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Here’s a shocking revelation for you, life is short. I went to the Social Security Administration’s website and entered my gender and date of birth in its Life Expectancy Calculator. Here’s what it spit out.
Holy purple cats! Multiply 26.3 years by 365.25 days and you get 9,606 days. That’s basically what I have left. Nine thousand six hundred and six days!
In one sense, 9,606 days is nothing. If I’m ever going to take my pursuit of happiness seriously, now’s the time. In another sense, however, 9,606 days is more than enough time for me to blow through my FI portfolio. A month in Australia isn’t cheap. Nor is taking the family to the Vermejo Ranch for a week. Nor is building a vacation home in Montana. Happiness is important, but my pursuit of it can’t be willy-nilly. It has to be portfolio appropriate; it has to be sustainable. Otherwise, if I allow my frugality muscles to atrophy, I’ll run out of portfolio long before I run out of life. Not good.
The good news is that the honorable pursuit of happiness and the responsible stewardship of your portfolio isn’t mutually exclusive. The pursuit of non-evil happiness can be a relatively inexpensive proposition. Let’s see how.
The Groovy Guide to Sustainable, Non-Evil Happiness
When it comes to the science of sustainable, non-evil happiness, I’m no Gretchen Rubin. But since 2006, I’ve been zippity freakin’ doo dah happy, and my portfolio’s value has quintupled. So I’m doing something right. And as I pondered my impressive run of sustainable, non-evil happiness, I pinpointed three strategies that have been integral to that impressive run.
Get Rid of What Makes You Unhappy
In 2006, I left the security of the public sector for the volatility of the private sector and took a forty percent pay cut.
In 2014, I took a vow of ignorance and stopped watching television news, listening to talk radio, and reading newspapers.
In 2016, I embraced my sartorial ineptitude, created a capsule wardrobe of twelve polo shirts and three pairs of jeans, and got rid of all the superfluous shirts and pants collecting dust in my closet and dresser.
Each of these decisions made me happier. Do you notice a pattern? It’s advancing happiness by subtraction. I increased my happiness, not by adding something to my life, but by removing something from my life. Take, for instance, my decision to leave the public sector. I worked for a very dysfunctional municipality. My co-workers were largely slothful, largely incompetent, and largely hostile to anything that might improve the quality of our municipality’s service. Every night I went to bed with a knot in my stomach. Knowing eight hours in Bizarro World was rapidly approaching was too much to bear. But then something wonderful happened. Mrs. Groovy and I relocated to Charlotte in 2006. And because I no longer had to deal with the insanity of my dysfunctional municipality, my night-time stomach knots disappeared. And this remained the case even when I entered the private sector and got a job that paid me forty percent less than my dysfunctional municipality. It’s amazing what dealing with co-workers who are largely energetic, largely competent, and largely customer-centric can do for your sangfroid.
Remember this well, groovy freedomist: The surest way to get happier is to rid your life of something that’s annoying the crap out of you.
Do One Thing a Day—Or Nothing
I brush my teeth several times a day. I floss once a day. I also shower, exercise, write, shove food down my gullet, run errands, and perform household chores on a daily basis. These are my maintenance duties, so to speak—things that must be done every day to remain an esteemed human being, husband, and blogger.
But what about the rest of my day? These maintenance duties can’t possibly take up the bulk of my day. What do I do with my free time?
This is a great question. I do have a lot of free time, especially now that I’m retired. And for the longest time, I viewed that free time with a carpe diem mindset. I was determined to wrangle as much productiveness as I could out of my free time. A regime of self-imposed busyness swept over me.
The only problem is that productiveness doesn’t always play nice with happiness. Hello law of diminishing returns. Cramming as many productive activities as possible into a single day may have placated the productivity gods, but it left me stressed and decidedly less happy.
So at the behest of Mrs. Groovy, I abandoned my carpe diem mindset. No longer would a single day be dedicated to commenting on ten blog posts, getting an oil change, going to a museum, visiting our favorite frozen yogurt joint, tinkering in my workshop, and researching vacation possibilities. Goodbye hyper-productivity. My free time is now reserved for one thing a day or nothing.
Today I’m taking Mrs. Groovy to her hair appointment. If I’m feeling really ambitious, I’ll have a glass of wine with father on the front porch. Such pitiful productivity will not garner me Blogger of the Year. But it will be kind to my nerves. And it will be a boon to my happiness.
Create, Build, Fix, or Clean Something
At least once a week, I grab a plastic bag and my picker and rid my community of some litter. It is truly the highlight of my week.
Why? Why is making my community a little less unkempt so rewarding?
Sure, part of it is the exercise and the sublime benefits of being alone with my thoughts. And, sure, part of it redounds to the joy of giving, of knowing that in some small way I’ve made the lives of my neighbors a little less dreary. But more than anything, what really gets me pumped about picking up litter is this: a sense of accomplishment. I park my car by a stretch of highway choked with litter, and a half hour later, that stretch of highway is pristine. Because of my effort, an eyesore has been vanquished.
Man was not put on this earth to wallow in stagnation or filth. Man was put on this earth to create, to build, to fix, and, yes, to clean. So if you want an inexpensive way to increase your happiness, bow to your underlying nature. Get off your ass and write a blog post. Get off your ass and fix that leaky faucet. Get off your ass and clean your freakin’ garage.
Final Thoughts
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? Are my three ways of increasing sustainable happiness legit? Or are they a sham? And if they’re a sham, what would you suggest? I would love to hear your thoughts. Have a zippity freakin’ doo dah weekend. Peace.
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