“What should I do with my life?”

blog, happiness, life lessons

I remember being 20 and completely not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. Ahead of me lay many paths: Which one would I take? Which one should I take?

Then I quit university, stumbled into opening a cafe, tried and failed at a whole bunch of things in between (publishing a magazine, starting an online publication, hosting a radio show, launching a travel bag, etc) and then ended up, six years later, unexpectedly becoming a professional photographer.

Never at any point did I stop thinking about what I would and should do with my life.

Even until today.

A few months ago I had a bit of a crisis. I couldn’t stop thinking about whether photography is THE thing I should do with my life. Yes, I love photography and I love being a photographer, but sometimes it does feel like there is something… missing. It’s almost like there should be something more, but yet there isn’t.

Photography is a great medium through which to make a difference in this world. That’s why many photographers work on documentary projects about issues they care about. But so far I haven’t been able to do the same. It’s not that there aren’t issues I care about, but which issue do I care about enough to base a documentary project on? Things just haven’t worked out in this aspect.

And as a commercial/advertising photographer, my work can be quite exciting, working often with big brands and sometimes celebrities. But at the end of the day, my commercial work is about helping my clients to make money. It’s not a bad thing – it can feel satisfying especially if it’s for a company I admire – but eventually, I have to be honest about the fact that doing this doesn’t give me a huge sense of purpose.

And so that’s how I fell into my little… existential rut.

Stumbling into purpose

When I started writing this blog three months ago, however, something changed.

I care very much about good photography, but on a daily basis I realize I care and think much more about issues intersecting creativity and business; I obsess about whether there is a path someone can take that allows him to go from zero to creative success; I think a lot about what it takes to live a rich, fulfilling life doing what one loves, on one’s own terms; I also think a lot about happiness and how to live a good life as both a creative and a human being; etc.

These are issues I care deeply about, even more deeply than how, for example, I can develop better photography techniques. Which is why when I started writing about these topics on this blog, I unexpectedly found a sense of purpose and meaning that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else.

Let me tell you, it’s a pretty awesome and magical feeling.

The beauty of purpose

Then you realize: purpose is on a whole different plane.

When you find something that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning, you wake up excited everyday wanting to jump out of bed and get started immediately (which is how I feel about writing here).

I think this comes from the fact that, with writing to share and help, it feels like suddenly I am no longer looking inwards but outwards at the world, and so now doing feels much more like giving.

When I receive emails and messages from people who read this blog who tell me about how some of my articles have influenced them or changed their life for the better or helped them to change their mindset or gave them affirmation to continue fighting for their dreams, I become even more convinced that giving is infinitely better than taking. (In many aspects of my life, I often feel like I am not good enough at giving. So in a sense, with this blog, I get to give in the way I know how.)

Suddenly it became clear to me why it was perfect that I’d quit school multiple times (a story I will surely write about someday), battled depression and anxiety, started a failed cafe, and become a photographer.

If my life hadn’t unfolded the way it did, I wouldn’t have been able to write the articles I write today. I would have no experiences and no stories of failure to share. I wouldn’t be able to write about the path that took me here, and the painful lessons I have learned along the way that I can now share as a gift with the rest of the world.

The beauty of knowing where to go

No, I’m not about to hang up my camera and transform into a full-time writer, but if I was utterly lost as a 20-year-old, now, some ten years later, I can safely say that I am much more certain about which path I should be on in life.

Now I know for sure that I should keep working at my photography. I’m (pretty) good at it, it puts bread on my table, I am still excited about getting better at it, and I do genuinely love the feeling of holding a camera in my hands and making good photographs.

But I also know now what gives me a sense of purpose and meaning beyond taking good photographs, and that is to give freely.

Specifically, to give freely by writing for this blog and teaching you, my readers, everything I know about how to live an awesome life on your own terms doing work you love.

I think of this as my mission.

(Not that I will not embark on other journeys in future, but for now, this feels like a good path to be on.)

How to find your purpose in life

“What should I do with my life?” is a question that is open-ended and has as many answers as there are people in the world.

But here’s a few things I learned:

(1) Having a Big Vague Goal in the long term is important. Having a Big Vague Goal is to have a vision of the kind of life you want to live. Maybe, ultimately, what you want is freedom to chart your own path, wake up whenever you want, not having to answer to a boss. Now all you need is to do whatever you can to pursue this Big Vague Goal. But try not to…

(2) Set a concrete 5-year or 10-year plan. I honestly think plans are a myth, especially long-term ones. We have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow. We also don’t know if one year later – or even just six months later – our feelings about something might change. As Bruce Lee said, be like water. Allow yourself the space and flexibility to change your plans as circumstances arise.

(3) 6-month to 1-year plans are cool though. It allows you to break your dream or your Big Vague Goal down into concrete, doable tasks; knowing exactly what to do also allows you to move forward instead of becoming paralyzed by inertia (due to the despair you feel at how seemingly far away your dream is).

(4) Set goals and put all your mortal resources into achieving them. Say you want to become a successful freelance designer. Your interest is in UI/UX, but you have no portfolio. Why not set the goal of getting at least 3 clients in the next 6 months, so you can start building your portfolio? I don’t know how you are going to do it, but you are going to find those three clients. Remember, whether you are starting a business or trying to become a successful freelancer, it’s fundamentally about getting clients – people who are willing to give you money in exchange for something valuable you can offer them. Can you find just THREE people in six months who fit that bill? If you can’t, perhaps you should consider moving on to doing other things. (Or you’re not trying hard enough.)

(5) Passion + skill + the value you can give others. Keep this holy trinity in your mind. All the time.

(6) What if you don’t even know what to pursue? Maybe you are passionate about five different things and you want to pursue all of them. I am a huge fan of the “try and fail and try and fail” theory. Feel free to pursue each of them. Enjoy failing. That’s how you test if one of them fits the passion + skill + value holy trinity I mentioned in the earlier point.

(7) Don’t have the illusion that you can only be happy making a living doing what you love MOST in the world. A lot of the world’s happiest people have hobbies that they are passionate about outside of their work. It’s possible to be the happiest lark in the world if your third biggest passion allows you to build a successful and profitable freelance career, giving you lots of freedom to do what you are most passionate about on your own time. That is sweet, sweet balance.

(8) Whatever it is, your journey to figuring out the question “What should I do with my life?” is surely not going to be straightforward. Don’t give up. If you ever give up, you do yourself and you do life a disservice. I believe successful/happy people are successful/happy because they have this Big Vague Goal in their head and they don’t give up until they get there. Of course, by the time they arrive, their Big Vague Goal has often evolved and now looks very different from what they had first envisioned. That’s because it’s been refined by their life experiences, like a raw diamond now polished to reveal its stunning beauty. What doesn’t work has been filtered out, leaving behind what works.

