Excellence Means You Can't Live a "Balanced Life"

In a previous post, I outlined the simple, 2-step formula to become good at anything:

1) Practice a lot
2) Put in a lot of conscious effort to what you're practicing

Here's a revised version of the formula, if you want to become THE BEST at anything:

1) Practice exponentially more than before
2) Practice with conscious effort and nearly singular focus

3) Be lucky

Assuming you have the luck required, you will also need to drastically increase the amount of practice you do.  Because of the increased amount of practice required, you'll have to sacrifice time for other things: social life, sleep, time with family, leisure activities, etc.  You are focused almost entirely on whatever it is you're trying to be the best at.

This is true no matter what profession or field you want to become the best at.  Whether you want to become the most renowned neurosurgeon, the funniest stand-up comedian, an Olympic gold medalist, the most successful CEO, an elite professional hockey player, the most published and cited academic, or a world-champion MMA fighter, you will have terrible "work-life balance".  You'll need to sacrifice a lot of time not only to reach the pinnacle of your field but also to stay at the elite level.

This goes beyond the level of a hobby. You can't clock out at 5pm. Having the goal of being the best at something for a certain amount of time will come at the expense of other things in your life. If the concept of "work-life balance" is important to you, you will never become part of the elite in your field.  The truth is, at one point or another, we all wanted to be excellent something.  Becoming excellent requires an unbalanced lifestyle. For most of us, living that way for a long time is unsustainable.

Money Can Buy Happiness

Many of us who didn't grow up with a lot of money were always told that money won't buy happiness. I think in most cases it's said by our parents to try to shut us up when we were whining about not being able to afford the latest and greatest toys being shown on TV commercials.

Yes, it is true that having money to buy material luxuries won't necessarily make you happier. However, there are many things that you can buy with money that will contribute to your happiness.

Here are a few examples of how to use money to buy / increase your happiness.

The Basics
It's very difficult to admit how happy you are in life if you don't have the basic needs covered.  If you're unable to buy food, to afford a safe place to live, to pay for clothing, health care, electricity and heating for yourself and your family, I doubt very much that you'll consider yourself to be happy.  Money allows you to pay for those basic needs.

Not convinced?  In the next few weeks, when the bleakest part of winter comes and it's minus 20 degrees outside, there's over 30 cm of snow on the ground and the polar winds are making your face turn red, go find a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk in the cold.  Ask him or her if having some money so they can have a place to stay would make them happier.

Or simply take a look at any person who doesn't make enough money to pay for rent, groceries, electricity and other necessities.  They're up to their ears in debt to make ends meet.  We all know someone like this.  See how stressed out that person. Now think: how much happier they would be if they had just a little more money to get out of debt and pay all their bills on time.

Time

In a previous post, I wrote about not being able to earn more of time spent the same way you can do with money. However, if you have enough money, you can buy yourself more time to do the things that make you happy.

For example, with enough money, instead of spending hours doing laundry, cooking, cleaning my home and washing dishes, I could hire someone to do those chores. The time I saved can then be spent on fun activities with my wife, my friends and my family, thus making me happier.

Another example of this is bribing your way to the front of the line. Yes, it's a bit of a dick move and no, it's not fair to those who came in advance and waited. But hey, there's a certain feeling of satisfaction knowing that you've saved yourself some time and got what you needed faster by subtly slipping someone a folded up bill.

The ability to say "No" with little to no repercussions
This is also known as having "fuck you" money. The more money you have, the more you're able to refuse requests, orders and drudgery that, while lucrative, can be a detriment to your happiness.  Having "fuck you" money makes it easier for you to avoid lousy jobs with terrible hours, long commutes, and stressful environments.

It means you won't have to deal with bullying bosses or rude clients.  Having "fuck you" money means that you can afford to say no while using the corresponding expletives without the risk of putting yourself and your family in financial trouble.  All this while pursuing work that actually increases your overall happiness.

Acts of altruism
This is actually one of my favourite examples because of the "double-whammy" effect.  Recent economics and psychology studies show that people who donate money to charity and seeing the positive results of their donation end up feeling happier and feeling better about themselves.  So, not only are you helping people in need (thus allowing them to purchase "the basics" and increase their happiness), you're also making yourself happier in the process.

It doesn't even have to be charity.  Many of us have parents who have always wanted to take a dream vacation that they were never able to afford because they were trying to pay bills while raising us.  I'm sure that a lot of us, if we could afford it, would be more than happy to pay for that dream vacation of theirs.  In this case, not only would we make ourselves happier, people we love would be happier as well.

If that's not buying happiness with money, I don't know what is.

Final thoughts
If you've noticed, none of my examples of money buying happiness include buying mansions, fast cars, jewelry, the latest and greatest giant flat screen TV, the newest iPhone, etc.  Those are the things people first think of when they say "money doesn't buy happiness".  They're right.  Trying to buy and accumulate material possessions as a way to fill whatever emotional void you have is never going to work. You'll just end up being a hoarder with so much clutter in your home that you can barely move around in it.

Money CAN HELP make you happier by allowing you to gain experiences that others with less money won't get.  Having money gives you the option to say no to lucrative, but time-consuming and unnecessarily stressful endeavours.  Thus allowing you to spend your time on more enjoyable activities with people that you actually want to be with. 

Become Good at Saying No

If you've ever taken an Intro to Economics class, you would have probably heard of the concept of "Opportunity Cost". Briefly, the opportunity cost of making a choice are the missed benefits of choosing one alternative over another.

Because everyone has limited time, energy and resources, that means that when you agree to do something, you will miss out on other things. By saying "Yes" to do one thing, you're indirectly saying "No" to doing other things.

This is why one of the most important (and difficult) skills everyone needs to develop is how to say "No". Whether it's a business opportunity or friends and family members asking you to do them favours, you will receive requests that will require you to give up a combination of your time, energy and resources.

When thinking about saying "Yes" to any of these requests out of guilt, an unhealthy need to please others or perhaps a miscalculation of financial gain, remember what you're potentially giving up. Just ask yourself how much whatever you're being asked to commit to is going to cost in terms of your sanity, time away from loved ones, your physical health and/or your financial well-being. Then you'll realize why "No" can be one of the most valuable words in your vocabulary.

Never be Afraid to Quit

We've all heard the adage: "Winners never quit.  Quitters never win."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The better adage is: "You gotta know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. And know when to run."

Yes, persistence and perseverance can get you far.  You can become very successful by sticking to something for a long time while trying to improve.  It's a skill that can help you in life.

However, knowing when and how to quit something is actually equally important.  At some point, we have to recognize when we're no longer able to improve on a situation despite the amount of resources you've sunk into it.

We all need to recognize the point when, despite any additional effort, failure is inevitable. When that happens, learn from your failure, quit, then divert your remaining resources and energy on other endeavours (or a modified version of the failed one). This is how quitting will lead to future success.

Time is Money? Nope

"Time is money."  It's an old, false adage that many people in business just perpetuated.  The truth is that if you spend money, you can still make it back later on by trading your time.  When it comes to time, there's no amount of money that will allow you to get back time that you lost.  It's gone. If you're fortunate enough you'll be able to pay someone to do things you don't want so you can have more time for the things you want to do.

 

Learning how to spend our hard-earned money is incredibly important. Learning how to spend your time is even more so.  Most of us need to be smarter when choosing which activities to engage in when offered money in exchange for your time.  On the flip side, it's just as crucial to respect other peoples' time by providing them value when they've made a decision to give any amount of it to you.