4 ms·

Seven years ago I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, nor a mortgage. Now I have all of that. Decisions are often made for me as I prioritize meeting the demand

Seven years ago I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, nor a mortgage. Now I have all of that. Decisions are often made for me as I prioritize meeting the demands of higher minimum income and time spent with family and kids. For better or for worse, growing older and gaining extra responsibilities acts as a forcing function. You need to prioritize more ruthlessly. Choosing what to spend time is harder! The opportunity cost increases as you have less time available to spend on yourself. Choosing, therefore, becomes a bigger gamble. If you’re relatively free in time, you should come up with a framework on making decisions on what to work with. It will depend on your goals - making a business, learning an instrument, learning skills to further your career - whatever. Make a goal and act in ways that furthers your goal.

josephferano 4y ago
Very relatable what you wrote. I became a digital nomad in my mid 30s. It was great at first, but then it got to the point where I engineered too much freedom in my life. The result was indeed paralyzing. Suffered some of the worst indecision in my life, in my mid 30s! During covid times, I met my wife, we had a son together and now we're a digital nomad family. Having a family removed a whole range of choices that let me narrow into the obvious and not have to stress out about what to focus on. In a way it's been more liberating, to take on these constraints and responsibility. I know it sounds counterintuitive but I think Jocko got it right with "Discipline Equals Freedom".
- sjducb 4y ago
  In 3 months I'm going to take my family (wife and 3 year old) on a 6 month trip. My goal is to become a digital nomad family with "bases" where we have family and friends. The rough plan is Bali, Japan, Sri Lanka, Kerala(India). Do you have any advice or tips? My biggest question is how do you meet other digital nomad families? I've done a lot of solo travel, and on the way I'd occasionally meet a traveling family, but they were pretty rare.
  - kirso 4y ago
    Nomadlist is one of the places, also digitalnomad subreddit?
  - josephferano 4y ago
    I've found it to be rare in my experience as well. It seems our demographic tends to not believe in having children, ranging from the apathetic hedonist to strong antinatalist beliefs. Since I have a 9-month-old, I haven't had the need to go out and find nomad families as much. Having bases helps with this since you can just meet local families and hang out with them while you're in town. Hopefully we can find a solution to this, maybe we need a nomadfamilylist.com to arrange playdates! Kerala sounds interesting, One place we went to recently was Bangalore and once we got used to the traffic, we enjoyed it. I've heard good things about Goa as well from a local tech entrepreneur friend. I'm curious as to what it's like to fly with a 3-year-old. We've had to keep our flights short, below 4 to 5 hours max, which has been cool because we then had to visit certain places we might have flown over, so we've seen more countries along the way, albeit at a higher cost. I guess in the age of media devices, longer flights shouldn't be that difficult with kids that age?
- kirso 4y ago
  Relatable. I don't have kids and lots of freedom in my life at least in the evenings outside of work. Somehow without the pressure, I tend to procrastinate on my decisions to take on the next chapter given several options available. That paralysis then turns into anxiety of not taking the choice and understanding how hurtful it is which just opens the vicious circle.
gopalv 4y ago
> Choosing what to spend time is harder! I've realized that the boundaries have given me more discipline than when I had none. Before kids, mortgage and a work visa, I would just pick something up and spend 4-5 weeks on a single thing before hitting a plateau. Then the going gets tough and there's a new thing which I could dig into right around the corner. Everything I did was at an unsustainable pace and it did broaden my horizons, but it was very much like dating. First the commute ate up the first hobby, the kid ate up the next hobby, but then the pandemic kicked off the hobby mode all over again. I almost went back to the old approach of hobby-crazy, but I couldn't with two kids in the mix. My rate of picking up new things have dropped to about 1.5 a year since 2020, but it's spread out onto a weekly schedule where I don't always have to drop the last thing I was doing to pick up something new. Also I no longer want to "get great" at things. I still jump into new things without prioritization, but I no longer burn twice as bright for half as long in my hobbies. Also the kids will drag you back in too - I'm going to go gokarting every weekend for the next year, because the alternative is sitting there in the bleachers with the phone.

josephferano 4y ago

Very relatable what you wrote. I became a digital nomad in my mid 30s. It was great at first, but then it got to the point where I engineered too much freedom in my life. The result was indeed paralyzing. Suffered some of the worst indecision in my life, in my mid 30s! During covid times, I met my wife, we had a son together and now we're a digital nomad family. Having a family removed a whole range of choices that let me narrow into the obvious and not have to stress out about what to focus on. In a way it's been more liberating, to take on these constraints and responsibility. I know it sounds counterintuitive but I think Jocko got it right with "Discipline Equals Freedom".

sjducb 4y ago
In 3 months I'm going to take my family (wife and 3 year old) on a 6 month trip. My goal is to become a digital nomad family with "bases" where we have family and friends. The rough plan is Bali, Japan, Sri Lanka, Kerala(India). Do you have any advice or tips? My biggest question is how do you meet other digital nomad families? I've done a lot of solo travel, and on the way I'd occasionally meet a traveling family, but they were pretty rare.
- kirso 4y ago
  Nomadlist is one of the places, also digitalnomad subreddit?
- josephferano 4y ago
  I've found it to be rare in my experience as well. It seems our demographic tends to not believe in having children, ranging from the apathetic hedonist to strong antinatalist beliefs. Since I have a 9-month-old, I haven't had the need to go out and find nomad families as much. Having bases helps with this since you can just meet local families and hang out with them while you're in town. Hopefully we can find a solution to this, maybe we need a nomadfamilylist.com to arrange playdates! Kerala sounds interesting, One place we went to recently was Bangalore and once we got used to the traffic, we enjoyed it. I've heard good things about Goa as well from a local tech entrepreneur friend. I'm curious as to what it's like to fly with a 3-year-old. We've had to keep our flights short, below 4 to 5 hours max, which has been cool because we then had to visit certain places we might have flown over, so we've seen more countries along the way, albeit at a higher cost. I guess in the age of media devices, longer flights shouldn't be that difficult with kids that age?
kirso 4y ago
Relatable. I don't have kids and lots of freedom in my life at least in the evenings outside of work. Somehow without the pressure, I tend to procrastinate on my decisions to take on the next chapter given several options available. That paralysis then turns into anxiety of not taking the choice and understanding how hurtful it is which just opens the vicious circle.

gopalv 4y ago

> Choosing what to spend time is harder! I've realized that the boundaries have given me more discipline than when I had none. Before kids, mortgage and a work visa, I would just pick something up and spend 4-5 weeks on a single thing before hitting a plateau. Then the going gets tough and there's a new thing which I could dig into right around the corner. Everything I did was at an unsustainable pace and it did broaden my horizons, but it was very much like dating. First the commute ate up the first hobby, the kid ate up the next hobby, but then the pandemic kicked off the hobby mode all over again. I almost went back to the old approach of hobby-crazy, but I couldn't with two kids in the mix. My rate of picking up new things have dropped to about 1.5 a year since 2020, but it's spread out onto a weekly schedule where I don't always have to drop the last thing I was doing to pick up something new. Also I no longer want to "get great" at things. I still jump into new things without prioritization, but I no longer burn twice as bright for half as long in my hobbies. Also the kids will drag you back in too - I'm going to go gokarting every weekend for the next year, because the alternative is sitting there in the bleachers with the phone.