(9) Have faith. Faith/belief is also known, more commonly, as positive thinking (doesn’t sound quite as mystical, does it?). I have always believed that I can do whatever I set my mind to doing. I also have always believed that anything is possible and achievable. This positive mindset actually warps reality because it modifies my actions (never forget that, with our free will, we are actually Superheroes in disguise who can create and move things and change reality, as if reality were… play dough). If I don’t believe that I can achieve the goal of eating five bowls of ramen in a row, I won’t even try. But if I believe wholeheartedly that I can do it, I will try. And that’s how I will realize I have the potential to be a professional competitive eater. Who said our minds can’t alter reality? (But if I try and fail, that’s okay too. Then I move on to my next dream of becoming a professional pole dancer.)

(10) Finally, like my yoga teacher said, there is no goal. Our life journey is the goal itself. Understand this and you will arrive at a whole different plane and realize just how awesome sauce life already is.

Buying less things, financial independence and happiness

blog, happiness, minimalism, money

Nowadays, I find myself wanting less.

I want to buy less stuff, do less projects, set less goals.

In the meantime I want more meaning, more connection, more joy.

More life.

And what I have found is, wanting less makes me happy. Much happier than when I was wanting more.

The anguish of more; the happiness of less

Just a few days ago I was watching the documentary Minimalism.

It’s a film that suggests minimalism as an antidote – or THE antidote – to the havoc that rampant consumerism has wrecked on our lives, and the environmental impact it has on earth, our only home.

Rampant consumerism is us going crazy buying things that advertisers have promised can make us happier, skinnier, prettier, smarter, more successful. And at a faster and faster rate. (The promises are false by the way.)

Most of us are not immune to such promises – that includes you and me both.

And what is minimalism?

“Today’s problem seems to be the meaning we assign to our stuff: we tend to give too much meaning to our things, often forsaking our health, our relationships, our passions, our personal growth, and our desire to contribute beyond ourselves. Want to own a car or a house? Great, have at it! Want to raise a family and have a career? If these things are important to you, then that’s wonderful. Minimalism simply allows you to make these decisions more consciously, more deliberately.” – The Minimalists

I couldn’t have said it better.

One of the experts interviewed in the Minimalism documentary said this:

“We don’t actually want all these things that we buy – what we really want is to feel whole and content.”

And might I add, happy.

With that we come to the root of the problem: happiness, or the lack of it.

Since we are not happy, we go out into the world trying to find happiness in a new iPhone or a new branded bag or a pair of limited edition sneakers or a new house.

Don’t we all know people who have everything they want and are still not happy?

Having a big goal like buying a new house gives us the illusion that we are okay – as long as we don’t get there. During the chase we are happy (and motivated) enough, but the moment we make enough to own that new house, the bubble bursts. We realize it isn’t what we are looking for after all. Emptiness returns. We create a new goal to chase after.

Perhaps we will finally find happiness there?

(Hint: we won’t.)

If a pill were invented right now that could give us the happiness and sense of purpose and meaning that we are all universally looking for, I’d like to hedge a bet that we would buy far fewer things.

That’s because we never needed those things to be happy or to feel fulfilled in the first place. It’s like eating a truckload of ice cream after getting dumped. You don’t actually want to eat it – because it makes you fat – but it helps.

That’s the problem – it does make you feel better. Temporarily, at least.

Same with buying things.

Financial independence

If money can’t buy happiness, what can it buy?

I didn’t buy new clothes for Chinese New Year this year. I figured that it’s not necessary to buy new clothes just for the sake of buying new clothes. The money I saved? It goes to my Financial Independence Fund.

What’s my Financial Independence Fund? It’s my savings. Every cent I earn – minus my essential monthly expenses – goes towards my savings. My goal is to reach a point where I have enough money to semi-retire or retire in 5 years’ time.

Yes, my goal is to semi-retire or retire when I am 35 (depending on how well things go). It sounds impossible, laughable even, because we grew up thinking we must work our entire lives – yet it doesn’t have to be that way. I like to think out of the box, and I like to think that there is another more rewarding path through life, and that path is financial independence.

To reach financial independence is to have enough money stashed away so you no longer have to work for a living (or you only have to work just a little – maybe once a week, or once a month – in order to sustain your lifestyle). Here’s a good beginner article about the idea of financial independence, if you are interested in finding out more.

So how do we get there? The first step is to stop buying so many damn things and start saving the money we would have used to buy those things.

F*ck you money

I’m not totally against buying things, as long as you are buying things you need or that add to your life. But you should not be spending so much money that you don’t have Fck You Money in your bank.

What’s that?

Imagine if you have $50,000 in your bank, or $20,000, or even $10,000. One day you finally realize that you are working for a boss who doesn’t care about your welfare, or in a corporation where you are not valued as an employee. With money in your bank, you have the freedom to quit your job without worrying about being homeless. That’s called Fck You Money.

If you don’t have Fck You Money in your bank, you are essentially a slave, trapped in a job that you hate just because it pays the bills (that you yourself chalked up in the first place).

To have Fck You Money in your bank, you save. There is no magic formula to it. If you think that giving up your expensive purchases or your high-flying lifestyle will cause your standard of living (or your enjoyment of life in general) to drop, then what about the sheer misery of having to work in a shitty job just because you don’t have any savings?

You might not have control over your terrible boss, but you have 100% control over your savings.

After saving for the last year, I have enough F*ck You Money to never get a full-time job ever again. Even if my freelance photography career tanks (hopefully it won’t), I have enough savings to tide me through until my next move, whatever that might be.

I wouldn’t have said the same thing two years ago. What has changed is that I have learned to save.

So… it’s simple. Buying less things means spending less. Spending less means having more savings. Having more savings means having more freedom.

A journey

On this blog I write a lot about how to live a better life. Today’s article is no exception. And like every article before this, I strive to live what I write about.

The beautiful thing is that these ideas – like minimalism, or like how buying less things can actually make one happier – really do work. They are not just theories or concepts. All you need to do is test them out in your own life and experience the benefits for yourself.

For me, it is a journey. I was a big consumer just a year ago. If you visit my house now, you will still see a lot of stuff (in the midst of learning how to declutter). What you will not see is how I have stopped buying many things that I would have bought just one year ago. What you also won’t see is the shift in my mindset and the questions I ask myself these days whenever I find myself tempted to buy something.

