On The Importance Of Putting First Things First
On The Importance Of Putting First Things First
By J.D. Roth
Holy cats! That was an interesting 72 hours.
For the past three days, I’ve been fighting a terrible cold. Or maybe the flu. I’m not sure which. It hasn’t been fun.
On Sunday, while I was in Florida attending an early-retirement retreat, I woke with crap in my lungs. All day, I was coughing and sneezing and hacking. I still felt relatively strong, though, so I made sure to get in my four-mile training run. (I made two goals involving running this year: I want to run at least one mile every day and I want to run a half marathon at the end of March.)
On Monday morning, I felt worse. Still, I rolled out of bed and tromped the one mile I had scheduled for myself. It was a l-o-n-g mile, let me tell you. I was wheezing and gasping the entire ten minutes.
The six-hour flight home to Portland on Monday afternoon was miserable. I hate flying when I’m sick, and I know how much that sucks for other passengers. I huddled next to the window and tried not to breathe too deeply. Breathing too deeply rattled the crap in my lungs and sent me into fits of coughing, so I mainly zoned out and made an effort to take shallow breaths.
“You sound terrible,” Kim said when she picked me up from the airport. That night, she made me sleep in the guest room.
I spent all yesterday fighting a high fever. I tried to write an article, but it was a futile endeavor. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t write or read or even watch TV. (I starting watching the new Blade Runner movie, but I couldn’t focus for more than a few minutes at a time.) I could barely focus on video games.
In the afternoon, I felt a little better, so I decided to take the dog for a walk. “I have a three-mile training run scheduled today,” I thought to myself. “I probably shouldn’t do that. But surely I can do just a mile.” I put on my running clothes, grabbed the leash and the dog, and headed outside.
After two minutes of running — and less than a quarter mile — I pulled up short. I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like I was going to faint. I walked the dog back home and crawled into bed.
And that’s how my goal of running at least one mile each day in 2018 came to an end.
Blind Pursuit Of The Less Important
My example of blindly pursuing a small goal at the expense of the Big Picture is relatively minor. It’s not a big deal. But it’s not hard to find examples of people doing this on a grander scale, which can lead to all sorts of complications.
I’ve noticed, for instance, that many people who discover the ideas behind early retirement become laser-focused on their “number” — the amount they need to save in order to reach financial independence (a.k.a. FI). They rearrange their lives so that they can save 50% or 70% or 85% of their income, but never take time to figure out what they’re saving for. Why are they saving for financial independence? What’s the purpose?
Then a crisis occurs and they realize the goal they’ve been pursuing was a red herring. Financial independence and early retirement aren’t the actual objective — and they never were. A happy life filled with meaning and purpose is what they really want; financial independence is merely a tool to help them achieve it.
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