Design Your Life Using First Principles Thinking (REVIST)

Learn to reverse-engineer your ideal lifestyle and unleash creative possibility.

This is arguably the single best approach for learning how to think for yourself and make decisions without pre-existing bias from societal norms. This isn't about casting tradition to the wind; it's about aligning our lives with our deepest values

Takeaways: 

• Discover the 3 stop process for implementing first principles decision making 
• Determine what are the most important decisions that will impact your life
• Confidently live your life without  future regrets by investing effort now

From planning a wedding that genuinely reflects your values to reassessing the very pillars of education and work-life balance, my story, and the wisdom I've gleaned along the way, serve as a testament to the power of first principles thinking and the profound impact it can have on living authentically.

Sponsored by: SafetyWing Travel Insurance 

About the show:

Sam Laliberte -  entrepreneur, digital nomad and freedom seeker, hosts the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast to expose people to the many ways you can design your dream life and unlock your own version of the freedom lifestyle. Her guests have empowered themselves through flexible work as a way to “have it all” - financial, location AND schedule freedom.

Transcript

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Designing Freedom Lifestyle With First Principles

Speaker 1 0:00

It's less about being alternative and more about being intentional . It's not so much about rejecting how things are done , but more about choosing how I want things to be done for me . You're listening to the Freedom Lifestyle podcast series . I'm sharing relatable stories of freedom seekers who ditched conventional office life and courageously asked for more . The energy just completely shifted . My entire being just felt so free . My business was still generating income while I was on the beach . I decided to quit and just stay at home . I really can't work for anyone but me . It's literally just doing whatever the hell you want to do . As for me , I'm your host , sam , and I've spent the last four years creating a business that allows me to work from anywhere .

Speaker 1 0:48

The Freedom Lifestyle looks different for everyone . What's your free ? When is the last time that you asked but why ? Why do we do something this way ? Why is it like that ? Why is the way that it's always been done ? Why is that the tradition , I'm guessing , if you listen to the Freedom Lifestyle podcast . First of all , thank you . Second of all , I'm guessing that this is a common question that you ask , that you are trying to live more thoughtfully and deliberately when it comes to making important decisions in your life .

Speaker 1 1:20

In this episode , I'm going to teach you how to make decisions using first principles and how you can use this methodology to actually design your dream lifestyle . There are three steps that I'm going to walk you through , so we'll go through each of those and I'll give you some examples of decisions that I'm making right now using first principles , including my upcoming wedding . And then I'm also going to talk about the personality traits and headspace that you really want to be in mentally in order to be successful . You definitely need courage , humility and a beginner's mind in order to use first principles to design your life . So more on that in this episode , but first I want to tell you a little bit about today's sponsor .

Speaker 1 2:02

This season of the Freedom Lifestyle podcast is made possible by some of my favorite brands and companies that are empowering the digital nomad movement , one being Safe Doing . They offer travel insurance that , yes , includes COVID-19 coverage , which is a must right now for many countries . To even let you in , safe Doing covers quarantine costs even if you're outside your home country . Click on the referral link in my show notes to learn more and unlock some extra ease during your next adventure . So , as I'm sharing this information today's episode . I'm expecting that there's going to be some nodding along as you're listening . There's going to be some moments where you realize that you're already doing this and that , intuitively , this is how you've been acting . That is exactly how I felt when I heard about this concept .

Speaker 1 2:54

This is something that comes pretty naturally for me , but I never really had a term for it . I thought it was something that actually was a problem of mine . I mean , that's what I was told my whole life when I've been an employee in the past . On many occasions I've received the feedback that I can be a bit combative and question authority , and even someone called me a little bit edgy when decisions were being made . It is common for me to ask why are we doing something this way ? When there's a process that's in motion that I see flaws in or I see can be improved , I can't help myself but to ask for the logic behind a decision or share my idea for an innovative approach to traditional ways of doing things . It's always come quite naturally for me , but it hasn't always been well received in many settings .

Speaker 1 3:48

My entire freedom journey started with me questioning office life and the traditional nine to five in the office where we can see you dynamics . I didn't understand why we were still operating in this way when we had the internet and we had so many different tools that allow us to really work from anywhere , and I saw there was just so much more that could be gained than could be lost by having more of a flexible work environment . And following that why and following that curiosity led me to where I am today , and while it hasn't always made me the most popular person in the room , I'm now realizing that this has been a natural instinct that I've had all along , and I got really excited when I learned about this concept of designing your life using first principles and making decisions using first principles . This methodology is most often used in startup environments or technical environments . When there's a lot of design whether it's a website or a physical product or a event that's taking place is to really let go of all of the assumptions and let go all of the biases that you have and start from scratch .

