligent, you will face endless opportunities to trade your time for income — the potential to take on a parade of jobs, promotions, and self-assigned entrepreneurial tasks in exchange for ever-larger paydays.

If you are not careful, you will believe this is the way forward, the stairway to true social regard, and your behavior will reflect your belief. Your 7-hour workday will become a 10-hour workday, your 35-hour week will become a 50-hour week, and you’ll be “vindicated” by pay far beyond your needs, a nicer house, and the superficial regard of your bosses, clients, and co-workers.

Unfortunately, you’ll find you’ve left no time to chase your dreams. To connect with your loved ones. To simply be. You’ll have surrendered your Agency for financial ease via time-for-income — and you’ll think you’ve done the right thing (while wondering why you feel so wrong).

Instead, forego the temptation. At every opportunity, choose more time instead of more income. Reject the promotion that comes with pre-work meetings and weekend emails. Say “no” to the lucrative contract that will leave you richer but less connected to your friends. Step off the hamster wheel of stretch assignments that will put a gold star in your personnel file and a schism in your sleep schedule.

In doing so, you’ll have elected Agency, and made time freedom (and its attendant joy) the organizing principle of your life. While this will not free you from the duty to amass adequate wealth through saving and investing, it will free you from the silent predations of “overdoing it” — the flytrap that looks so beautiful until the moment you drown in it.