Okay, now we’re getting down to brass tacks. I’m going to show you what the process of getting your shit together and winning at life actually looks like.
For me, this has meant living in the tropics and working for myself. For you, it could mean getting a promotion, or just going a week without drowning in your own inbox. Maybe it’s circumnavigating the globe in an origami kayak. I don’t know your life. But the beauty of having your shit together is that anything is possible.
Getting it together takes three steps.
1. Strategize: Set a goal and make a plan to achieve that goal in a series of small, manageable chunks.
2. Focus: Set aside time to complete each chunk.
3. Commit: Do what you need to do to check off your chunks.
Here’s what these steps looked like for me, in the wake of that Oh shit moment I mentioned earlier:
To achieve my GOAL of quitting my corporate job with all its corporate benefits, I needed some cash reserves. First, I put out feelers to my freelancer friends. After hanging out their own shingles, I asked, how long had it taken to book jobs, and then actually start getting paid on those jobs? Taking into account their answers and my own plans, I concluded that three months’ worth of expenses—mortgage, insurance, phone bill, pizza fund, etc.—would tide me over while I got my new freelance business off the ground.
When I added up my monthlies and multiplied by three… well, it was a lot. Nest eggs usually are. So my STRATEGY was to amortize, which is a fancy word for “break it into small, manageable chunks which are then spread over time.” I did the math. Saving that money in two weeks would be impossible, but saving it over one year was eminently doable.
Next, I made a chart with 365 squares and hung it on my refrigerator. Each square represented a day of savings. Then every morning, for a whole year, I FOCUSED for just a couple of minutes: I fired up my banking app, transferred a set dollar amount from my checking to my savings account, and used a red marker to color in a corresponding square on my chart.
Every day, a small COMMITMENT. It didn’t even hurt my pocketbook, because I’d divided my overall goal into 365 mini-goals.
As time went by and I watched the sea of red advance across my fridge, I got more excited about what it represented: cold hard cash, yes, but also freedom from corporate bullshit (and eventually year-round sunshine and unlimited access to palm trees). And because I was calmly proceeding toward my goal in small, manageable chunks, I was able to take on even more things that I wanted to do along the way, without feeling overwhelmed.
For example, during the course of the job-quitting and freelance business-starting (and essentially as a direct result of having my shit together on those fronts), I got a deal to write The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck. Huzzah! But there was a catch: the book—all 40,000 words of it—would be due in the absurdly short span of one month.
You read that correctly. One motherfucking month. Eleven months less than it took me to save up all that money, eight months less than it takes to gestate a human being, and two months less than the trial period during which one can test a thousand-dollar Casper Mattress and return it for a refund if not fully satisfied.
Well, I wanted to write the book, I wanted to hit my deadline, and I did not want to drive myself (or my husband) crazy. So what did I do? I looked at the calendar and made another plan. I determined that I’d have to generate a certain number of words per day (factoring in the occasional day off because, hangovers); then I set aside some time each day, sat down, and, you know, did it.
Strategize, focus, commit. That’s what having your shit together looks like.
Same deal with building a house in and moving to the Caribbean. Yes, it took some sacrifices, but just like my Quit-My-Job Fund, those were spread over time. My husband and I strategized on what we could afford and how long it would take, focused on small parts of the whole (him applying for loans, me corresponding with the builder); and committed—financially and psychologically—to both the overarching goal and the smaller, easier mini-goals along the way.
In this way, life is like an adult coloring book. You simply work your way through each little section until the big picture materializes before you.
When the new house was ready, it was time to put our Brooklyn apartment on the market. When the apartment was sold, it was time to get rid of furniture. Then arrange movers. Then pack. Then wake up in paradise with the birds chirping and the palm trees swaying and OH MY GOD IS THAT A GIANT SPIDER?!?
Grab those colored pencils, because you’ve earned yourself a fun little exercise to illustrate my point!