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Year: 2022

Scorecard

It’s been over 4 years since I transitioned out of my digital marketing career and I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself why I’ve done the things I’ve done which included being less involved & less excited about a well paying well established business and letting it gradually slip away.

While I was doing it, I didn’t know exactly why I was doing it, I just knew it had to be done. After years of introspection, trying to collect my thoughts to understand myself better, I think I’ve a little bit idea of why I chose that path.

My business and everything I was building felt like a game to me. The income/profits were points and I loved seeing my scorecard grow. As I got good at the game, setting a newer high score became more accessible, and less exciting. So I probably ended up changing the difficulty mode to hard i-e a painful career switch leaving most my leverage behind and starting over again.

I think I’m excited to try to rebuild. I’m earning much smaller game-points but excited to see the scorecard go up again from 0. I think I will be very excited when I break my previous high score on this new difficulty level.

The Two Ends

There are things that you need. Without those, you’d likely be in a miserable shape. You need a roof over you. Being homeless would likely make you extremely unhappy. You need a way to keep yourself warm when it’s cold, and cool when it’s hot. You need to eat a minimum amount of calories everyday. It’s almost always a good idea to spend money on whatever you need. I am willing to bet that the majority of the happiness you feel stems from fulfilling your needs.

There are things that you want. May be it’s a new phone. May be you want two cars instead of one. But there are certainly somethings that you want, but not really need. These could act as short-term happiness boosters. But usually these wants will not make a significant contribution towards your long-term happiness.

There are things that you like. May be you would really like a new carpet in your living room. Or a more pleasing work-station. Your likes probably also make contributions towards your short-term happiness. But probably not so much towards the long-term one.

There are things that you love. These are the things that you’d love to do if you had a large amount of resources whether time or money. May be you love travelling so much that for the ease of travel you’re willing to throw $100,000 on a better travel document. May be you really wanted to see the northern lights. May be, you want to travel twice every year for as long as you’re alive.

I’ve come to a realization that the kind of happiness that money can buy is often found in two things that are farthest from each other on our quadrant; need & love. Your happiness is either stemmed in the basics, or probably in the extravaganza. Everything in between is probably not worth your money.

Home

A few weeks ago I (temporarily) moved outside of Pakistan for professional reasons. I will likely not be back in Pakistan for the next few months. My initial feelings after spending first 30 days here is that even though this place may classify as having better standards of living, there’s more to life than that. And even though being here is financially better for me, which is why I’m here, it doesn’t translate into me being happier.

Better savings today may mean more financial freedom in the future – which is all very great – but my happiness stems from people. My home is where my family and friends are and hence I can not wait to go back.