Speaker 1 4:59

When we design and when we make decisions , it's very common for us to use concepts and analogies that already exist . We see these as almost like mental shortcuts and okay , well , this is already how it's being done , so we're starting with this base and we can disguise these mental shortcuts as best practices and proven best practices , without ever questioning how we even got to these quote unquote best practices in the first place . So step one is really being open to ask about why and to have humility with yourself , to acknowledge that you may have , consciously or subconsciously , been making decisions in the past , or were about to make a decision that you're currently facing , using a bunch of preconceived notions and expectations about how things should be done or have always been done or expected to be done , or how you've seen things to be done . And so , first of all , just have some humility with yourself of you're human . We're all going through this life with a millions of downloads and messages that we're receiving on a daily basis from media , from society , from our peer groups , from content that we're consuming , from people that we're talking to to our own monkey minds giving us inspiration all of the time , and so it's a lot of information that your brain is having to process and organize , and so , naturally , if it's doing its job , it's going to be trying to help you by going into a decision and making it easier , by kind of taking the first steps , for example , planning a wedding . Right , there are a lot of decisions that are already made for me .

Speaker 1 6:43

If I'm going the traditional route , you are wearing a dress , your dress is going to be white , you are going to wear a ring , you are going to eat certain food , have a particular type of dessert , maybe there's live music , maybe there's some traditions , maybe there's religion involved , but there's a lot of decisions that are kind of already made for you . And , yeah , that can be really helpful to have a template . But you want to start with just acknowledging hey , maybe that's something to be questioned . Maybe this concept of wearing a white wedding dress , while I never really thought about it before , when I do think critically about it , isn't actually something I want to do , and I don't even really know why that's a thing . I don't even know the history of why wedding dresses are white . I just know that my best friend just did it for her wedding and my mom offered to go dress shopping with me and she set us up with a bunch of dress shops that specialize in white wedding dresses .

Speaker 1 7:41

And so what are those biases that are already shaping your decision and shaping your life ? So that's step one , and for that you need to have humility , so you need to be gentle with yourself and willing to face the facts that you too may have fallen victim to societal expectations or preconceived notions about how things are done , but that it's okay , that we are awakening now and we are looking at this information with new eyes and we're deciding if it's right for me . So you need to have that humility and you really need to have a beginner's mind . You have to be willing to start from scratch and actually take all of that information out and head to step two , which is what are the actual truths ?

Speaker 1 8:26

When I think about the concept of the 40 hour work week and something that I've questioned for a long time , actual truths are okay . Here are things I need to get done this week . These are commitments I've made . These are goals that I have for the month , the week , the day that need to get done within a certain particular timeframe , and I have an idea of generally how long this task should take . That is an example of an actual fact that I'm going to now take these facts and these actual truths to decide whether I want to work a 40 hour work week versus the other option , which is what most of society defaults to is I'm just going to sit on my computer until five o'clock and then I'm going to close my laptop and I'm just going to keep working and keep playing around with things and keep moving things forward until around five o'clock and I'm going to start at about 9 am and I'm just going to do stuff because that's when I'm supposed to be working and I should be putting in 40 hours versus questioning how long it is even going to take for you to do your work and then base how many hours you're going to work based on that . So it's like something that comes very naturally for me . Something regarding my upcoming wedding is that I know Jared and I both want to have an experience where our close loved ones are there and we want you have a moment in time that honors this transition in our lives into married life . So that's an actual fact that we have that we both share , and then you build off of it from there .

Reimagining Education and Work-Life Balance

Speaker 1 10:02

Third example this is way into the future , but honestly it is something that's on my mind right now . If I did have a family , what type of education system would I put my children through ? And so an actual truth with that is I know that I would want my children to have a learning experience that would allow them to explore things that they're personally interested in and follow their own curiosity and be able to go as deep as they want into problems and ideas that resonate with them . I want them to have the freedom to fully go deep into their own interests , and I start with that . I don't start with saying , oh , will the traditional education system and putting them in public school or private school with government regulated classroom curriculum is wrong . I go into it with , starting with like what do I want out of this ? And then seeing if what the traditional ways of doing things will actually fit into the goal . So that's actually looking at it with the hard truths . And part of looking at the hard truth and following that curiosity of why things are the way they are is to look at the history of where these traditions came from and why society even got to where it was .

