Because you only live once…
UnWork for Beginners
4 Steps to Live the Life You Desire
Sep 9th
You look around one day and say to yourself, “This is not the life that I want to be living!” You have made up your mind to change your life and are ready to start your journey towards a better life. Great! Congrats on that first step. But where do you go now? What do you actually do to create the life that you want to live.
There are 4 main steps that you will need to go through to change your life. Each of these has many sub-steps and may take some time, but master each of these and you will gain the life you desire.
1. Control Your Life
If you don’t control your life, you won’t have the ability to change it. Doing things like tracking your money, managing your time, and mastering your projects can allow you the flexibility to make changes in each of these areas. Being able to say “Here I am and this is my status on each area of my life” is an amazing feeling.
Some people may struggle with this step while others find it fairly straight forward and easy. One person may try and try to master their lives while others are probably already doing it. But wherever you fall, having some systems in place to track your life and control your life will lead to a easier time as you begin to make other changes.
2. Design Your Life
This step can be really fun. This is where you take time to dream. How do you really want to live your life? Do you want to travel? focus on a hobby? volunteer? Are there any dreams that you had as a child that you would want to pursue?
Designing your life so that it reaches its full potential (a process also referred to as Lifestyle Design), can give you a goal. The life that you want is where you are headed towards. Then sooner that you can bring aspects of that life into reality, the better life you will live.
3. Fund Your Life
This is where a lot of people get stuck. You have this life that you want to live, but it takes money that you don’t have. The goal here is to figure out how to fund that life without spending all of your time doing so.
There are various ways that you can do this. You can start an online business. You can create a product based company. You can work at a regular job, but only for part of the time. The key is finding a way to make the money that you needs while following your passions and interests. That’s what UnWork is all about.
4. Live Your Life
This last step is the best. Once you succeed at changing your life, go out and do all of those things that you planned on doing. Have an adventure. Do something different. Find ways to keep your life interesting and fun.
It’s your life. Do something with it.
Do You Have to Be a Writer?
May 15th
I wish I had a dollar for every time I hear someone say, “I can’t create an online business because I can’t/hate to write.” Even I thought this for a while. But is this true? Do you have to be a writer to be an UnWorkaholic?
I will admit that it helps. If you love writing, you can produce blog posts and informational products easily and enjoyably. And since information products and blogging have a pretty high rate of return, writing can indeed help you succeed in an UnWork lifestyle.
But the answer to the question is no. You don’t have to be an writer to make it online. You will have to write some, even if it’s just getting your thoughts on paper for someone else to polish, but there are ways to minimize the writing. Here are my tips for doing so:
- Pick a non-writing business – If you hate to write, sell something besides information. If you are selling a doodad or something physical like that, you won’t have to write in order to produce it. A similar option is selling software, either that you coded or you hired someone to code for you.
- Use alternate media – Hate to write but love to talk? How about delivering your information through audio or video? A successful video blog can be just as powerful an online tool as a regular blog. And plus, audio products have a higher perceived value when packaged into a product, which means your audio information product may sell for more then an ebook anyway.
- Hire a transcriptionist – If you still want to have a blog, you can record your entries and hire someone to type them up for you. You may have to try a few people before you find a good fit, but this is definitely doable. Some of them may even be able to post your entries to your blog for you.
- Hire a writer – You come up with the outline for your post or ebook and then work with someone else to actually get it written. This works great for information products where you supply the ideas and someone else actually writes it. This is called ghostwriting.
- Create a group blog / community – This is where you have a team of people all writing on your blog. Your audience knows about the team and can see who posts what, but you hare still running the show. You provide direction to the team by setting the goals for the site and benefit from the group success.
Those are my ways to still be successful online even if you don’t like to or can’t write. If you try something and keep hitting road blocks, that may be a sign that you need to look into alternate paths. I hope these can provide you with a starting point.
What other ways can you think of to get around a writing road block?
Introduction to Lifestyle Design
May 3rd
I used the term “Lifestyle Design” while talking to a group of friends the other day and only one of them had heard the term before. That made me stop and think about the fact that when you’re around an idea all of the time, you can easily forget that others don’t know what you are talking about. So now I’m going to do what any blogger would do, write a post about it. I’d like to take a moment to introduce you to the term “Lifestyle Design” and how that relates to the UnWork lifestyle.
What is Lifestyle Design?
