Creating financial freedom has been my goal ever since being stuck in a 9-5 engineering job. I got a taste of what it meant to be an employee, and I immediately knew it wasn’t for me.
So after three long years, I quit.
That first “real” job lit a fire under my ass and motivated me to work hard and build a business that generated passive income. For me, passive income meant freedom from having a job or having anyone tell me what to do with my time. Passive income meant snowboarding midweek, traveling often, sleeping in when I was tired, and just enjoying life without sluggishly doing the same routine every day.
So I worked hard on my business with one goal in mind – to eliminate the need to work. And after about six years of making very little money, I finally got to the point where I was making more money than I needed for my lifestyle while only having to work a few hours per month.
As you can imagine, this gives me a lot of freedom. I’m not quite to the point of being able to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it, but I’m pretty close.
So the question is, does all of this free time make me a happier person?
Nope, not really.
Sometimes it’s great, but it comes with unwanted baggage. The problem with free time is that it magnifies an already challenging problem in the modern world, which is deciding what to do.
“free time magnifies an already challenging problem in the modern world, which is deciding what to do.”
The pain of making decisions
Being in the midst of making a tough decision is uncomfortable and often stressful. Your mind constantly churns on the topic, even while you sleep. Anyone who has decided what college to attend, what career path to choose, where to live, if they should quit their job, or what business to start has felt that pain. It can be so uncomfortable that it forces you to choose something simply to relieve the tension of deciding.
Now imagine that being your default state. Every day is an open slate and you have the responsibility to decide what to do.
Every day.
There are so many options to choose from in countless categories. There are endless great shows to watch, books to read, skills to learn, sports to try, and foods to eat. There are a million different experts telling you how to live your life, all pulling you in different directions. There are so many cool places to visit. The options are endless in the modern world.
There’s also the option to just sit on the couch and do nothing.
With no urgency, choosing among a million options is really hard, and once you finally choose something, eventually that ends, and you’re right back where you started – trying to decide what to do next.
The benefits of restricted freedom
Most of our choices are made for us (or at least heavily influenced) by our circumstances. We want to live to see tomorrow, so we eat, drink, breathe, and sleep. We need money, so we get jobs. We don’t want to get fired, so we show up and attend meetings. As kids, we don’t want to be grounded, so we go to school and do our homework.
As a result, most of our time is taken up by bodily maintenance and what others have deemed most important, so there is less deciding, and more acting.
As restricting as it may be, the beauty of being in this situation is that purpose and meaning are given to you. The definition of success is created for you and you don’t have to go through the tedious and opaque process of setting your own goals or deciding what is important. You just show up, do what you’re told, and hopefully earn a gold star. That gold star, however meaningless it may be, still brings you a sense of progress and the positive emotions that go along with it, even if you lacked the freedom to decide to do it in the first place.
With certain restrictions on your time, you get the benefit of having fewer decisions to make and a sense of purpose and meaning handed to you.
You also get a heavy dose of accountability.
The accountability that you get from your bosses, teachers, and parents pushes you to overcome challenges and accomplish big things you couldn’t otherwise do alone. It also helps you avoid bad decisions that lead to misery and peril.
There’s a great saying that goes like this “Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” Accountability is often the primary force pushing you to make those hard choices.
So while authority figures restrict your freedom, they are also providing you with three big benefits:
- They give you clarity (clear goals, values, and a sense of purpose).
- They save you from having to make too many decisions (which are stressful and mentally draining).
- They provide accountability to make “hard” decisions (which often improve your life over the long run).
The downside of freedom
When you have the freedom to decide what to do and when, you lose the benefits that come from constraints. By default, more freedom means less clarity, more decisions, and no accountability.
That is a recipe for being ineffective and unhappy.
Steve Jobs is famous for wearing the same outfit every day (a black turtleneck and blue jeans). He didn’t do this because he thought it was the best outfit in the world, he did it to save decisions.
That’s because decisions take mental effort, attention, and willpower – all three of which come in limited supply.
Even though small decisions only takes a few seconds, those decisions add up over time, leaving you with less energy and willpower to make the “hard” decisions in more impactful situations. Someone like Steve Jobs can’t afford that wasted energy.
Now I’m not saying everyone should trade style and novelty for tiny boosts in effectiveness, but this illustrates the point I want to make – decisions are draining. Too many of them makes you less effective. And not just less effective at working, but less effective at everything, whether it’s being present with your family, cooking dinner, enjoying a movie, or planning your next adventure.
When your mind is constantly wrapped up in deciding what to do next, it’s very difficult to be present and enjoy the moment.
And this ends up becoming a vicious cycle with more decisions leading to even more decisions.
Pretty soon your brain is wired to be in constant “decision mode” where your day turns into a stream of rumination and analysis, void of anything that resembles peace.
That’s not very helpful when trying to accomplish something, and it rarely leads to happiness or enjoyment. Ruminating is a hallmark trait of someone suffering from depression.
Again, the more freedom you have, the more decisions you have to make. While having the ability to choose is fun, having to make decisions isn’t.
