Investing in Action over Object

I’m lucky to be 25, in a secure job and able to shop for a condo or house at discount prices in our current economy. In fact, I’ve seen close to twenty places over the last 10 weeks or so and a couple of have impressed me enough to reach for the check book. For better or worse however, those places had other offers and apart from one low-ball back-up offer I made, I wasn’t willing to get into a bidding war. The plan from the get go was either buy under what I could afford, or just at my comfort zone and rent a room or two so my lifestyle of never cooking* and fancy eating needn’t be limited.

Shopping around, the idea if settling down always made me nervous (I know, a big shocker if you know me). I chalked this up to cold feet for a while. “Of course I’m nervous, it’s a big commitment, a big step in life. One of the big three: house, wife, kids” etc. But in this personal era of deconstruction and self-analyzing, I’m led to question all the standards and anytime I’m thinking about doing something that I potentially don’t want to do, old culture and tradition is getting the Jake Bales microscope treatment.

Deconstructing Empoyment

About six weeks ago I came across the Authors@Google presentation featuring Tim Ferriss and Marci Alboher, where they discussed their lives and respective books The Four Hour Work Week and One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success, and promptly devoured Ferriss’s book. It focuses on two major points: Lifestyle Design (building a life with intent rather than deferring happiness to retirement) and strategies to build a business that supports you, but doesn’t take 60 hours a week to run. Cutting out the advice he gives that, rather than making everyone happy, is instead more a path to become like him, and achieve those things that he finds satisfaction in, there are still buckets of great perspective, inspiration and strategy.

I took a few weeks to experiment with the 80/20 Principle (or the “Pareto Principle“) at the core of Ferriss’s business and personal success/satisfaction.

“About Topthot” Updated

Tossed a quick update to the about section. Obviously this will change as the focus of the blog becomes clearer.