“Do I really need this?”

“Will I die without this?”

“Does this really add to my life?”

The practice of this philosophy of “less is better” – or minimalism – has greatly benefited me. And it can also be applied to not only personal finance but also to work, relationships, and life in general, because it helps you to sift through what is truly important and what is not.

But a disclaimer – I am still not there yet. There are so many things I haven’t learned about minimalism or how to be a more conscientious or environmentally-conscious consumer, but I am learning and I will keep learning.

I wish you luck and happiness and joy as always, my friends, and if you have any comments or stories to share, please feel free to share them below!

Keep showing up

blog, creative work, productivity

Screen Shot 2017-01-19 at 10.41.31 AM

I almost didn’t make this week’s publishing schedule, mainly due to an intense week of photoshoots, photoshoots, and more photoshoots. I’ve been super busy.

But somehow skipping this week’s article was out of the question. I’d promised to write one article a week for this blog, and I’ve decided that I am going to do just that, rain or shine.

In the department of blogging, I have failed, been inconsistent, and given up an embarrassing number of times – but this time I truly want things to be different, and for that to happen, I have to start showing up, no matter how busy I am with the other (always seemingly more important) things in my life.

The art of showing up

When life gets busy or tiring or overwhelming it can be hard to show up and do the work. Harder than most people imagine.

Gary Vaynerchuck is famous nowadays for being a loud-mouth entrepreneur who can be seen on viral Facebook videos teaching people how to hustle and market themselves on the internet… But before this he was the creator and host of WineLibraryTV, a daily youtube series about wine that went on for 1,000 episodes.

Yes, ONE THOUSAND episodes, one a day, for five long years.

This is the first episode of the now legendary series.

He showed up every single day and built a massive audience over that time (growing WineLibrary from a $4 million dollar business to a $45 million business).

And the amazing thing is, very few people were watching his videos in the first two years, but he kept at it.

Not many people can do that.

People ask how they can build an audience, start a successful freelance career, grow a small business – that’s how. By showing up and doing the work every day. Over time people begin to hear about you. It’s inevitable.

Focus

A few friends have asked me how I find the time and commitment to keep writing for this blog.

It’s all about focus.

Besides my work as a photographer, I have decided to make this blog my priority this year. Not one of many priorities, but THE priority.

The process of sharing everything I have learned (no holds barred) about creative entrepreneurship and how to live an unconventional, successful life with people through this blog has been very fulfilling (and even educational) for me.

It’s still early days, but I have an intuition that if I keep at this consistently over the next few years, wonderful things are going to happen. And that’s because sharing openly – and helping others live a better and happier life in the process – is a tremendously valuable thing.

And the second reason is… that I am just really passionate about it. I have many ideas for the blog and I’m very excited about what is to come. And I truly enjoy doing this. Even though no one is paying me to write at the moment, I am still happy to spend a lot of my time working on it.

So since my blog is my priority, it’s always at the top of my mind. I’m always thinking and brainstorming about what I can do to make this blog better. I also derive a great deal of purpose and meaning from it. Yes, there are still a hundred other things I want to work on (being me), but I have realized that this is one of the most powerful things I can do right now – sharing, teaching, giving, without asking for anything in return.

Which is why I’m saying yes to this and no to the hundreds of other possible things I could be doing.

I’ve laid out the path, all I need to do is walk it.

(But you do need to know what is the one thing you should focus on and show up for. Give yourself some time to find your focus. Don’t just jump into the first thing you can think of. I recommend the book The One Thing as a good starting point.)

Do

There is an almost perverse kind of pleasure in doing what you’d set out to do.

Planning to do something rocks. Dreaming of doing something rocks too. The actual doing… not so much sometimes.

It’s easy to succumb to laziness and to come up with excuses to avoid doing something we’d planned to do. Often we can even derive some pleasure from this avoidance. But it never lasts.

On the other hand, I have discovered that it can be fun to be, well, disciplined. Obviously, we can’t be disciplined all the time, but with things that really matter, DOING can be the most satisfying, fulfilling and happiest feeling ever.

(Fun tip: You don’t need to be disciplined about everything, just the essential things that, when done, can move you forward or nearer to your Big Goals in Life, caps mine.)

When you actually do something you’d set out to do, and you do that consistently over time, you are in a good place to make some very magical things happen in your life.

Don’t take my words for it. Try it for yourself.

A simple trick

Human beings are not good with abstraction. “I want to read more books in 2017” is a vague resolution that is probably not going to happen for most people, unless you use this little trick:

Be ultra-specific about your goal. Numbers and dates are your best friends.

For example, to make my blogging consistent, I have committed to writing one article a week every Thursday. It’s set in stone (except in the case of Extreme Calamities). It’s very specific – one article, not two. And it must be published every Thursday, not Monday or Wednesday or Saturday.

We humans work very well within constraints and limits (even if artificial).

Another example – you want to read a lot more books this year. Why not commit to reading at least 20 pages every week day? “20” is a number, “every week day” is a date.

Again, don’t take my words for it. Try it for yourself.

The simple guide to financial happiness

blog, money

I never thought one day I’d be writing articles about personal finance or money, but here I am. Life is strange like that.

As a kid I was terrible at mathematics. That (and the insults from my fearsome Secondary Four A Maths teacher) made me steer away from anything to do with numbers.

Up until I was 27 (I turn 31 this year) there was never more than a few thousand dollars in my bank. I remember how there was once I hit $4,000 in my savings account, and it felt like I’d reached the pinnacle of my financial achievements.

I’m not very interested in status symbols, but I love food and books and travel and cameras and other hobby-related toys, so much of my money was spent on these stuff, lots and lots of stuff.

Oh, and whenever I’d accumulated about $2,000 in my bank, I’d feel rich enough to think I deserved a holiday. That was when you’d find me in front of the computer booking my next flight out of Singapore.

For much of my life I treated money like it was an afterthought, and spent it “like water”, in the exact words of my mum. It didn’t matter how little or how much money I had at any given time – I simply didn’t give much thought to how I handled or spent it.

I often consoled myself by thinking – I’m a creative and an “artsy” person, so I’m not supposed to be good at the money stuff… right?! People like us simply don’t have the genetic makeup for something as tedious as this – we have more important things to think about. Or so I thought.

I was never more wrong.

Like I said before, last year I had a rude awakening. I had been working very hard and earning money from photography since 2013, but by end 2015 I realized I’d managed to save very little money, having squandered about 90% of the money I had earned.

