The Voluntary Life

This episode provides an overview of eight tools that can free your mind and massively boost your productivity. One of the things that makes us human is our ability to extend the power of our minds with tools. The tools are only effective when combined with the right habits (repetitive behaviours). Be sure to look up and learn more about the productivity habits mentioned with each tool.

1. A Concentration Timer

Your mind is not free if you are distracted and interrupted all the time. A concentration timer is a simple tool that helps your mind focus for short bursts of concentration and then give your brain rest periods. A concentration timer is just a stopwatch with an alarm. Examples include a stopwatch app or a simple kitchen timer. The habit needed to make the most of this tool is to forgo multi-tasking, take regular breaks, and protect your concentration when working by managing interruptions. To learn more about the best practice habits for using a concentration timer read about The Pomodoro Technique.

2. A Journal

Writing is an amazing ability unique to humans. Getting your thoughts out of your head by writing them down gives your mind far more freedom to explore them and view them objectively. A journal can simply be a pen and paper, or a dedicated physical journal, a digital journalling app like Macjournal or web based journalling service like 750 Words. Use a password protected journal app (or a lockable one if paper-based) to give your mind full freedom to express anything. The habit required to make the most of a journal is to maintain regular journalling every day. Read more about journalling in The Ultimate Guide to Journaling.

3. A Ubiquitous Capture Tool

A ubiquitous capture tool or mobile thought and information capture tool gives you the opportunity to have potentially useful ideas anywhere but still allows you to get on with your day (and not have to remember everything). Examples of a capture tool can be a simple pen and paper, a Hipster PDA, a note taking app like Drafts or Evernote, even the voice memo or camera feature of your phone. Read more about capture tools in Getting Things Done by David Allen.

4. A "Stuff Funnel"

A stuff funnel is a system of discrete inboxes to funnel new information into one location where it can be processed. All kinds of stuff shows up in your life (letters, emails, receipts, manuals, downloaded files etc) and clogs your mind. In order to mentally 'process' the stuff and identify what you want to do with it, you need a complete set of inboxes. Since most people have both a physical inbox and various digital inboxes (email inbox, download folder, task manager inbox etc), you can think of the full set of your inboxes as a funnel for information coming into your life. The habit needed to make good use of this tool is to make sure you put all the stuff that comes into your life into a designated in-box that is part of your funnel and clear the funnel regularly (empty all the in-boxes). Read more about processing stuff in Getting Things Done by David Allen.

5. A Task Management Tool

A task management app is a tool to organise and work with all your "to-do" items, projects, goals and other task management information. If you don't use a tool for this, these to do items remain constantly on your mind, taking up mental effort. At the simplest level, a pen and some paper can serve as a task management tool. Various software apps can also be used, such as Things, Omnifocus and Evernote. These tools are only effective when combined with the habit of organising all your project and task information in the tool and working with it daily.

6. A Reference Material Store

A reference material store allows you to put information that you might need in future in a safe place, freeing your mind to forget about it. A filing cabinet is a physical example and Evernote is a digital example. The habit needed to make use of this tool is ensuring that you put all the information you might need into your reference store.

7. A Mind Mapping Tool

Mind maps free you to be conscious of all the intuitive connections that your mind can make. They are bubble and stick diagrams of your thoughts and their connections. A mind mapping tool can be as simple as a pen and paper, or a specific application like iThoughs HD. It can take some time to develop the habit of doing mind maps and allowing yourself to make those intuitive connections, but it is well worth it.

8. A Media Queue System

A media queue system is a set of tools to allow you to save media to consume later, so you can avoid being distracted when someone sends you a link. You might see an interesting article online and use a tool like instapaper to save it to read later. Similarly youtube has a watch later feature and Amazon allows you to make wish lists for things you may buy later.

Show Notes

• The Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo (downloadable pdf)
• The Ultimate Guide to Journaling by Hannah Braime
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• The Getting Things Done Virtual Study Group Podcast

This episode is an interview with Todd Tressider, founder of financialmentor.com. Todd founded Financial Mentor to educate business owners and investors about the wealth building principles he learned from years as an entrepreneur in the investment management industry. In the interview, Todd outlines his definition of financial freedom and discusses the hurdles you need to overcome if you want to achieve it. He talks about the importance of developing your own wealth plan and identifies some of the key requirements necessary for your plan to be successful. As always regarding investment, do your own research. I am not a financial advisor.

This episode is an interview with Jorja Leavitt, founder of Sharetown.com. Jorja is an entrepreneur and mother of four, living in Las Vegas. In the interview, she shares her experiences of moving to a minimalist lifestyle. She talks about the freedom that she has found from decluttering and selling unnecessary stuff. She highlights the great opportunities to trade at a community level, using social media platforms such as Facebook.

