Should you actually be optimizing your life for freedom?

It’s surprising how big Tim Ferris’s podcast is, and still most of the people I meet haven’t heard it, let a lone know who he is.

I have received a lot of key information that has greatly improved my life over the last 8ish years of listening to his podcast.

He had a guest on the other day, Andrew Rosener, a domain broker, who was telling a story about walking away from a business he was about to launch.

Want to know the kicker, he made the decision literally the night before it was about to go live.

His reasoning?

He didn't want to do it. Well, what he actually said is when he was lying in bed reflecting on what his life was about to look like with this new business, it didn't align with what he wanted his life to be like.

He wanted to optimize for freedom.

And this new business would strip him of pretty much all the freedom in his life.

He would be flying from city to city doing meetings and podcasts, managing way more people as the business grew.

Another crazy part, he knew the business would be a success, he’d make a shit-ton more money.

But that would be less time with his family, less time to focus on hobbies, and Less time doing whatever he wanted with his days.

He had to weigh these two lives and only had a few hours to decide what he was going to do. He had to stop it now, or else this new business would have been let loose into the world. Once you let a business loose, it's hard to put it back in the bottle.

But his team had worked so hard on it and he invested a significant amount of capital into it.

It takes someone with a remarkably strong conviction and knowledge of what they want in life to make a decision like Rosener did.

I'd argue that 99 out of 100 people would continue with the business and be miserable with their life for the next 5-20 years because

They wanted the money.

Felt guilty.

Didn’t want to let down other people.

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Sometimes the best decision is actually:

To not make that investment in an IPO

To not date that person

To not start that new business and just focus on the one you're already running.

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Often, saying no is much harder than saying yes, especially when you had previously convinced other people to say yes... to start a new business.

I now realize I too want to optimize my life for freedom. I'm choosing fun and joy, so if I'm not having fun or it doesn't bring me joy, then I'm not doing it.

Which is a big reason why I'm so excited about growing this newsletter. I believe it's a key piece in optimizing for freedom.

I'm not saying you need to optimize for freedom, but you need to know what you are optimizing for; otherwise, you might be saying yes to the wrong things.

What hard decision that you’re teetering don do you just need to say no to?

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