I think that the definition of “lifestyle design” differs greatly from person to person and from blogger to blogger. Some of us are the 4-Hour Work Week type and want work to have the most minimal influence on our life as possible. Others of us are freelancers or more of the hands-on working type and want to be in charge of our own situation, even if that means working the same amount as with a “real” job.
There’s no right or wrong way to go about designing your life. That’s one of the most beautiful parts of this thing we are all pursuing.
I thought I would write a post to clarify what lifestyle design means to me.
First, designing my ideal lifestyle means less work, not more. Actually, a lot less work. If I wanted to work the same hours that I do with my regular job, I might as well just stick with that one. At least it would be a guaranteed pay check and come with health benefits and things of that nature. Some people are cool with simply transferring their workload from a real job to themselves. I’m not.
I’m going to come out and say that I want to live an extremely laid back lifestyle. I enjoy doing nothing all day (not every day, but quite often). With that being said, there is a lot I’d like to experience as well. Just check out my to-do list. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I want work to be a very small part of my life.
How?
If there is one word to describe my view of lifestyle design I think it would be automation. How can I automate my income to the point where I spend under 10 hours per week working? I’ve created one business (and have been slacking on promoting it badly due to managing too many projects at once) that I am 100% sure could create a full-time income for me while working 5 hours per week or less. Will that ever happen? No idea.
Along with automation comes outsourcing. I know this is a touchy subject with some of you guys/gals, but I don’t have a problem with hiring a virtual worker who lives in another country. I view it as optional work. Most of the people who I have worked with so far and will work with in the future are freelancers. They are in total control of the work they take on. All they have to do is say no if they feel it isn’t the right situation for them.
And as for the biggest question since Tim Ferriss decided to excite us all with his legendary book: Is a 4-hour work week a realistic thing?
I’m going to say yes. Some of you are probably kind of pissed I just wrote that, but let me explain.
Probably the most popular and enticing way to make money online right now is by blogging. Everyone and their mother wants to be a professional blogger. It is not possible to work a 4-hour work week and be a professional blogger. Blogging is a hell of a lot of work. I don’t ever want to be a professional blogger. I do this because I enjoy it and I like connecting with like-minded people. It’s not work to me and I never want it to be. To those of you striving to be make a living blogging, best of luck! It’s completely possible, but I’m far too lazy.
With that being said, there are many online business models that can make this seemingly foolish work week length a reality. Keep in mind that I’m not trying to preach at you and that I still work at my crappy day job.
Affiliate marketing can be very low maintenance if you set up your marketing efforts in the right way. As of today there are about 6 months until the deadline I have set myself to leave my job. I want most of my income to come from affiliate marketing, mainly because it is so easy to manage.
I’ve succeeded in this type of business before, and the best part about it is that it is very scalable. If you can make $100/month, you can push that up to $1,000/month with a little work. There was a time when I was making $300/month doing affiliate marketing, and that was without hiring help and barely working at all due to the busy schedule that comes with being a college student-athlete.
Scalability and easy to outsource is what I’m looking for, and that is presented in affiliate marketing through niche websites.
So yes, I think that a real life 4-hour work week is possible. That work week will need to include the use of automated processes, and that is only possible with the help of virtual assistants.
One more thing I want to address is that you do not need a “passion” to design your dream lifestyle. I’ve been struggling with finding my passion for a couple years now. Nothing has really formulated that I can actually take and make an income from. It bothered me for a while, but eventually I just said forget it. I don’t want to read about anyone else whining about not being able to make an online business because they don’t have passion. Go to Clickbank.com, find a product that looks decent, buy it, review it, make a website full of content about that niche (just do a little research), and promote it either on your own, or hire people to do it for you.
Ok…
I want to go back to something I wrote at the very beginning of this post. There is no right or wrong way to design your ideal lifestyle. If the blogging and more labor-intensive online business is the route for you that’s great! But if you are lazy (I’ll admit it for the sake of transparency) like me, know that there is hope.
I would love to hear what your definition of lifestyle design is.
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Nate – your take is something that I have thought about myself. Should I take on passion projects (Label 2.0 and the Under 30 Rock Star Stuff) or jump head first into a cash cow like affiliate marketing. I know a lot of friends making a killing in the CPA world right now, but I am not sure if I care enough about setting up review pages, building crap content, buying traffic, testing, testing, testing, changing bids, and all that for something that may produce some income.
I am not saying that others shouldn’t. I’d love it to be something I can hire out for in the near future.
What I do think is that doing something just for the cash gets old quick. I know – I was into real estate during the boom and my bank account looked super sick. I stayed home all day, went out all night and made a few calls to my realtor to keep the checks coming.
3 months in it was awful. I think even if you automate your income to the level you want with Clickbank or whatever, you will know have the freedom to do stuff you love and the money from that will follow.
Anyway, good post dude and looking forward to seeing your development.
Great post. Among programmers we use to say that the greatest programmers are those who automate everything because they are lazy, but in reality they are intelligent and don’t want to keep repeating the usual stuff. Stumbled!
Great post Nate, I appreciate your honesty. I’ve always liked the idea of not working, and have always enjoyed chilling out and having that time. Recently with training to be a coach and starting my blog, I think I have found my expression and what I want to do, so I think I would do those things regardless of how much money I have. I’m interested in learning how to make money on line but not sure if I honestly have the patience. I’m still thinking about it, as a way to free up my time to do my other work. Anyway, somw good food for thought here, you are right, it is different for everyone. Thanks for your openess Nate and starting an interesting discussion.
