Tag: Freelancing

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Financial independence in your 40s

Today’s Times has a piece on the so-called Fire (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement that, having taken off in North American is growing in the UK, too.

Here’s the magic formula:

The basic mathematics of Fire are that you need a net worth of 25 times your annual spending, invested sensibly in the stock market in low-cost tracker funds or in buy-to-let property.

Financial independence, whether you  choose to continue working or not, must represent true sovereignty. It’s therefore a worthy goal for the sovereign professional.
“If you can save 50 per cent of your take-home pay, it will take 19 years to go from broke to never needing to work again. If you can save 75 per cent, it will take seven to eight years.”
The basic requirements are a long-term focus and an ability for deferred gratification.
It reminds me of a great book, Your Money or Your Life, by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, which is well-worth a read.
Photo by Sonja Guina on Unsplash
Work

Passive income streams for sovereign professionals – Forbes.com

Here’s a useful post from Abdullahi Muhammed on Forbes.com: 4 Passive Income Streams Freelancers Should Create To Secure Their Futures.

One of the ongoing challenges that sovereign professionals face is the direct relationship between time and money: if you work, you earn; if you don’t work, you don’t earn.

It manifests itself in other ways, too. When you’re busy you can quickly hit an earnings ceiling: there are no more hours to work and you feel like you’re leaving money on the table.

A useful goal, therefore, is to create passive income streams: ways to generate revenue even  when you’re on the beach. An obvious example is the successful novelist or recording artist who earns royalties from a popular back-catalogue.

Abdullahi offers four routes to passive income, here.

 

Photo by Salvador Martin Yeste on Unsplash

Freelancing

Memories matter more than money – the freelancer’s challenge

Tom Albrighton, on ABC Copywriting, reflects on the freelancer’s dilemma:

While freelance work will come again (touch wood), each precious summer will never come again. We may only have a handful of whole-family summers left, and to wish them away is ridiculous. Memories matter more than money.

All too true. Read Tom’s full piece, here.

 

Photo by Adrien Tutin on Unsplash

Work

Focus! How to get things done – @Chris_Bailey

Anyone who prescribes meditation, coffee and wine deserves attention.

Yesterday’s Times has an interview with Chris Bailey on his new book, Hyperfocus: How to Work Less and Achieve More.

Our inability to focus, because of our digital aids to productivity, is the bane of our times.

In a fascinating article, Bailey prescribes:

  • Set yourself no more than three daily tasks
  • Do a phone swap
  • Set an hourly awareness alarm
  • Switch environments when you need to
  • Ditch brain training apps for meditation
  • Buy a cheap alarm clock
  • Save your first coffee for work
  • Play a song on repeat
  • Take a mindful shower
  • Have a glass of wine

It’s definitely worth a read and some consideration. Over a glass of wine.

The interview is here.

The man, via TED, is here.

The book is here.

Work

More open plan

Just adding to my earlier post on open plan. Here’s Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership, via Execupundit, with a wealth of articles on the subject.

His own summary:

People seem to want a one-size-fits-all answer to the question about what makes the best workspace. I don’t think there is one. I think the answer depends on the people involved, the work to be done, and the size of the team.

Read the full breadth of perspective, here.

 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Work

The ins and outs of open plan

The debate over open plan office layouts rages on.

For many organisations, the advantages of real-estate savings, increased collaboration and organisational flexibility seem overwhelmingly to the good.

To this, today’s Times adds research from the University of Arizona that suggests open plan is good for the participants’ health as a result of higher levels of activity and lower levels of stress.

On the other side of the argument, the Economist’s Bartleby column reported some possibly counter-intuitive findings: Open offices can lead to closed minds. A report published by the Royal Society – The impact of the “open” workspace on human collaboration – found that face to face interactions decreased by around 70% once open plan was introduced, as:

“transitions to open office architecture do not necessarily promote open interaction. Consistent with the fundamental human desire for privacy and prior evidence
that privacy may increase productivity, when office architecture makes everyone more observable or ‘transparent’, it can dampen F2F interaction, as employees find other strategies to preserve their privacy; for example, by choosing a different channel through which to communicate. Rather than have an F2F interaction in front of a large audience of peers, an employee might look around, see that a particular person is at his or her desk, and send an email.

 

Photo by Studio Republic on Unsplash

 

Echoes through time

Echoes through time: whoever offers to another a bargain

Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Too often, focus is on the [wicked] “self-love” rather than on the proper context.

 

Image: Shutterstock