The first point assumes that all of the other roles we play as friends, partners, parents, lovers, children, siblings, human beings and many others go up against the one role of being an EMPLOYEE. My life includes work, but is not going to be balanced out with work, because “work-life balance” implies there is some sort of balance to be achieved. Balance usually refers to somin being equal. If I was to do that, out of every 24 hour day, I should spend 12 hours working and try to cram the rest of my life such as sleeping, working on personal projects, and hanging out in the other 12 hours. That just seems idiotic.

I prefer Tim Ferriss‘ take on the idea of work-life balance. He says there should be “work-life separation”. I still have some qualms about this term, but this at least gives the possibility of reducing the time and attention you give to work, possibly working less than the fabled 40-hour week.

BTW, I’m using “work” in the sense of a job and being an employee. I personally use the broadest sense of word “work” in my life: that of anything that I’d like to do, including job stuff, personal stuff, relationship stuff, humour stuff, personal projects for love not money, etc.

My S/M list is long (over 200, maybe 300 items) which makes reviewing this list during the weekly review a bit of a hassle. So I’ve done three things:

1. Divided my list up based on when they might be conceivably actionable (by time and by context). So, I have seperate “toRead” lists which I look at if/when I’m looking for a book to read, a “toWatch” list, and a seperate “toBuy” list for when I have a bit of extra money. That is, if I know I have a bit of extra money in a given week, I’ll read that list otherwise I’ll just skim it.

2. Set a rule: put something on the list after I’ve thought of it the second time. I used to put things on the list when I would first think about and get excited about them…except I have way too many ideas which are just interesting the first time and upon sober reflection I would never do them. If something comes up a second time in my head, it might be something I might end up doing.

3. Every weekly review, try to eliminate at least one item off the list, again to keep the list manageable. Some items I just don’t feel as interested in or connected to as I used to. Or my life direction has changed and items which used to be relevant aren’t anymore. Or, I’ll simply realize my motivation for having written something down and decide I don’t want to connect with that motivation anymore. “Read Shakespeare” sounds nice and all, but the reason it used to be on my list was cause it was on other people’s lists of things to do before they die, and cause I thought it was something that would make me “cultured”. But, I realized that unless I want to read Shakespeare out of interest, there’s no point in putting that on my list cause it’ll never get done and it’ll be an injustice to a great artist. I also realized that Shakespeare’s main audiences tended to be illiterate, so it’s funny that its “cultured” to know his work today.

Similarly, “write a book” is one of those things everyone wants to have done, but not everyone wants to actually do page by page. Saying I’m an author at a party is great and all, but it’s not something I’m genuinely interested in right now. And “writing a book” is kinda like “burning a cd”. What matters is what’s shared on either medium. Some things are just best shared in book form.

I would like to add one more note: check out Getting Things Done FAST. It’s a hard-to-find (though easily available on torrents) recording of a GTD seminar by David Allen. It’s really good. He emphasizes that these lists are not to constrict you or to be taken as overbearing rules, but to simply get off your own back so you can go off and live your life. Often, he says, he’ll go do things that weren’t on any lists, but the reason he can do that is cause he has his lists so he’s off his own back.

That, I believe, is the real reason people ask this question. It’s easy to feel good about yourself if everyone else is also stuck in the same place, or if you can assign some external reason for why you are not doing what you really want to do but don’t have the courage to right now. Those reasons enumerated, I do want to answer the question as asked:

Like I said previously, a massive change like everyone following their dreams will not happen suddenly. If anything, it could be argued that its been happening slowly over the last many decades. Massive social changes like that rarely happen very quickly (they’re called revolutions if they do). “For example, if everyone did what they felt their purpose was and there were no garbage-collectors left, this is some of what might happen: 1. The wages for a garbage collector would skyrocket. 2. People would have to clean up after themselves. 3. There would be a greater demand for solutions that didn’t require humans or as many humans, such as automated cleaning machines, and the people who really enjoy solving society’s problems using technology would love to create that.”

There are every kind of people. Paul taught me about this. This may sound really, really strange to you, but there are people who ENJOY being garbage collectors. The Fred Factor is a book about a postman who brings so much joy and purpose to his work. Most people would think that being a post delivery person would be dreary and boring, but Fred loves his work. The value of these people who really love to do this would go up dramatically because they are so rare, so they could actually make a lot of money doing something that others would consider “dreary”.

Finally, we, as a species/culture, can adapt to massive social changes such as if everyone is starting to follow their dreams. We’ve gone through a number before now. For example, I’m willing to bet that someone said at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, “What if everyone went to work in jobs in factories and left the farms; we’d all starve!”. And we have not starved. This henny penny, “the sky is falling” stuff is usually overrated.

Let’s say there was suddenly a severe shortage in the number of postal workers. Courier businesses would probably skyrocket, people would stop sending as many letters (as they have), the wages of postal workers would skyrocket, faxes and emails would grow much greater in number, many entrepreneurs would step in to attempt to come up with solutions that are cheaper and/or more efficient than the current system. Perhaps instead of getting mail delivered to our doors, each neighbourhood or block would get its own central mail box racks where you go to pick up the mail, like a PO Box, this is pretty common in many places around the world.

Financial

• Past Year: I did pretty good in this area, doubling my income from the previous year. I started to use Quicken to manage my money and I really like it. I also try to use debit card to pay for as many things as I can so that I can just download the transactions and Quicken can figure out what I bought and where. I do this about every two weeks. Easy and simple. I also setup an automatic transfer near the end of the year, of a certain amount (about 20%) of my paycheque to be transfered to my savings account right after my pay is deposited into my account. This is what The Automatic Millionaire is about. I spent an inordinate amount of money on eating out, so I’ve limited myself to ten dollars a week of eating out money. This isn’t going so well, but I am bringing more and healthier food from home.
• Current: Things are pretty good right now. I’ve got a good mix of income sources which keeps things interesting (mostly by having different jobs). My savings rate is between 20-30% which isn’t bad, although I would like to be higher.
• Future-Perfect: I want to make at least $5000/month passively, through very little time involvement and/or by doing something I really love, but can still leave well enough alone every once in a while and jet around the world. I want to feel free to spend upto a few hundred dollars without worrying, and I want to be able to decide to go somewhere in the morning and leave in the evening. I have a positive net worth, but as long as I’m getting income I don’t really care what it is.
• Projects: The way I’m doing things now is not really scalable. At my jobs, the only way to make more money is to put in more hours, and I have only so many hours. Alternatively, I can improve my marketable skills to the point where I can command a higher salary, however I don’t feel like its the optimal choice for me right now. I would rather put my energy towards finding more passive/less time-related means of income. That includes focusing on and monetizing this site (you might have noticed the increase in postings, almost one a day now, as well as the ad bar), as well as investing and any other way that comes up. I’m also looking up books like 4-Hour Work week, Multiple Streams of (Internet) Income to get more ideas from.
• Roles and Responsibilities: Monitoring cash flow and expenses, long and short-term financial planning, reducing expenses, finding ways to increase income, finding and applying for bursaries and scholarships, researching and making investments, exploring opportunities and learning and reading about these things.

This stuff is a little different from how PD advice generally is, which is to put in time frames. My Future-Perfect category would probably be a 5-year goal. As I’m just learning to plan things out for the long-term, I’m still learning what works well and what doesn’t. I also want to achieve that state before 5 years, and I think it is possible to. I also prevent procrastination by deliberately doing things badly the first few times. That way, if its bad, I can say, of course its bad, I meant it to be like that.