This threw me into panic mode. I was pissed. I was angry with myself. There was a lot of self-blame and confusion (where did my money go?!). I felt terrible that I’d worked so hard and had almost nothing to show for it – it was almost like I’d worked for nothing.

Suddenly I remembered something. A couple of years ago I’d been forced to see a fortune teller (long story) who had told me, “You have the potential to make a lot of money, but if you don’t know how to save, you are still going to end up poor.”

So when I was panicking about this situation back in end 2015, this little (ominous) statement from the fortune teller kept popping up in my head.

“…if you dont know how to save, you are still going to end up poor.”

My financial awakening

It took me awhile to figure this out: It’s not cool at all to be financially ignorant.

It’s not that I am suddenly a financial whiz or that I am now super rich. These haven’t happened yet, but since last year I have changed the way I think about money and that has made all the difference.

If I kept going the way I was going – spending money mindlessly, not bothering to save, spending on instant gratification rather than planning for my future – no matter how hard I worked, I would end up old and penniless.

This thought was scary enough to force me to start learning everything I could about personal finance.

One of my biggest inspirations has been the personal finance blogger Mr Money Mustache.

His writing overturned a lot of the wrong mindsets I had about money.

Because of his blog I was introduced to the concept of financial freedom, which blew my mind.

I never knew it was possible to retire young.

I never knew it was possible to be frugal and still enjoy life.

I never understood exactly how much advertising and society in general have brainwashed us into becoming such deeply entrenched consumers.

Also, the more I read and learned and studied, the more I figured out what all these rich and financially competent people have in common (and no, it’s not trust funds)…

How to become rich

The only way you can become rich is if you spend much less than you earn. Repeat that to yourself.

The only way you can become rich is if you spend much less than you earn.

It’s true of Warren Buffett, and it’s true of you and me.

Apparently, it doesn’t matter how much you earn. If you are a banker earning $30,000 a month who spends $40,000 every month on your expensive condo rental and on $400 dinners and $1,000 suits and a $2,000 per month car installment, you are going to be not just in debt but poorer than an admin executive who saves half of his $2,800 monthly salary.

Over one year, the banker is going to be $120,000 in debt while the admin executive is going to end the year with $16,800 in savings.

It’s bizarre, isn’t it?

Think of all the famous, supposedly dirt-rich people who splurge on mansions and yachts and private planes and go bankrupt.

And then think of my aunt and uncle who brought up three kids on a combined income of $3,000. And they still have money left over to go for holidays in Taiwan and Bangkok.

Having a high income is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT if you spend more than you earn.

It’s not how much you have, it’s how little you want

There is a brilliant little book titled The Millionaire Next Door.

It’s about how the truly rich often have frugal habits, live in smaller houses, drive cheaper cars (or not at all).

While the ones who are broke or in massive debt often appear to be rich simply because they live in big houses, drive big cars, own more expensive television sets.

It’s a sad facade.

Simple strategies

With regards to money, many of us are on auto-pilot. We inherit our parents’ attitude towards money or are influenced by our friends, or even by the media.

We want people to think we have made it. We spend money without thinking. We lust for condos that we cannot afford. We buy things that we don’t need and end up working so that we can earn more money buying things that we don’t need.

Many of us need to wake up, including myself.

And waking up is not enough. To achieve financial happiness, we must be willing to put in the work (as with any other thing worth striving for).

The following are practical strategies that I learned from my obsessive research on the topic of personal finance in my brave attempt to transform into a Financially Savvy Artsy Person™. I have put into action most of them – I really don’t want to write fluffy articles about things that don’t work in real life – and have benefited greatly.

I’m still learning and I still have a long way to go, but if you ask me, these will give you – as they gave me – a good start.

1. Track your expenditure

This is the number one thing you need to do if you want to overhaul your finances, because if you don’t know what you’re spending on, you won’t know what to cut out of your spending.

I use the excellent app Wally to do this. The idea is to track your expenditure religiously for an entire month so you have an idea of where your money goes. It’s somewhat laborious but crucial if you are serious about getting a grip on your finances.

(It took me maybe five false starts before I eventually managed to track my expenses for an entire month. Yes, the road to financial prudence can be a long and painful one, especially if you are as ill-disciplined and lazy as me.)

Use Wally to track all your cash expenses, and your credit card statement to track your credit card expenses. If you are Singaporean, Seedly is an app that allows you to connect your credit and debit cards – it then automatically tracks all your spending.

TIP: You must capture ALL your spending in order to have an accurate picture of your current financial situation.

2. Cut your spending ruthlessly

Once you know what you’ve been spending on, you can do the cutting down.

This is actually quite fun.

I’m sure you will find a lot of unnecessary expenses in your monthly spending, just as I did.

Subscriptions to online magazines and newspapers, Spotify, a brain training app, an online meditation programme… I cut all of that (except for Netflix, which I can’t seem to let go off, because… The Good Wife is the best TV show ever).

I stopped cabbing and got myself an EZLink card. I stopped buying books, my favorite all-time hobby that sets me back hundreds of dollars a month, a couple of thousand dollars a year. I ate out less, and if I did eat out, I would choose cheaper options. And dozens of other small things, but they add up.

(The underlying principle is: Do we really need all the things we think we need?)

But don’t just cut out the small stuff. I didn’t understand this at first until it was pointed out to me that my real problem lies in my big-ticket purchases – a $800 painting here, a $1,000 foldable bike there, a $3,000 trip overseas (still working on this).

So cut, cut, cut.

3. Start a separate savings account

Segregate your spending money from your savings. They are two completely different things.

For myself, after some research, I decide to start a separate savings account with CIMB. They only have branches and ATMs at two locations in Singapore, so it’s pretty hard for me to withdraw money from the account. That helps 😉

Don’t touch the money in this account. Unless you need the money to save a life.

4. Automate your savings

If you can only remember one thing from this article, it’s this – always save before you spend.

I’m a freelancer so my income can be in flux, so this is my little system: In my checking account, at the beginning of every month, I maintain a balance of about 3 months’ expenditure. Thereafter, every time I receive payment from my client, I transfer the entire payment directly to my separate savings account (see above). I’m into saving radically right now.

Every time we move into a new month, I top up my checking account so that the balance maintains at about 3 months’ worth of expenditure.

That also acts as my emergency fund. In case anything happens, I dip into it, but I never touch the money in my savings account.

If you are an employee, things are even more straightforward. Set up a Standing Instruction so that a certain amount of money is immediately and automatically transferred to your savings account the moment your salary comes in – out of sight, out of mind.

For some people that amount is 20% of their income every month; for some it’s 50%, and for others, 80% (in extreme cases). It’s up to you, but the more the merrier of course.

Remember to maintain an emergency fund so that you never have to use money from your savings account.

5. Increase your income

We have already established how important savings are, but once you know how to save, it’s time to work on increasing your income.

There are many ways to earn more money – get a part-time job, promote yourself more if you are a freelancer, start a small side-business, work as a virtual assistant on your days off, be a part-time florist via Instagram, change jobs, etc.

Yes, it’s not easy, and I applaud you if this is what you are trying to do right now, but I’m a firm believer of “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

It always helps to know how other people before you have done it before. This is a podcast I like that is all about how to side hustle and also features stories about people who have managed to make money doing things as disparate as selling photos on Pinterest or earning an additional $3,000/month via their blog.

Not for the faint-hearted, but you are not faint-hearted, are you?

6. Invest your money

This is an area that I am still learning about, but in terms of investment, due to the effects of compounding over time, it’s best to start as early as possible.

Also don’t get the wrong idea that you can only invest in things like property or the stock market. Anything you do that allows your money to grow is a form of investment, and that can mean investing in yourself if you are a freelancer or a solopreneur or a small business owner. Buy books that can teach you a much-needed skill, go for an online course, join a workshop – in short, invest in upgrading your awesomeness, and use your awesomeness to earn more money!

If you are thinking of investing in a more traditional, low-cost but effective manner, index investing is a pretty good way to do it.

As JL Collins said, “Stop thinking about what your money can buy; start thinking about what your money can earn”.

6. Avoid debt

Don’t allow yourself to fall into debt. Avoid installments (it’s stupid). Reconsider your expensive masters degree that requires you to take out a hefty study loan (will it really give you better opportunities at work?). Use your credit card smartly (or cut them up if you are prone to spending future money with your credit cards).

In other words, debt is evil (unless you are using it to build the next Apple).

People who are in debt can never start to build wealth until they clear their debt. And we know how difficult it can be to demolish one’s debt. So don’t even get there. Just don’t.

Finally, what is “financial happiness”?

So we have got the practical strategies out of the way. Let’s get abstract now…

Financial happiness isn’t just about being rich. And it’s definitely not about having a lot of money.

To reach financial happiness is to be at a place where you are no longer trapped, fooled, or controlled by money.

You are the master of money, instead of its servant.

Look around you. Looks at the two kinds of people around you.

The ones who are lost in an almost automatic and life-long pursuit of wealth and achievement and external affirmation. They don’t seem to know what they are doing.

And on the other side, the ones who seem to be… in control, balanced, happy.

Who do you want to be?

We underestimate how much control we have over our lives. We think it’s fate or destiny or our genes. But really sometimes it’s just ourselves…

We really can be whoever we want to be.

So it doesn’t matter if you are in a bad place financially right now. The best time to change course is now.

I wish you all the best in your journey towards financial happiness, and if you have any personal finance related stories to share, please feel free to comment below.

Thank you for reading this long post, and I’ll be back next week!

Do difficult things

blog, creative work, happiness

Contrary to what we usually believe… the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times – although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. – “Flow”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I believe in doing hard things, even though I’m not always good at practising what I preach.

Quite a few years ago I got into a habit of doing things that I didn’t feel like doing.

For example, every time I wanted to swim but felt like the pool was too cold for me to jump into, I made myself do it. Or when I didn’t want to eat healthy, I would make myself do the opposite and eat healthy instead.

Then I realised something – most of the things I didn’t feel like doing were things that were good for me, and I didn’t feel like doing them because they felt like a chore. But if I ignored how difficult the activity was and simply did it, I would reap its benefits and feel really… happy.

That’s basically what Csikszentmihalyi’s talking about in the quote above. His two main points are:

(1) Happiness is actually something we can create.

(2) We can create happiness by immersing ourselves in doing difficult but rewarding activities.

He wrote an entire book on this topic, so you can be sure that it’s a much more layered issue than I’ve made it seem, but I think he’s right.

Like a few months ago when I did a pretty big photoshoot in Kuala Lumpur – three full days of shoot, a huge crew, shooting in the blazing hot sun, a long shot list – it was so physically and mentally demanding that by the time we were done with the shoot, the happiness level of the entire crew went through the roof. If it had been a simple one-hour shoot, I don’t think we would have ended it with a good dinner at a famous tze char place in KL and a round of beer and big hugs and a pretty good feeling in our bellies.

Or how like when you have had a long, hard day at work and you come home and you crash on your sofa and you watch a really good show on Netflix like Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul and you think to yourself, ahhhh, now this is heaven. It probably wouldn’t feel the same if you had already been lounging at home the entire day being a couch potato.

We all want to find happiness. Sometimes we find it staring into the eyes of someone we love. Sometimes we find it on an airplane traveling 500 miles per hour towards a new city. But sometimes we find it in a hard and dark place, and when we finally emerge out of it we are drenched with satisfaction, peace and something resembling… happiness.

2016 annual review

annual review, blog, happiness

tree

So… here we come, to the end of 2016.

I turned 30 this year, so it feels a little like I’ve rounded a corner.

I can’t help but think about what a wild ride the last 10 years have been.

It hasn’t been easy getting here, but as of now, I am very happy with the small life that I have built for myself.

After struggling for so many years, I’m deeply grateful to have found a vocation (photography) that I want to spend a long time doing. I’m thankful to be living on my own in a lovely apartment; to be the parent of two crazy cats; to be financially stable; to have so much freedom in so many aspects of my life; to be surrounded by so many people I love.

screen-shot-2016-12-23-at-1-38-06-pm
One of my two crazy cats…

But I still have a long way to go, and there are still a lot of things I haven’t learned.

Hence this annual review.

I’m borrowing this idea from James Clear, who writes an annual review every year asking himself three questions:

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What am I working toward?

I’m going to do the same thing, plus a little bit more.

But before I go on, there’s something else I want to say.

screen-shot-2016-12-27-at-11-14-26-pm
Sunrise in San Francisco, February 2016

We all want to live a good life, but what is a good life?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this question.

I’d be lying if I say that I have it all figured out, but after having spent so much time thinking about it, here’s my little conclusion:

Gratitude.

A simple but powerful notion.

Be grateful for the life you have NOW, and you can be the happiest person on Earth.

Be incapable of gratitude, and you will find it hard to find happiness no matter where you go, what you achieve, who you meet.

I’d rather be a happy nobody than a depressed billionaire anytime.

Once you can learn to be happy about the place you are at right now, you can then begin to craft a sweet life that you love with the other lego blocks of life – good relationships, good health, financial well-being, having a career that you enjoy, etc.

Yes, those things are important, but remember, they mean NOTHING if you are intrinsically unhappy.

So, with gratitude as my foundation, let’s go through my 2016, and let’s look towards 2017 together!

What went well this year?

Work

This year I found representation with an international photographer’s agency. That means they help to promote me and help me get big jobs with potential big clients such as NIKE, HBO, Coca Cola, etc. It’s a new thing for me and a big milestone!

And… my first photography assignment of 2017 is going to be for The New York Times. I. Can’t. Wait. It’s been a huge dream of mine to shoot for them. Will write about how this happened in a separate blog post!

Travel

travel
A year on the road!

I visited three continents and almost twenty cities this year, from San Francisco to L.A. to Copenhagen to Budapest to Tokyo to everywhere in between. Sometimes for work, sometimes for fun.

Travel is never wasted; everywhere you go there is a lesson to pick up. Looking forward to the places 2017 will bring me to!

Here’s where I stepped foot on in 2016 – San Francisco, Portland, L.A., Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Split, Budapest, Prague, Munich, Taipei, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hokkaido.

Money

I had a rude awakening about money early this year. I’d had a couple of years of nonstop working, but in January this year I realized I hadn’t managed to save much at all. So I decided to start getting better at this whole… financial thing.

I became obsessed with this topic. I scoured the internet for articles. I read countless personal finance books. My efforts finally took me to Mr Money Mustache. His writings and his life story helped to transform my mindset towards money. Not exaggerating.

Over the last year I have managed to save more money than I have ever saved over my entire life (true story). My mindset towards money has also changed drastically. I look forward to achieving financial freedom in less than 10 years.

I’ll write more on this topic in future posts (it’s a HUGE topic, and one of my favorites too), but it’s enough to say that I’m really glad this happened to me in 2016.

PS: I’m still a work-in-progress because traveling is still one of my biggest expenses, and I LOVE to travel…

Writing

One of the happiest things that happened to me this year was getting back to writing again. I had been writing sporadically on and off on my personal journal, and I’d had many false starts with having a public blog, and things had always fallen through. Ask my friends. They know my failures the best.

But I have begun writing consistently for this blog and it’s been wonderful. Truly wonderful. What used to plague me – major writer’s block – doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore, because now I am writing for a different reason – to genuinely help other people. It has become easy to write because now I am just sharing everything I know honestly, no holds barred.

It’s a wonderfully liberating feeling.

And the best thing? When I receive positive feedback from people who read this blog, or when people very honestly share their struggles and their life stories with me.

Never estimate the power of human connection, even if it’s electronic 😉

Giving back

This year my friend Cynthea and I got together to start A Simple Day, a collective that hopes to spread happiness through the idea of simple living. But soon we will team up with our formidable friend Daniel to create something we are going to call the Happy Collective. What is it going to be about? You’ll find out soon…!

What didn’t go so well this year?

Loss

This year my aunt passed away unexpectedly from sleep apnea related complications. Our beloved, lovely friend Cheese from Taiwan also passed away from cancer earlier this year. It made me think about death. Actually, even on good days I think about death a little too much. I have a deep, deep attachment towards life, and yet have a morbid fascination for death. Which leads me to…

Spirituality

Spirituality was a big part of my life in 2015 and helped me through some bad times. But 2016 was a good year, so when things are good, you don’t think about praying. You don’t think about God quite as much. It’s a complicated issue. And of course, the less you pray the less you want to pray. But as I mentioned earlier, I have been struggling with the idea of loss and death (not just my own, but also that of my loved ones). In the next year I definitely want to go back to reconnecting spiritually again, in order for me to come to terms with this fear.

Health & fitness

screen-shot-2016-12-28-at-12-04-09-am

This year I fell sick quite a bit. I also had a health scare where I had to be hospitalized and go through an endoscopy and a colonoscopy procedure. Thankfully things turned out fine in the end! And I have always wanted to experience staying overnight in a hospital, so that was (a little) fun…

Exercise-wise, I started running last year, which continued to 2016, but tapered off towards the end. I would have squash sessions with my friends sometimes, but exercise wasn’t a very big part of my life.

I also didn’t have the best diet.

What am I working toward?

screen-shot-2016-12-28-at-2-33-11-pm

I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I have come up with a few themes that will guide me in 2017. These are the things my life needs right now in order for me to live an even sweeter, more joyful and more balanced life.

The “actions to take” are not exhaustive but are top priorities. They are there to help me create actual change in my life.

1. Health is wealth

Nothing is more important than health. I love life, so I want to live longer and live better. In 2017 I’m going to focus on my health.

Actions to take:
(a) Drink vegetable juice for breakfast every morning;
(b) cut out red meat from my diet;
(c) establish a weekly exercise routine and stick to it;
(d) meditate daily.

2. Less is better

In other words, focus on only the essential in all aspects of my life. I want to keep asking myself: What is truly important? What should I keep in my life? What should I throw out? What is the one thing I can do right now – rather than many things – to advance my career, improve my relationships, become healthier? In 2017 it must be all about subtracting rather than adding.

Actions to take:
(a) Continue to declutter my home and wardrobe until I am left with what is essential;
(b) wean myself off social media.

3. Be useful to others

This year I found much meaning and purpose and joy in sharing what I have learned with others. Next year I want to continue to do the same and create more value for other people.

Actions to take:
(a) Continue to grow and update this blog and send out my newsletter once a week;
(b) write and publish a book that can help others.

4. Do what scares me

There are a few things that really scare me. So next year I want to try doing them. Even typing them out scares me, especially the half-marathon. Yikes. I will try my best!

Actions to take:
(a) Hike across Shodoshima (120km);
(b) attend a 10-day silent meditation retreat;
(c) run a half-marathon by end of 2017.

Happiness Principles

As a way to conclude this post, here are some of my Happiness Principles that help me to live a happy life. They also help me to remember what life is truly all about, and on bad days they even help me to feel better. I hope they help you too!

Gratitude.
Live in the present.
The past doesn’t exist.
The future doesn’t exist.
Only now exists.
Now is eternal.
Create a life you truly love (not a life that you pretend to love).
Try new things.
Get closer to the things you like.
Create.
Be balanced.
Sing in the shower.
Have faith in miracles.
Experience nature.
Accept life as it is.
Savour life.
Have less.
Give more.
Save more money.
Help other people.
Be comfortable with yourself.
Be kind to yourself.
Be imperfect.
It’s okay to be sad or to have a bad day sometimes.
Don’t try so hard to be happy.
Stop struggling.
Be effortless.

Have a great 2017 and may you experience true happiness, peace and joy in your life!

(I’d love to hear from you if you also did an annual review. Drop me a comment below!)

“Do you make enough money to survive?”

blog, creative work, money

In my long journey to escape this whole giant rat race, I have been asked this question multiple times.

When I was running my cafe, people – random strangers – would come up to me and ask bluntly, “So are you able to make money doing this?” (The honest answer? No.)

Later on, I’d had to deal with the skepticism of my family and friends about the inherent financial instability of my decision to find my own way in this world.

Meeting up with friends from school was painful sometimes. At that time they were all fresh university graduates and had all just secured comfortable jobs paying them $3,000 – $5,000 a month. They would openly and excitedly exchange their salary figures, but would look at me quizzically and ask, “So… are you doing okay? Surviving?”

It was a good time in their lives and I was truly happy for them, and it really wasn’t their fault at all that they would ask me something like that – they were just concerned about me.

Most people have this idea that freelancers cannot earn much money and don’t have much job security. When I was starting out, that was certainly true – I really was barely scraping by. For YEARS. To add on to everything was the interminable uncertainty, unlike my friends, who could look forward to their promotions and their bonuses.

But having come a little further along the journey, I want to dispel the misconception that freelancers cannot earn good money.

Fear, lots and lots of fear

Many people desperately want to quit their jobs and start their own small businesses or become a successful freelancer (just look around you).

They want the perks that come with the freelance life. The freedom. Not having to wake up to go to the office every day. Not having to answer to a boss or to have to do things that suck the joy out of their soul.

But they don’t want the sacrifices and the pain and the uncertainty that come with actually quitting their jobs to do their own thing.

Mostly, they are mortally afraid – of not having their salary automatically transferred to their bank accounts every month; of not making enough money to feed themselves.

Fear sucks.

Two truths

Truth number 1: Freelancers can make good money.

Truth number 2: Full-time employees are often underpaid.

I have a very talented friend working at an art studio who earns $1,800 a month. And another friend who’s a full-time designer who earns less than $2,500 a month, even though she’s an amazing designer.

That’s not cool.

They are clearly underpaid (for their talents). If they could just venture out to do their own thing, they might be able to earn more, and have more creative freedom at that.

Step into a world of possibilities

I want to show you a year-by-year highlight of how much money I have made since I quit university to pursue my own path.

I’m doing this to show you real figures that a real freelancer makes (and can potentially make), so that you are no longer in the dark about the financial possibilities of working for yourself.

It takes patience, lots and lots of hard work, and some creative thinking (and very thick skin – by that I mean a slight disregard for what society thinks of you). It can take years before you even start seeing any returns. And then it might take years for things to start getting stable.

But it’s all worth it.

No pain, no gain.

A rundown

2007 – A year after I quit university, I started running my cafe. Startup capital was borrowed from my parents (I’d like to acknowledge how blessed I am to have parents who were crazy enough to support me in whatever I wanted to do). Every month I paid myself about $300 in living expenses. This went on for about two years. In that time I barely went out (I spent most of my time working in my cafe) so I didn’t need that much money.

2009 – After my cafe closed, I decided to give a 9-5 job a try. I got a job at a local arts organisation. My take home pay was about $1,500/month. This went on for six months, then I quit.

June 2009 – I’d had my taste of a regular job, and I hated it. It confirmed my gut feeling: I’m not cut out to work for someone else. It was at this point that I steeled my resolve to make a living working for myself doing what I love. I didn’t know yet what that was; all I knew was that I didn’t want to work in an office. I wanted to create my own path, even if I didn’t have a roadmap. During this time I began trying to become a freelance writer (since, after some serious thinking, it was a skill I had and something I thought I’d enjoy doing). I started writing for free for a few publications. I survived on the money I’d saved from my job at the arts organisation.

2010 – Throughout 2010 I probably earned not more than $1,000 from all my freelance writing assignments. I realised at this point that freelance writing pays peanuts. I took on a translation project that paid somewhat better at $100 per article. It was a difficult time.

2011 – I began teaching tuition. I worked quite hard and had quite a few students so I began earning about $1,500/month. I didn’t really enjoy it but it helped me to survive while I continued finding my own way as a freelance creative. At this stage I was winding down on my freelance writing (although there wasn’t much to wind down haha) and trying to figure out my next step. Going back to a 9-5 job was definitely not an option for me.

2012 – I started part-time hosting a radio show. It paid a few hundred dollars a month. I was still teaching tuition to survive at this point, so I was earning about $1,500-$1,800 a month. Early 2012, I decided I would try to become a freelance photographer (something I’d always wanted to pursue but hadn’t dared to, since it felt like an impossible goal), since I’d failed to gain any traction in freelance writing. I started doing my personal photo project Creative People + Projects and began telling everyone I knew that I was now “a photographer”. Began shooting free and low-paying photography jobs for all sorts of different people.

April 2013 – After about a year of shooting, directly because of my photo project Creative People + Projects, I got my first 4-figure ($5,000) photography job and another 4-figure job ($3,500 to shoot a magazine cover) within a month. I consider these two jobs together as my first big break. The income I earned from them gave me the confidence (and the financial buffer) to keep persisting. I also started doing editorial (magazine) work that paid a few hundred dollars a shoot after I decided to ask.

April 2014 – This was a huge milestone for me: I got my first 5-figure photography job. I was jumping with joy when the job was confirmed. It was a commercial shoot for a private bank’s publication that paid about $13,000 for 3 half-day shoots.

June 2014 – From this point onwards, I began getting a steady stream of photography jobs. Most of them were 4-figure and 5-figure commercial jobs. I continued to shoot editorial work at the same time.

July 2015 – Another milestone: I got paid $20,000 to shoot an advertising billboard. 2 days’ work.

Dec 2016 – I recently got represented by a photo agency who will now help promote me and help me get bigger commercial/advertising jobs. It’s been 3 years since photography became financially viable for me, allowing me to pursue it full time; 10 years since I quit university to pursue my own path in life. In between, 7 years of self-doubting, uncertainty, searching, failing. In the last 3 years as a photographer I haven’t stopped working.

Some questions

The most important question in your mind – how does a freelancer get 4-figure and 5-figure jobs?

The grossly simplified answer – by working with corporations who have money. Companies are all about the bottom line. If you can help them earn money, they tend to pay well. So think of how your skills can help a company or a brand earn money.