The term “Lifestyle Design” is thrown around the Internet a bunch these days. You’d think it was a balloon that everyone is collectively trying to keep in the air. I was first introduced to the term while reading “4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris. In that book, Ferris talks about a new type of entrepreneur that was popping up around the globe. These people were not out to create huge companies to take over the world. Instead, they were out to see the world and/or aid the world. They didn’t need mansions and fifteen cars. Instead they needed plane tickets and hotel rooms.
All they need to do was set up a business that allowed them to be 3 things:
- Location Independent – They could run their business from anywhere by the powers of the Interweb.
- Financially Sound – They had enough money coming in to cover their chosen Lifestyle.
- Free to Follow their Passion – They must have enough time to do the things that they want to do — not just what they need to do to earn a living.
The term comes from the fact that Lifestyle Designers choose their lifestyle first and then build the business in order to support that lifestyle. It’s like taking your retirement now.
Unwork and Lifestyle Design
The idea of UnWork fits very nicely with the concept of Lifestyle Design. The key difference is that I focus more on the lifestyle that you are designing. I see lots of people, including me when I started looking this direction, say “I hate my job. I’m going to start a Lifestyle Design Business.” But then they would have no idea what to do or how to get started.
The first step, in my experience, is to figure out what you are passionate about. You must figure out what you want to do and how you want to spend you time. This is what finding your UnWork is all about. Without this, you are creating a lifestyle design business that allows you to quit your job. Once you succeed, you may discover that you are either bored, or find that you could have created your lifestyle design business out of your passion. Starting with your UnWork allows you to have something to work towards (not just away from) and can offer a great source of inspiration along the way.
What is your ultimate lifestyle?
Photo By: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nattu/ / CC BY 2.0
What is UnWork?
Apr 25th
When you introduce a new term into the lexicon, people are always going to wonder exactly what you mean by that term. So here is my definition of UnWork:
An activity that one does regularly that is motivated by passion and interest rather than money.
But that is just a hobby, you may say. A hobby is a type of UnWork, but usually only in one’s spare time along side a regular job. UnWork is like a hobby that takes up the time you would be holding a job. Your UnWork is primary. You income is secondary. That is the key.
In the UnWork lifestyle, you do what you are driven to do. You do what you love to do, not only in your ’spare time’, but whenever you want to. Money comes secondary to living the life you want to live.
But what about making a living? Won’t I starve?
If you just quit your day job today to start rock collecting without any forethought and planning, you may, in fact, starve. And I don’t want you to do that. But with a little planning and some initial hard work, you can quit your day job and still make a living. You have two basic options:
- You can make money by turning your UnWork into a business.
- You can start a lifestyle business that earns you money while you do your UnWork.
I will go into more details about each of these in later posts.
So what is your UnWork?
PREP for Freedom
Apr 20th
Most of you reading this probably want more freedom. It may be the freedom to travel without having to worry about running out of vacation days. It may be the freedom to spend more time with your kids and love ones. It may be the freedom to choose what you do everyday. But whatever your reason, you want more freedom in your life.
But how do you get freedom?
The attainment of freedom focuses on two main areas: your money and your time. To gain more freedom, you need to free your time to do more of what your want to and to free your finances so you can afford to do what you want.
I have distilled this into a convenient acronym for the process of gaining freedom in your life: PREP, which stands for passion, revenue, efficiency, and play.
The steps of PREP
- Passion. To start off, you need to find your passion. I refer to this as finding your UnWork. It’s that thing which you love doing and would still be interested in doing even if you didn’t get any money from it. It’s what you wake up in the morning burning to do. Your passion also can give you motivation and inspiration as you continue towards freedom.
- Revenue. The next step is to find a way to free your finances. This may be a way that you use your passion to make money or a business that makes money without taking much time. Both work. The key is to make sure you have time and money to follow your dreams and doing your UnWork.
- Efficiency. Once you get revenue, the next step is to clear as much clutter out of your schedule as possible. Just think of IDEA: improvement, delegation, efficiency and automation. Use these to free up as much time as you can.
- Play. The last step is to have fun and get the most out of life. I’d bet that this is the step you want to do most, but remember, it’s last for a reason. It’s your reward.
Efficiency Redefined
Mar 26th
Efficiency as defined by a Workaholic:
Doing things as quickly and easily as possible so that you can get more things done.
Efficiency as defined by an UnWorkaholic:
Doing things as quickly and easily as possible so you can get on with doing the good things in life.
Which definition do you use?
