Ultimate Freedoms; Financial, Location, Time, and Why I Want to Achieve them All.
Three types of freedom come to my mind when I think about how I want to live my life, Financial Freedom, Location Freedom, and the hardest of all; Time Freedom.
A few years ago I set clear targets for myself… become a recognized energy expert that I fulfilled and start my own business that doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the energy sector.
Before deciding to quit my latest amazing job, I was an Energy Expert at the United Nations in Africa, developing sustainable energy solutions for the UN agencies around the East African region. No doubt, it paid me well; however, I didn’t have enough time to travel or move freely during the workdays or spend my time the way I wanted to, which made me feel somewhat trapped. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy and satisfied, I used to travel on a monthly basis for work, meet new people, get to know different cultures, and, most importantly support vulnerable communities to have access to energy that is affordable, reliable, and sustainable.
I developed a significant number of sustainable energy projects in remote areas utilizing the latest available energy technologies to power more than 33 schools, 6 health facilities, and more than 6 community facilities and United Nations offices in Kenya during a short period; with a budget exceeding 7 million USD, before proceeding to a larger mission after that. I was extremely satisfied at that stage, knowing that thousands of people would directly benefit from this.
Although this was one of my best professional achievements, I knew I can achieve more with my time after spending long office hours; in many occasions, I had to work till midnight on these projects, living far from my family and friends with limited social life.
This brings me to my argument, financial freedom is nothing but a joke if you can’t associate it with location and time freedom.
During those years, I wanted to do more with my time, but fulfilling this desire is arguably the most challenging type of freedom cause with financial freedom comes bigger responsibilities; we need more time and energy to manage these responsibilities.
Today I run my businesses, and let me tell you, running your own business would make time and location freedoms somehow impossible. Don’t you agree?
Okay, it shouldn’t be the case, and if it is, it shouldn’t be the case in the longer term. I could argue that if you’re a business owner, and you can’t do whatever you want whenever you want after years of running your business, then you aren’t running the show correctly, cause if you do, you would have managed to delegate the responsibilities rightfully, and assigned the right people to the right tasks, and handed over the tasks correctly, so you can manage things from anywhere, spend your time on macro management, creative thinking, development, continuous enhancement and so on. This is what I keep reminding myself of. If I have to decide how things should be done, it means that I failed at leading my team and delegating tasks. As leaders and managers, we should avoid making the decisions ourselves rather than teaching our teams how to make the right decisions, even the critical ones, when needed.
To achieve the second possible type of freedom, Location Freedom, I need to manage my business mindfully, if I fail at delegating tasks, hiring the right professionals, assigning tasks, and handover the responsibilities to my team members, then I will never have the time to take the organization to the next level. I’m relatively close to this target, but I still need more time before I can officially be location free, work from everywhere, and try to spend my day the way I want.
How is this linked to Time Freedom?
The cycle of life, money, and time is astonishing; if we understand it well, we will win at life. The ultimate financial freedom is being able to create money out of money, but to do so, we need to first check the other box, time freedom; in other words, buying, literally buying, your time back by spending more money to make money.
Stage 1: Spend Time <<>> Make Money
Stage 2: Spend Money <<>> Buy Time <<>> Make Money
We are hired to create value for our organizations. If it’s the private sector, then we get paid to spend time on certain tasks allowing the organization creates higher financial value than the cost of our time and experience, at this stage we can’t spend our time freely, but we can buy time by hiring professionals to do tasks that would create higher values.
So the questions now are, what’s your definition of financial freedom? When you get to financial freedom, are you going to be free? or you will get into another trap of being available and working on the same thing from 07:00 am to 02:00 am? Will you have time for creativity and development ?Are you interested in being location free? and how close are you to this target? What about time freedom? Is it even possible for you?
