What You Think About When You’re Independent

There are two types of people at the poker table, generally. First there are the sharks. They stay quiet and occasionally make comments about the game that intimidate amateur players by revealing just how much they’re thinking about. The second group are normal people who are there to have a good time.

Through hours of listening to the second group, I’ve noticed how different the things are that “normal” people think about, and people like me think about. I’ll loosely define “normal” people as people whose lives are dominated by things they HAVE to do, vs. people whose lives are dominated by things they WANT to do.

I thought it might be interesting for people who haven’t made the switch to independence to hear what sorts of things rattle around our minds.

Money is Time

We tend to not think of sums of money as “a boat” or “a new stereo”, but rather we think about it as time. A month of time, for me, is around two or three thousand dollars. I can live well off that.

So if I have $50k saved up, maybe I count that as 20 months. I don’t think about it like that because I’m going to take a 20 month vacation, but rather to evaluate risk. If I know I can float myself for 20 months, that’s a long runway for me to ponder and come up with an ambitious project. If I have $5k saved up,  it’s time to hustle.

We Don’t Like Weekends

Our week is actually reversed, with weekdays being better than weekends. On weekends everything is busy and expensive. During the week it’s cheap and empty. A friend and I just went to ski in Tahoe for a couple days this week and never waited in a lift line. Our hotel was $45 a night. When we go to Tahoe for a full week, we actually use weekends to stay at home and work because the mountain is too crowded.

We can’t really figure out how you stand your job

I might be more of a victim of this one than most people, but as I interact with people with normal jobs all day, I can’t stop wondering how they take it. This sense of wonder is on par with wondering how Cirque du Soleil acrobats do their tricks: I see it happen so I know it’s real, but I also can’t even for a second empathize and imagine doing it.

On a similar note, friends’ jobs are really annoying because they get in the way of them joining our adventures.

We Write a Lot

I’ve noticed that my independent friends, like myself, tend to write a lot, whether it’s in a personal journal or on a blog. I don’t know for sure why this is, but my best guess is that it’s because our lives revolve around  turning thoughts into action. When I’m in a tough spot I instinctively just start writing in a text file to sort things out, confident that by the end I’ll come up with a plan that will be executed.

Location is Flexible

Today I’m headed to Las Vegas. Three friends from San Francisco are coming. I sent a couple texts to two other friends (developer for Bungie and a professional poker player) to see if they wanted to join, and without much discussion they agreed.

When you know that your friends have control of their own time, you invite them to stuff in random places. This sounds expensive, but it’s actually pretty cheap because we can take flights on the cheapest day and at the cheapest time.

Status isn’t Derived from Money

When you have a job that monopolizes both your time and creative output, material items are the obvious sources of status. Amongst independent people, this is very muted. Admiration for a material object, if it exists at all, is likely to be based around the FINDING of the item, not the purchase of it.

Instead, we derive status from projects. I try to meet people who are working on interesting things, and/or have done so in the past. Whether or not they have money or luxurious items is essentially irrelevant.

What’s the point?

What’s the point of sharing all this? It’s not to convince you that it’s how you should be thinking, or even that this lifestyle is better for you. I’m always curious to know about how other people think and what their lives are like, so I thought I’d share a bit about my friends and I to help you understand what bounces around our brains.

I’m sure I’ve left out tons of things. I’d love to hear you observations as well.

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Really looking forward to Vegas this weekend, and then Austin immediately after. SXSW, staying with awesome friends, borrowing my brother’s motorcycle, and backstage passes at a certain secret show!

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(Joel Spolsky suggested a multiple use code so you don’t have to keep trying them. Definitely a great idea, but I haven’t had a chance to implement it yet.)


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