Creativity is a much-needed skill in today’s society because it helps a company stand out from the noise. Example: If you are good at miniature food styling, you could have been hired by Singapore Airlines to consult for this brilliant advertisement that features… miniature food:

For photography, since it is so tied up with the commercial needs of companies and organisations (almost every brand in the world needs photography to tells its story), it becomes something that is highly valued.

If you want to be pragmatic, find a skill that the market needs (this is very important if you want a lucrative career as a freelancer) and that you enjoy, and become good at it, then use it to help companies earn money. Example: Aaron Nieh, a designer from Taiwan, is so good at what he does that he practically designs the album covers of every singer in Taiwan with good taste – his design helps them to sell their CDs; even the Taiwanese government engaged him to do design work for them. (In future articles I will write about how to attract the attention of companies and brands. According to Cal Newport, one way is to be so good they can’t ignore you.)

Still, generally, all kinds of freelance work has the potential to give you more income than if you were working a normal job (unless you have climbed to the upper levels of the corporate ladder, then that’s a different story).

Can a freelancer have consistent income?

There are always going to be ups and downs. Some months you earn more, some months you earn less. But at the end of the day, if you can get big jobs, the bigger jobs can make up for the bad days.

Does freelance work ever become stable?

Yes and no. There is no inherent stability in being a freelancer. One day you might be busy fending off potential clients, another day you might be sitting at home refreshing your email, hoping for a job request. And that’s okay. That’s a truth you need to live with if you want the other (good) parts of this life. To counter this, learn to save as much of your income as you can for rainy days (an important lesson that I learned that will be the topic for a future post).

Do you need to be the best in your field to earn a good living as a freelancer?

No. Is anyone really the best in their field? There’s always someone better. I definitely don’t think that I’m the best in my field, but I think I’m good enough. I have also built relationships over the years, giving me access to a network of opportunities. These people in my network think of me when they want to hire a photographer. That’s how I get many of my jobs.

At which point does one consider oneself a “successful” freelancer?

When there is more or less a constant stream of work; when you have more job requests than you can take up; when you need to reject jobs.

Is freelancing a good path for everyone to pursue?

The honest answer is… no. Or at least it can be much more challenging for people who have dependents and who have to support their family. Or if they already have a massive college debt to pay off. Having said that, nothing is impossible in this world. If this is what you want, nothing should stop you (or at least give yourself the chance to have a go at it before throwing in the towel).

The economy is really bad now. Should I still pursue my dream of being a freelancer?

Any time is an okay time to pursue your dream. It’s not about the economy. The economy will go up and down. But you can control how little you need. The less you need, the less you can afford to earn. That gives you some buffer to experiment with your life (especially if you are still young right now). So go and try. If you die tomorrow, would you regret the life you didn’t dare to live?

In closing

This was a long, slightly unnerving post to write. I’m a little nervous about putting it all out there like this, but I have learned that, if one wants to share effectively, honesty / total transparency is always the best policy.

I also wrote this to encourage the many people I know – including many of my friends – who want to quit the rat race and live life on their own terms. I hope this gave you a view of the possibilities of a freelance career and a strong push to pursue the life you want.

As always, I hope this article proved helpful and encouraging to you!

Got any more questions? Feel free to ask in the comment section below.

What I learned from doing something consistently for a year

blog, creative work, writing

For a period of about a year, I wrote a weekly column for Lianhe Zaobao, a national Chinese-language newspaper in Singapore. My article appeared every Thursday, like clockwork.

zaobao
My very first column. I wish I had a better picture of it.

I wrote about everything under the sun. My topics ranged from photography, traveling, swimming, reading… to music, meditation, death, etc.

The newspaper had a huge audience (as of August 2016, their circulation is about 180,000), and the other columnists were all older, experienced writers, so it was both incredibly pressurizing, and also a great opportunity and platform.

My column started in March 2013. I wrote close to 40 articles in total over the next year. At that time I was about 27 and not quite yet a photographer. Nobody really knew who I was and I hadn’t really been published anywhere before.

Here are some lessons I learned from the experience:

(1) The fact that an established national newspaper would let a young nobody write a weekly column for it suggests that… anyone can break into any inner circle, no matter how seemingly impenetrable. So young nobodies take heart.

(2) If you let a big organization or company or brand know you exist, you would have given your chances of being “discovered” a big boost. I first wrote to the newspaper floating the idea of me writing a column for them in 2009 (I just checked my email archives). The editor replied me a week later, saying we could meet up for a chat, but I never heard from them again until three years later.

(3) Try to sell yourself in some way, even if you’re a young nobody. When I wrote to them in 2009, apart from being the founder/owner of a cafe that had received some media attention, I had only written some articles on my blog and been published in some small, independent publications. Since this was all I had, I used them to sell myself. Any small achievements can be part of your portfolio, if (and only if) they are relevant.

(4) It can take awhile for things to happen. About three years passed since my first email before I heard from the paper again. I think a columnist had just ended his run, so there was now an opportunity for a new columnist to come on board. In those three years, I had managed to write a lot more and was by then hosting a radio programme for a national radio station. I was still a nobody, but a much more experienced nobody.

(5) Writing a weekly column was fun at first but soon it became quite frustrating, since I had to write a high-quality article once a week while I was trying to break into the photography industry. It was challenging. I never learned to accumulate my articles so I could give myself some lead time. This is something to note the next time I write a newspaper column again.

(6) Being committed to something like this made me work hard. I’m a lazy person by nature, but being a columnist for a national newspaper gave me enough pressure to actually deliver. Week after week. It FORCED me to work because I was already (very publicly) committed. It’s a rather sado-masochistic way to “get things done”, but it works.

(7) There is therefore a beauty in commitments like this. Take Casey Neistat, who uploaded a short vlog of his life every day for two years. His popularity exploded over those two years and he grew his Youtube subscribers to more than 5.8 million. He recently sold his company to CNN for $25 million.

(8) Most of us will never be Casey Neistat, but as you can see, doing something consistently over a period of time not only allows you to become better at what you do, you also get to bring your audience along with you on the ride. That audience will only grow in number over time.

(9) Know when to stop. Once a commitment/project stops being enjoyable, and after you have learned most of what you can from it, stop. Move on to something different that can allow you to grow in new ways.

So now…

This is my something different.

I will be publishing articles here once a week, every Thursday.

Thanks for joining me on this ride. I can’t wait to see where we’ll go together from here.

Write a comment below to tell me a little about yourself and your journey.

Let’s keep moving forward together!