Jen
It seems to me that if your are to design any life you want you need ot learn how to do different aspects one by one and training yourself to do it on command.
Also we function by running the “programs” we have learnt before. So if you learnt bad habit’s you will continue then until you change the program.
Mac
To me lifestyle design is taking what I’ve learned and systematically implementing those lessons so that I can do what I want to do with my life, whatever the happens to be at any particular moment.
So recently designing my life has included setting up my studio so that I can run it from overseas with less direct effort, still make enough money to keep my bank accounts steady and not have to worry about money while I gallivant around the world, and to put myself in situations that make me more knowledgeable, capable and interesting long term.
Good stuff Nate. Just what I needed to hear really and you’ll see why in my next post, actually when I put it up I’ll ping it to you because I would be particularly interested in your feedback. I’m still struggling with this passion stuff too, I guess we just have to keep exploring but with as little pressure as possible, I think even if you are extremely passionate about something, if you do to much you risk burnout, you can also burnout searching for it.
Passion is a big issue that I have talked written about as well. The fact is that most people will not be able to find a single “passion” that they will be excited about for the rest of their lives. Professional athletes, musicians, authors, etc. have committed to one single focus in their lives and that is why they excel.
The rest of us probably only have “interests.” We are interested in many things so we should pursue many things. Author Ian Sanders calls that Juggling. (I did a recent review of his book on my site.)
Those interests might last for 6 months, or 6 years. The key thing is that you are free to change.
All that jumping around means that you will never be world class. Sometimes it is enough to enjoy what you are doing now. I am not a rock star but I enjoy playing guitar.
Passive income is a difficult issue. I have income from investment and dividends but even that keeps me checking stock prices, reading economic news and fretting about exchange rates. It takes time.
In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing that is truly passive unless you are mega rich and put all your money into treasury bills or something, but even that would have you dealing with accountants and tax people.
Outsourcing is another issue. I have been outsourcing for about 5 years and have hired dozens of people. I find it highly unlikely that anyone will be able to automate all that work so that it is entirely passive. It takes work to manage outsourced employees. The cheaper they are, the more quality checking is required. Also, if it really is that easy to make money online, your outsourced workers will start stealing your ideas.
In all the people I have interviewed and studied, I can say unequivocally that there is a direct correlation between work and profits. There are many people making $500 to $1000 per month on part-time hours. However, if you want a long term sustainable income, it is going to take a more substantial effort.
I haven’t heard of anyone proving me wrong. If you are the first, I would love to interview you! :-)
Hey Nate!
Thanks for sharing your view on lifestyle design. I agree that the eventual goal is less work and more income. I don’t agree on the fact that you can do this so easily right from the start.
Personally I think when starting for yourself, initially the work will be MORE and the money less. However, if you keep at it, work hard and don’t give up, your hard work will pay off. You will be able to automate things and you will have more time and more income.
Don’t be scared to work hard initially :) Nothing happens by itself, except for the sun rising :)
Have a great day
Diggy
Thanks for all the great comments everyone :-)
@ Greg – Thanks for such a great comment. You are fortunate to have a passion that you can follow, and though I’ve never used any of your products I’ve heard absolutely nothing but the best about them. About just doing something for the cash getting old – you are right. That’s why I stopped doing affiliate marketing before. But then I had no concept of using systems and outsourcing, now I do. Thanks again!
@ Oscar – I like your use of the word intelligent as opposed to lazy. I’m going to take that as a compliment :-)
@ Jen – Glad you appreciate the honesty! I have a hard time not being 100% honest. It’s great to hear that you have found something that really makes you happy, keep going with it. Thanks.
@ Mac – Thanks for the comment :-)
@ Colin – Thanks for sharing your view of lifestyle design. Honestly, I think what you have done over the last few months is an amazing definition of lifestyle design.
@ Dan – Looking forward to your post man! And you are absolutely right about burning out, in both cases. I guess you could say I’ve burned out looking for my passion so I’m looking for other things now. Thanks so much for sharing!
@ John – I agree with your views on passion very strongly. I’ve enjoyed your writing on the subject in the past. As far as passive income, I had the same view up until fairly recently. I didn’t really believe all the outsourcing hype. But then I got a copy of Source Control by David Walsh and the concepts of systems and how to organize your efforts changed everything. Thanks for the comment! Oh wait! And I will put down an interview at Jet Set Citizen on my list of goals :-)
@ Diggy – I think I might have given the wrong impression in the post, I’m cool with putting in some initial hard work. That’s what I’m doing right now, writing a free report, getting my website design customized, working on some good initial content. I just want to get this thing off the ground, and then integrate the systems I’m creating to hopefully eliminate 90% of my workload. Thanks for the comment Diggy :-)
Lifestyle design is kind of a fuzzy concept since it means different things to different people. Thanks for sharing what it means to you.
For me it is just about working less and smarter so that I can do other things I enjoy. I don’t want to quit working completely since I enjoy work (maybe I’m weird?).
Also, on the passion thing – you are right. For you. For some people they have to have the passion or else the work to create their desired lifestyle will seem unbearable and they won’t do it. But everyone does not need to find their deepest passion to find success. And even when you do find a passion, that can change. Nothing lasts forever.
@ Mary – Thanks for such a great comment. And you are not weird for enjoying work! A lot of people do. Your view of passion is exactly how I view it. It won’t last forever, and it is not completely necessary to see success and be happy.
To me its all about choice. Having the choice to decide what you wish to do
@ Adventures – You are absolutely right, that is what it’s all about.
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