Show Notes:

• Sharetown Facebook App
• Article on selling all your stuff by Never Ending Voyage

This episode is an interview of me by Kevin at Freedom Lovin' Podcast. Here's what we covered:

• What does freedom mean?
• Why entrepreneurship is important
• Living in Mexico
• Minimalism/going paperless
• Tips on becoming more free in your life

This episode provides a mind blowing way of thinking about the true cost of your monthly expenses. If you are interested in achieving financial freedom, then it makes sense to look at each monthly recurring expense as really costing you 300 times more. For example, a gym membership that costs £80 per month really costs £24,000 (in dollars, a $120 monthly gym membership really costs $36,000). The episode explains this perspective in more detail. In summary:

• You have financial freedom when you don't have to work to support yourself. Therefore, if you want to be financially free, you have to think of paying for things from the interest on your passive investments.
• Although there is a lot of debate about the numbers, the most widely used assumption is that you can live from 4% of your portfolio (the so called 4% rule). This assumes that on average your portfolio will make enough to cover for both inflation and you drawing down 4% (I personally think it's better to use 3% to be on the safe side, but let's use the most commonly used assumption to illustrate the point).
• The 4% rule implies that you need a net worth that is 25 times your annual expenses to be financially free. To apply that to monthly expenses, simply multiply the 25 by 12 (for 12 months) and you need investments that are 300 times your recurring monthly expenses. So any monthly expense really requires 300 times more in capital to pay for it when financially free.
• This is why for the £80 per month gym membership, you need £24,000 in capital saved to pay that membership when financially free. That figure (£24,000) is more than the annul expenses of most people in the UK.
• This is why frugality and saving is so powerful as a way to get more financial freedom. It is more powerful to save expenses than to keep increasing your income because more income won't make you more free unless you control expenses.
• I'm not a financial advisor and as always, you need to do your own research. I think this perspective is useful and it has been very helpful to me.
• That's why I won't be getting a gym membership again anytime soon. There are plenty of free ways of getting good exercise!

Further Reading:

• Mr Money Moustache article about the 4% Rule
• Retiring Sooner: How to Accelerate Your Financial Independence by Darrow Kirkpatrick
• The 4% Rule and Safe Withdrawal Rates In Retirement by Todd Tressider

This episode is about how to go paperless and what the benefits are. Topics covered include:

• How accumulating paper limits your flexibility and freedom
• Simple steps to reduce the paper you accumulate such as using e-billing and e-books.
• Ways to minimise the paper books you own, such as selling them as soon as you have read them
• Key tools for digitizing your paper and going paperless: a multipage scanner (such as the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i), a shredder and Evernote
• Keeping labelling and metadata simple: the three key attributes of date, location and person/organisation
• Options about where to store digital data: secure encrypted drives vs services like Evernote
• What to scan and what to simply delete.

A good site for more tips about going paperless is DocumentSnap

This episode is a recent interview I did on the Nomad Capitalist Report radio show. The interview is by Andrew Henderson and here's his summary: "Live from Mexico, Jake Desyllas of The Voluntary Life podcast talks entrepreneurship and freedom. He shares tips to building a location independent business, being a global entrepreneur, and prospering anywhere in the world. He shares suggestions from his jet-setting life, talks about the best countries in South America, and dispels myths about Mexico "they" don't want you to know." Podcast Episode

An episode about freedom from stuff. Topics covered include:

• What I learned living from a backpack for 7+ months
• Why owning stuff is not wealth
• The hidden financial and psychological costs of owning stuff
• How your stuff can control you
• The goal of purposeful ownership
• Strategies for minimalism: paperless, zero data and selling all your crap

An episode about finding and clarifying the purpose of your business. Why does your business exist? Topics covered include:

• The limits of "Mission Statements"
• The benefits of a really short elevator pitch for your business' purpose: encapsulating it all in just 3 words
• It can often take a long time to move from intuitive to fully conscious business purpose. Don't worry, you can get going and discover it on the way
• Three things to think about to clarify your purpose: What will inspire you? What will inspire others? What do you have the capability to deliver?

Show Notes:

• Episode 107 (Part 1 of What Kind of Business Should I Start?)
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
• Making It All Work by David Allen

An episode about the financial risks and rewards of entrepreneurship and what they mean for your motivation in starting a business. Here's some harsh data about the financial risks and rewards:

• More than half of startups cease trading within the first five years.
• Entrepreneurs on average earn significantly less income over 10 years than they would have earned in paid employment. There are debates about the numbers but one study (Hamilton) suggests a 35% earnings differential.
• Entrepreneurs on average don't earn a better return on their investment by founding startups than they would have by investing in publicly traded stocks (in fact they earn less from a risk return perspective).
• Nevertheless, the majority of affluent people are self-made entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs make-up less than 20% of the workforce in America, but account for 66% of the millionaires. Of the millionaire entrepreneurs, 80% of them are self-made: they are first generation wealth holders (Stanley).

What are we to make of such statistics? I argue that the high financial risk (and potentially high reward) make it even more important to do entrepreneurship for intrinsic motivations:

• Purpose: building a business because you want to make a dent on the universe and you believe that what you are doing will make peoples' lives better.
• Autonomy: being an entrepreneur because it gives you freedom to live and work as you want to (not as someone else thinks you should)
• Mastery: overcoming the challenges of learning how to build a business is rewarding in itself.

The episode ends with a discussion of the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for making money itself. The intrinsic motivation to make money is for the freedom (financial freedom) that it gives you. Show Notes:

• "Start Up Failure Rates: The Definitive Numbers" By Scott Shane
• "What Do Small Businesses Do?" Erik Hurst and Benjamin Wild Pugsley
• "Does Entrepreneurship Pay? An Empirical Analysis of the Returns of Self-Employment" by Barton H. Hamilton, 2000
• "The Returns to Entrepreneurial Investment: A Private Equity Premium Puzzle?" By Tobias J. Moskowitz and Annette Vissing Jørgense
• The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley