2860: I’ll Figure Out What I Want To Be When I Grow Up by Mr. 1500 of 1500 Days on Career Happiness

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: This is Optimal Finance Daily. I'll figure out what I want to be when I grow up by Mr. 1500 of 1500 Days.com

[00:00:09] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm your host and personal finance enthusiast, Diana Merriam.

[00:00:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Now let's get right to it and start optimizing your life.

[00:00:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll figure out what I want to be when I grow up by Mr. 1500 of 1500 Days.com

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_00]: An outsider goes inside.

[00:00:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I've always hated to be inside.

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Climbing beats a day at the office at any and all times.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: When I was a kid, I'd spend the summers tearing around the neighborhood on my freedom machine, the bicycle.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_00]: When I first started thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up, my thought was this,

[00:00:53] [SPEAKER_00]: there's no way I'm working at a job where I'm confined to an office.

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_00]: When I got a little older, I wasn't sure how reasonable it was to work outside, so I gave up on that.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Like 98% of boys, my next thought was this,

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_00]: planes! I want to be a pilot! How do I get to fly an F-16?

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Later, someone told me that you needed perfect eyesight to fly, so I dismissed my F-16 dreams.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_00]: In high school, I still had no clue about what I wanted to do.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_00]: The only thing I did know was that I liked science, so I took biology, chemistry, and physics classes.

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_00]: By the time I got to college, I still had no idea what I wanted to be.

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I liked writing, but the job prospects for journalism weren't good.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I knew that I'd have to take out loans to go to university,

[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_00]: and I wasn't willing to take on loads of debt for an uncertain career.

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_00]: What to do? I still liked science, so I studied biology at Northern Illinois University.

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Four years later, I graduated and still had no idea what I wanted to do,

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_00]: so I enrolled in a doctor of pharmacy program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_00]: About halfway through my first year at pharmacy school,

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I realized that working as a pharmacist would not make me happy.

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I was telling my roommate about my dilemma, and he said something like this.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Have you considered programming? If you like solving puzzles, you should give it a try.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_00]: DePaul has a programming certificate program that's only 30 weeks long,

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_00]: and you can get a good job once you complete it.

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought about this for about 30 minutes and decided to finish up my year at pharmacy school

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and then enroll in the computer program.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, for whatever reason, this didn't make me nervous at all,

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_00]: even though my family thought I was crazy.

[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Looking back, it was a bit reckless.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I was giving up a high-paying pharmacy career for an unknown,

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_00]: but it turned out to be one of the best decisions that I ever made.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I love coding.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Figuring out how to make computers implement the requirements of business people is great fun.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And looking back, perhaps the most amazing part was this.

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_00]: The kid who swore he could never find happiness working inside

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: now found happiness sitting in a cubicle for nine hours per day.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's an important lesson in here, and it's this.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: You're never really sure what will make you happy.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And now I've left my formal career, but I still write code.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_00]: My next goal is to either learn Python or Swift.

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_00]: I started this silly blog on a whim back on January 1st of 2013.

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I was having lots of stress at my job, so I googled something like,

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00]: how do I retire early?

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I discovered Mr. Money Mustache, and the following happened in the course of less than an hour.

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Number one, disbelief.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: This guy claims that he retired in his early 30s? Bullsh...

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_00]: This is fake and or this dude is trying to sell something.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, I kept reading.

[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Number two, acceptance.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Huh, this mustache guy lives on $24,000 per year.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_00]: According to the 4% rule, he only needed $600,000 to quit his job.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Anonymous people on the internet may lie, but numbers don't.

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to live on $24,000 a year, but this early retirement thing is doable.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this mustache guy isn't full of sh... after all.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And number three, onward.

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm turning violently onto early retirement avenue,

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm pushing the pedal to the metal.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to start a blog to document my journey.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I never thought anyone would read anything I had to say.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: However, people did start reading it, and writing has been even more fun than I expected.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: While the blog makes some money now, for the first three years readers were scant and it made about $100.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't care because I was doing it for the joy of writing, and it still continues to bring me happiness.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_00]: My original plan was to end the blog at 1500 days.

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I had even written my final post.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_00]: As day 1500 got closer, the idea of killing the blog was also killing me.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_00]: I was having too much fun, so I decided to press on.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And in a strange twist, something went wrong with either the blogging platform or the website's host,

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00]: and the draft of my last post disappeared.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: If there was ever a sign to continue, that was it.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But the time will come when I'll get bored of writing,

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00]: or some other project will come along that's more interesting and I'll move on.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Open book. What career?

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_00]: I think life is much more fun when the future is uncertain.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Think about it this way. Which is better?

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_00]: For the next two decades, I will work at a job for 40,000 hours and then retire.

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully, I'm still in reasonable health.

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Or, who knows? I'll go where opportunities and passions take me.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Someone asked me recently what my career was.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I had to think a bit. This is the definition of career.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_00]: An occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I almost made it 20 years in computers.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_00]: That was a long time, but maybe not long enough to call it a career.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll figure out a career when I grow up, which will most likely be never.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_00]: You just listen to the post titled,

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll figure out what I want to be when I grow up by Mr. 1500 of 1500days.com.

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be right back with my commentary.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Buy low, sell high. Buy low, sell high.

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[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Right now, high interest rates have crushed the real estate market.

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[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_00]: This is a paid advertisement.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a bit humbling to realize that you might not be very good at figuring out what you want and what would make you happy.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I have so many examples of this.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I used to think I wanted to sing in a band, and live nomadically, and do stand-up comedy, and on and on and on.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_00]: But then I did all of those things and realized that it wasn't what I wanted.

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm super happy that I tried, though, because too many people tell themselves elaborate stories about what they want to do someday,

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and they never do those things or even test those assumptions of what they think they want.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_00]: That, my friends, leads to a life of regret, and ain't nobody got time for that.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: This article reminded me of an awesome Cal Newport book called So Good They Can't Ignore You.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_00]: He encourages people not to follow their passion, not because they might be wrong about what they think their passion is,

[00:09:05] [SPEAKER_00]: but because research shows that following your passion doesn't align with what makes people most happy in their careers.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Professional happiness comes from following what you're good at and achieving a level of mastery.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_00]: You also need to have autonomy over what you work on and how.

[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Working with people you like and trust and having a meaningful impact are also key to getting satisfaction out of your career.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Your career is an incredible tool on your path to financial independence, and work comprises a large majority of our time.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's super important that we enjoy our work, so maybe we need to ask ourselves some hard questions about what we think we want.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's another edition of Optimal Finance Daily in the Books.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Have a great rest of your day, and I'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.