Are We Working Hard For A Living!
Almost everyone of us at some point in time worked for a living.
- Maybe you are right now or maybe you are in-between jobs?
- Maybe you been retrenched or
- Facing the possibility of being made redundant?
Most probably you are or were like me working either for a boss as an employee or maybe made that transition to being self-employed. This post of mine may just rock your boat!
Whatever you did for a living most probably you exchanged time for money in your working career. You gave up a certain amount of time for a reward. You did or still receiving a reward for giving your boss your time. You either get paid a hourly rate or get fixed money. Lets call that reward “wages“.
How many hours do you give up a day….
Now most of us work a 38 hour week here in Australia. Some may work 37 hours while others a 40 or 48 hour week. It all depends on who your employer is and your working contract.
Just imagine you did work a 40 hours week and you began your working life at the age of 20 years old. And you right now have no plan so maybe you be working for a long time. Many of the working population today moving forward most probably may be working up to 70 or 72 years of age.
Are you prepared for this?
Want To Keep Working For 50 Years Hoping For A Promotion?
That is around 50 years of service you would have put in either working for a boss or for yourself. That’s a very long time. In fact it’s a major part of your life tucked away indoors in a factory shed, working in a cabin on a train or plane, being a desk in a office or behind the wheel as a truck driver or as an UBER or taxi driver.
How does that idea settle with you?
Are you happy to feel trapped for next 50 years?
Before I show you how to work smarter and not as hard here is something I learned a few years ago.
Directly Proportionate Value!
What do I mean by direct proportionate value?
At the time of retirement you may look around and evaluate your life. Everything we will see around us at age 65 or 70, at time of retirement is because of the efforts we have put in for the years in service.
The better the service or bigger demand for our expertise over our working lifetime the better the reward. This will be seen in the home we live in, the travel memories we have collected over the years, how well our kids have turned out to be, etc.
How Do We Working Smarter?
Most people like to work either hard or smarter. I believe and this is just my opinion only is that if we can work harder and smarter for a short period of time say, 3 to 5 years, we may potentially turbo charge our life journey so much faster. Its like compounding interest. You start to see amazing results after the first and second year of intense activity.
It is certainly simple, all you need to do is focus and work hard for that time. But is it easy? No, certainly not – not for a single second. You will have to be determined, focus, apply yourself 100% and do it diligently. All along the while you will have failures and setbacks and you will have to make tweaks to get back on track.
Are you ok with that? If you are ..
Is it worth it?
Certainly is.
So lets look at two scenarios below…
The first one is…
The Road Well Traveled!
What if we took the road well traveled? This is staying with what you know and doing what you just don’t like but doing it all the same.
Imagine you were to work all your working life for a boss or even as a self employed person. Exchanging time for money. Not liking it so much but putting up with the politics and settling for the journey of life.
Imagine you are putting in a good 40 hours a week for those 50 years you will work at the job. Imagine saying each Friday the mantra “Thank God Its Friday“.
Now, Is this the life you want?
- A life you can predict almost what you will do for next 50 years,
- What you will be rewarded for the next 50 years?
- A life you work hard for that $20 a week pay increment every 2 years when the union fights for it’s employees to get a pay rise!
What is the sacrifice of time you will need to allow for weekly/ yearly?
So what does a year’s commitment of work looks like?
how many hours you need to sacrifice to get the good things of life you dream about…
Here is some mathematics …
Imagine you are working a 50 hour week.
In a year …
At 50 weeks a year it worked out to be 2500 hours of time you will have to put into work to earn your salary so that you can have everything you want. (that is 50 hours times 50 weeks).
PS: Even though you may just work 8 hours a day please factor in the time you start to get ready for work, traveling to work as well as after work traveling back home and getting ready for work the next day. This is almost the entire waking day for you and me.
Now lets calculate what your input is over 50 years…
Over 50 years it would be a total of 100,000 hours. (that is 50 weeks times 50 years)
That’s a total of $100,000 HOURS.
Yes! It’s done in small increments daily and you don’t feel it so much other than complaining of being exhausted. And as most people do this you feel its normal to trade time for money. I agree with you.
This is called the Rat Race of life!
People Over 65 Years Of Age!
If you are reading this and are over 65 years old please look around you right now and check out what you see.
- Is your home, the home you dreamed about when you were young and starting off in your career? or have you comprised for something less? Maybe you have. If you are young maybe its your parent’s life you see? Do you want this happening to you as you get older, closer to retirement?