Newfound freedom
Of course when you first gain some free time you just do whatever fun things you’ve been putting off while being constrained. Maybe you go to the beach, go on a hike, take a trip to Europe, or go visit family you haven’t seen in decades.
Your recent level of restriction has made you very clear on how you will use your newfound free time.
But after you’ve done all of those things (and many of them multiple times), they will start to lose their appeal. The novelty wears off and a lack of meaning starts to set in.
As time grows more abundant, it loses meaning.
Suddenly you start missing the good old days when you were starting your business and being productive. You miss the motivation and gusto you once had to tackle the day and push through challenges. You miss that feeling of being engaged.
If you get to that point, you may then decide to start a new business or project. Of course, you have to decide what to do which isn’t easy.
But this time you’re facing a new challenge: lack of accountability. Since you don’t need the money, you can do whatever you want. Now there are infinite options to choose from, so you end up going down rabbit holes trying to find your passion, purpose, or calling in a desperate attempt to whittle down the countless options and create a more approachable problem.
But finding your passion or purpose is often a fruitless endeavor. It’s rarely obvious and can take years, if it happens at all.
And it gets worse.
Once you finally decide what to do, you will almost immediately run into a challenge of some kind. Maybe that is self-doubt. Maybe it’s boredom. Maybe it’s just getting distracted.
Either way, you run into a challenge which has you thinking…”Do I really want to do this? Maybe there is something faster, easier, or more fun? Is this really going to improve my life?”
Since you have your freedom and don’t have to do anything, you have the choice to give up at any time. So even once you’ve made a decision, you can always back out with almost no negative repercussions.
The option to give up seems like a good thing, but in reality it keeps you sustained in a never-ending decision. Should you keep going, give up, or doing something else?
Trading one master for another
When you gain more freedom you are trading one master for another.
Your new master is the ever present need to decide how to use your time or resources. The only difference between this master and your past bosses, parents, and obligations is that he never takes a break. He’s always with you in the back of your mind, tormenting you and tempting you each time you meet a new challenge.
Essentially your freedom ends up imprisoning you in a constant marathon of decision making or apathy. So much so that you don’t really feel free.
The funny part is that the people who end up achieving this level of freedom tend to be the type of people who are least likely to enjoy it. That’s because if you are the type of person who is willing to work hard enough and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve that freedom (which isn’t easy), it’s because there is some level of dissatisfaction about your life that has motivating you to work hard enough to gain your freedom. That dissatisfaction is part of who you are, engrained in you by your upbringing and DNA. Gaining your freedom, achieving your goals, and making piles of cash will never make that dissatisfaction go away. The dissatisfaction that exists at your core will keep pestering you to produce, fix, and improve. But with freedom, now you have so many more options to choose from, making it more difficult to get results.
That’s why I choose option “C”
It may seem like I despise my freedom, or that I think people are better off just getting a job. Having someone else control your time does simplify a lot after all.
And sure, if every single boss, teacher, or parent was effective and genuinely had our best interests in mind, then I think most people would be better off with a job. I might even go get one.
However, that’s not the case. If you want to live your best life, leaving your fate up to other people has poor odds for paying off. Everyone is biased and operating on self-interest.
That’s why I choose the third option, which I call Enlightened Restriction. Enlightened Restriction is what you get when you have the freedom to decide what to do, and you use that freedom to carefully inject certain constraints into your life.
Instead of just floating around in a constant state of decision making, you commit to certain goals or actions for a defined period of time. But you don’t just make empty promises about following through. You commit in a way where backing out is painful, or where quitting means incurring a meaningful loss that you’d work hard to avoid. That commitment is what brings clarity, meaning, and takes you out of decision mode for long enough to be present and engaged.
How I learned to enjoy my freedom
Here’s what I do to maintain effectiveness and actually enjoy my life.
Every three months, I sit down and go through a system (which is a series of questions and exercises) that I developed which helps me do three main things:
- Set a clear goal that is compelling to me.
- Create a strategy for achieving that goal with defined actions I’m going to take.
- Put some solid accountability in place to make sure I follow through and actually do it.
Essentially I spend the time to intelligently decide how to constrain my environment and behavior in a way that improves my life.
I call that system The WELTH Method.
The decisions I make while going through The WELTH Method end up saving me thousands of decisions over the coming months (which you hopefully now realize is a very good thing).
It allows me to limit my freedom enough to enjoy it. The three month time period is key here because it’s enough time to make progress, but not so long that I feel boxed in or trapped.
The WELTH Method isn’t perfect and I do still get caught up in the occasional cycle of indecision, but I’ve found it to be essential for my well being.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Most people want more freedom because they have an idealistic view of what it means. But freedom is power, and with power comes responsibility. Responsibility can be a burden.
The key to relieving that burden is to limit freedom by applying constraints to yourself and your environment.
Either you inject restriction strategically or the universe will eventually take your freedom from you. Maybe it will take your health. Maybe it will take your wealth. Maybe it will take your sanity.
So by all means, seek more freedom. Just give it up as soon as you get it to a carefully selected form of restriction.
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