#52: 3 Ways to Balance Money and Meaning

#MoneyMeaningBalance #WorkTakesTime #ResilientKids #Interactions

Jan 05, 2024

👋 Welcome to this week's Pursuit. My name is Amir, and each week I go over 10 hours of content in pursuit of living a meaningful, fulfilling and balanced life. I'm grateful to share my findings with you and hope I can have a tiny impact on your life. Subscribe now if you haven't already!

This week’s discovery:

⚖️ 3 Ways to Balance Money and Meaning
⌛ Real Work Takes Time
🧗🏼‍♂️ Bringing Up Resilient Kids
🫂 The Power of Every Interaction
🗒️ A Quote I'm Pondering On
🎵 Music I'm Listening To

⚖️ 3 Ways to Balance Money and Meaning

“Deferred Life Plan” is the choice to do something lucrative now, so you can make enough money to eventually do what you really want. When the deferred life plan works, it tends to be because: You place high-probability bets on income; you live frugally relative to your income; you enjoy your day-to-day work enough that you don’t mind doing it for a decade or more. The most common pitfall on the deferred life plan is lifestyle creep. When you make more money, you acquire more expensive tastes, and your costs rise to meet your new level of income. This is why one third of Americans making $250,000 per year still live paycheck to paycheck.
Whereas the deferred life plan approaches money and meaning sequentially, the bivocational path approaches them in parallel. It is the choice to make income in a way that leaves time to pursue meaning outside of work in the form of art, hobbies, or side projects. When the bivocational path goes well, it is usually because: you can fully clock out of work at the end of the day; your income stream is consistent; you’re willing to dive fully into your art when opportunity arises. The most common pitfall I see on the bivocational path is when work consumes so much of your time and attention that you don’t have the energy to pursue art in your spare time.
Integration is about finding a way to monetize what you enjoy doing. It's epitomized by the maxim, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." Whereas the other two approaches split money and meaning into different times and projects, integration is about holding that tension more directly and trying to balance money and meaning in the same work.
If you’re on the deferred life plan, make high-probability bets on income. If you’re bivocational, make sure you actually carve out time to spend on your art. And if you choose to integrate, try not to lose touch with what matters to you in the face of monetary rewards.

📖 Read - 10min

⌛ Real Work Takes Time

Effort is hard to measure. It’s become obvious to me that real, meaningful, effort takes a really long time to bear fruit. This can refer to all sorts of work: e.g., internal: confidence-building, developing taste, skill-based: coding, writing, researching. When you’re in the thick haze of hacking away at a goal with no clear reward, incremental improvement is extremely opaque and tedious. Nothing is wasted: all the failures, the recklessness, the rituals, the persistence. Each endeavor is meaningful in its own way. The small things accumulate. An invisible thread runs through everything. My life is not a moving memory, it is being written at this very moment. I’m just finding the right language, the right container, for its essence. I hope it keeps transforming, evolving in mysterious ways. Sometimes you can’t plan for the long term future, all you can do is make the best decision right in front of you. Your choices can haunt you or they can liberate you. I’ve always wanted to live like the latter.

📖 Read - 4min

🧗🏼‍♂️ Bringing Up Resilient Kids

Allowing kids to fail and emphasizing effort over innate ability are key strategies for building resilience in children. By giving kids the opportunity to navigate challenges themselves, parents show faith in their abilities and communicate that it's okay to make mistakes. Emphasizing effort rather than innate skill or ability helps children view challenges as opportunities for growth and learning (read more). However, it's important to note that the emphasis on effort over innate ability might lead children to believe they're solely responsible for their success or failure, which can result in anxiety and burnout (read more). Additionally, focusing too much on achievement and not enough on personal fulfillment or intrinsic values can lead to children equating their self-worth with their achievements (read more).

💭🔔 New Format: My goal this year is to present more comprehensive arguments and provide a holistic perspective on a chosen topic. When you click on the "read more" links, you will be directed to the specific part of the piece that I read and summarized. If you wish to delve deeper, you can find the original source under the "URL" field. Please leave a comment and let me know if you like this new format.

🫂 The Power of Every Interaction

Every interaction you have with someone is a moment of creation. It's a chance for both of you to shape each other and the world around you. We often underestimate the impact of these interactions, treating them as isolated incidents where everyone is responsible only for themselves. But the truth is, every interaction is an opportunity to glimpse into a whole other world and embrace the complexity of others. We tend to forget that people have their own lives and perspectives, and by recognizing this, we can fully appreciate the depth they bring to every interaction. By taking responsibility for our interactions and understanding that they also shape us, we can change the way we engage with people and experience life in a more meaningful way (read more). Knowledge creation is the ultimate form of power, and as humans, through our interactions, we have the power to create knowledge and shape the world around us (read more).