- Is the car you now drive the your dream car you wanted or are you not financially able to buy a new one now since retiring?
- Do you regret not being there for your children growing up? Not having the time at home to sit and help them with their homework?
- Have you been able to saving enough over your working life in superannuation?
Dig deep into your heart and think of all those moments you would have wanted to have with your children while they were growing up years ago?
Think of those moments you sacrificed with your loved one or partner all because work called you away?
Was it all worth it? Was it worth sacrificing those precious years all because you wanted or needed to provide for your family? Do you feel you could have done better?
The Trap!
This is the trap most people will fall into and then slide into a life of acceptance and resign themselves to saying “this is my lot in life, thank God I have a roof over my head. I don’t need much“. Isn’t it sad we quit too early and not taking responsibility how our lives turn out and strive to turn things around.
Even at age 60 you can turn your life around. Its never to late.
Why? Because I have done it. And so can you.
Now what if you are just starting out in life…
Are you between 20 and 35 and just beginning life. And have big dreams and feel you can conquer the world. That’s a great feeling and I was too at your age. It’s exciting to dream and then chase those dreams. Do you have a plan to get to those dreams?
I bet maybe you are
- Dreaming of traveling places once COVID-19 is over,
- Dreaming of having a fancy house by age 30 years old,
- Hoping to have a nice car to drive and
- Planning to have a budget to dine as nice restaurants in the inner city restaurants.
I admire your dreams and I push you to keep on keeping on to get them. You can certainly achieve them.
However do have a plan to succeed?
Because most people who fail or settle for less later on in life are those who failed or failing to plan. Now this may not be the case for many as they did plan to succeed but bankruptcy or divorce may have come their way.
However, I feel maybe they could have avoided those pitfalls in life if their lives were more balanced and they had the time and money and health to devote to nurture relationships or employ brilliant minds to work for them. Still chase dream but not sacrifice time for money.
Would you agree?
So how do we get extra time while not sacrificing income.
Let’s look at leveraging Time
The Power Of Leverage!
This part of the article is very helpful to anyone who wants more for less. What I mean is working hard for a shorter period of time and then having more time eventually in life to enjoy what life has to offer. It doesn’t matter if you 20 years old or retired.
Lets move on …
Imagine you had a project to work on, a project to building a ‘bridge’ across a fast flowing river (the river of life) so that you can get across and enjoy the fruits on the other bank. If you went about it by yourself this would take you 50 years of your life to accomplish or to construct. You will be an old man or woman before you get there and not be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Now you can go about it all by yourself or with your life partner and that’s fine.
The bridge is a pathway which is less traveled by most people. And the fruits on the other bank is ‘financial freedom‘.
Financial freedom is having all three things we desire
- time freedom
- money freedom,
- best of health
Not just one or two of the above.
Most people will give up time all their life chasing money and then at retirement have no health and then give up all the money they accumulated just to get their health back. Most often its just too late.
So lets back back on track and see if we can do it differently by traveling the ‘road less traveled.
However there is a smarter way to do this.
The smarter way is leverage. Leverage your time.
So how do we leverage our time so we can get there in a fraction of the time it would take us single handedly?
Lets break this down below …
Lets say you put in just 5 hours (after work) a week on building this bridge to freedom across the river.
Next you find just 4 people are passionate to get across that river too and are willing to only put in 5 hours a week.
They soon find find 4 more people until you have an army of people working on the project with you. You don’t have to pay them nor motivate them. Because all of them have a dream of get across too. They too want a better life.
Lets say you now have 100 people working just 5 hours a week.
This over a week is 500 hours of man hours worked on your project.
Over a year that is 25,000 hours (50 weeks times 500 hours)
Now how long will it take you to get 100,000 hours of work done?
In four years you have reached the 100,000 hours it was required to get the bridge done.
In record time of 4 years you completed the task of building the BRIDGE TO FREEDOM.
You have literally saved 46 years of your life working hard at a living trying to get this bridge to freedom done in time before you get old. This is the power of leverage.
Ordinary people have no idea what leverage. Nor do they know about passive income. This is because this is not taught in schools nor colleges. We are taught to be hard working employees.
Just imagine having a life in four years where you done have to work so hard. All this because you decide to work hard now and play later.
Most people want to compromise and play now but working ‘average’ and what they don’t realize is that at some time in the future they will have to pay. Either Pay Now and Play Later or Play Now & Pay Later!
Which person are you?
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