The pursuit of freedom

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Dear Reader,

One of the major themes my writing has focused on is living an intentional life. “Deep life” would be another way to put it.

It is something that I aim for: building a life where I have control over what my day-to-day looks like.

I have tried to obtain that in the past. When I started my first blog, the goal was to build financial independence. While that did not go as planned (the ROI on blogs was a downward slope), it taught me an important thing:

This “something valuable” is called career capital. With my blog, while I was sharing helpful articles, there wasn’t really much value in what I had to offer. I didn’t have enough knowledge or experience to offer extraordinary guidance that people would be willing to pay for. Hence, it was not a sustainable business.

I’ll share an example to better explain what I mean.

Let’s say I got a job at a firm as a junior developer (it could be any entry-level role in any field). If I were to ask the management to reduce my work hours from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week while receiving full benefits, they would most likely laugh at my face and offer me 0 hours a week instead.

Instead of doing that, let’s say I stay with them for longer, improve my skills to the level where I have a full understanding of their entire system, where I can draw connections and build solutions in ways that others couldn’t, to the point where I become one of their most valuable engineers.

What would happen if I were to ask to make my schedule more flexible now? The answer, most likely, would be that they would do it.

There are a lot of companies right now that offer almost complete flexibility as long as you get results. You don’t even have to show up at the office. You could take a 3-month break to go on a world tour if you wanted. In return, however, you have to be skilled enough that the work you do is very, very difficult to replicate. You’d have to become so good they can’t ignore you.

An important thing to recognize here is that if you’re able to do this, you wouldn’t really be tricking your employer. They would happily give you as much freedom as you need as long as you deliver results. Most employers care more about the value you can provide rather than how many hours you spend at the office.

This is what I’m aiming for now: to build carrer capital, to obtain expertise.

I’m hoping that this gave you something interesting to think about over the weekend, to reconsider your approach towards a freer life.

I’ll see you next week.

Warmly,
Suraj

If you'd like to hear more from me, here's my YouTube channel where I share lessons, experiments, tools, and resources to make life just a little better.