Early Retirement Extreme Review – Day Four

More personal thoughts will be in bold below in the outline. For those that want to listen to The Brothers on Books Podcast discussion with Jacob Lund Fisker I’m attaching the link directly below:

BOBP 17: Early Retirement Extreme

Chapter 4: The Renaissance Ideal

  • “If you want to change your life don’t be tempted to outsource your life or your operations”
    • This is interesting advice as often times one hears people say that one should outsource everything that isn’t worth their time
    • Trying to get at if you learn to do more things yourself you’ll be more resilient and robust
  • “Curious that experts recommend that investments be broadly diversified, while at the same time recommending that job skills should ne highly concentrated.”
    • Think of the very specialized person that makes a salary from one function but then needs to pay for every home repair, every car repair, and becomes so dependent on their job that they think they need to keep doing what they’ve been doing, otherwise they won’t be able to survive.
    • A wide assortment of skills can substitute for a lot of otherwise required income
      • I’m thinking people/companies that are more concentrated on top line growth instead of profit, or the money that is actually left over after expenses. If you are varied in your skills maybe your bottom line, or money leftover, may actually be higher than if you had a much higher main salary but had to outsource all other aspects of your life.
  • 7 Generic Groups
    1. Physiological
      1. Too many forget that they live in their body first and their home second
      2. It’s imperative to put a focus on health and maintaining your body for the long term. You only get one body. Be nice to your body.
    2. Intellectual
      1. Critical thinking doesn’t come naturally
      2. Learn independently
      3. How should one go progress towards getting critical thinking skills? It would seem to reason that one has to put themselves into complex situations and hear/read many points of view. Also would result in the thought that acquiring these skills must be a very active process, not passive.
    3. Economic
      1. Understand difference between price and value
        1. Value is psychological, price is determined by market
        2. I can’t help but think about some of these stocks that have huge market caps but aren’t profitable businesses (at least yet),
    4. Emotional
      1. Necessary to align actions and goals with personal values
      2. Be empathetic
      3. Make connections
    5. Social
      1. We’ve grown into a society with no social capital, only financial capital
      2. Get to know people outside of your profession/comfort zone
      3. Learn how to sell/barter/swap
    6. Technical
      1. Often independence is thought to come after income goes up but can be achieved by acquiring skills
      2. Learn how to select tools for certain jobs
      3. Learn a common trade to be able to barter your skills for other things. For me I’ve been thinking lately that I’ve been getting good at editing sound for our podcast, or at least decent. I can kind of clean pools. I can tile decently. What else?
    7. Ecological
      1. Understand Liebig’s Law of the Min
      2. Always consider the system and the parts

Education

  • Education widens the focus while training narrows it
  • People remember most of what they do, some of what they say, but little of what they see or hear

Leave a Reply