Speaker 1 11:13

When we look at the 40 hour work week , for example , this was invented and started almost 100 years ago and it was from Henry Ford who came up with the 40 hour work week as a way to create more productivity in his workforce . He realized that if he had three eight hour shifts then he could have 24 hour coverage in his plants all day long , and so he started the 40 hour work week to create efficiencies and maximize productivity . And then a bunch of other companies followed suit with that best practice , and we've kind of just been doing that ever since , and I've seen the headlines about . Now there's discussions about moving to a four day work week , and all of that's great , but I still think it's completely arbitrary . How can we just determine how long something should be taking , especially with the way that jobs are changing ? It's one thing to be working in assembly plant where your output is directly correlated with time in , but there are tons of jobs , and increasing every day , where your output is not directly correlated to time in , and so to arbitrarily decide how many hours a week we should all be working in , what those hours should be to me really needs to be questioned , and it should be done on a case by case basis , and you should be using first principles when you're making those decisions , right .

Speaker 1 12:42

Another thing that's really interesting is if we look at the history of the classroom setting , specifically lecture style education and having children in classrooms for most of the day that was actually set up to support society . No one ever said what is the best way for children to learn . When we were deciding this , it was just as much about child care and supporting working families more than it was for the education and the learning environment . And so , first of all , acknowledging that , okay . Well , if , if I'm changing my work and I don't really need my children to go to school for 40 hours because that's not how I'm working necessarily , and maybe now I'm more remote and I'm flexible , does that traditional education system even make sense for my lifestyle and is that even helpful ? Or , at this point , is there more to be gained by questioning that ? So , once we've worked on step one and step two , we've asked the question but why ? We've been honest with ourselves about what bias are we going into this decision with ? And am I trying to use these mental shortcuts as best practices without everything questioning whether these best practices make sense ? For me , that step one and then step two is to look at the actual truth . What are the facts that come from you and that are the reality of the situation ? And now for step three .

Speaker 1 14:06

Right , you really need courage now . You need the courage to design from scratch . You need the courage to resist the urge to Google a template . Yes , you can lean into inspiration and ideas from how other people are doing things . I mean , you're literally doing that right now by listening to this episode and hearing how Sam uses first principles to design her life , and you know I appreciate you listening immensely . But I don't want you to recreate exactly what I have in mind for my wedding and my relationship celebration and I don't want you to think about how I'm using my 168 hours a week to determine how much I should actually be allocating that for work . I want you to find inspiration in what I'm doing , but use your own first principles about your own truths in order to find the solution that's going to work for you For our wedding .

Speaker 1 15:01

Things that we've really been questioning in particular is whether we even want to be legally married , whether I will formally convert to Judaism because Jared is Jewish and I grew up Christian . These are difficult conversations to have with each other , but they're really , really important and we're going into these conversations with what are the expectations that other people might be putting on us or society might have led us to that we want to decide . Is that actually what we want for ourselves , and so those are two decisions that we're making right now that I , honestly , I don't know . Another one is having a family one day . Is that in the cards for us ? And the main reason that we've been holding back from making that decision is because we have this fear of giving up our freedom .

Designing a Lifestyle With Intention

Speaker 1 15:57

So many times I have been told oh , that's all fun and games , to live the remote lifestyle and be a digital nomad until you have kids , and kids change everything and kids ground you and kids need stability and kids need security . This is what we've just been told over and over again , and I've been listening to that and I've been thinking , oh crap , you're right . Well , that means I have to have one or the other , and so I've been now going out of my way to source inspiration and examples where that isn't the case , learning about families that are using international schools and raising what they're called third culture kids , and I've learned that there are so many different ways that you can do this , and so the truth is is I don't know if we want to have a family , but I do know that , if I did , I see immense benefit in educating children through real life experiences and having very interactive learning environments . I can picture my kids , you know , speaking more languages than me and going to school with kids from all over the world and having them live in multiple countries throughout the year . But something that I do think is a real concern would be the stability aspect , and so , if I think about my own lifestyle living this , one of the hardest things is you know , you meet these friends and you meet these people all around the world and you get really close in three or four months and then you have to say goodbye and you don't know if you'll ever be back and ever see them again , and it really makes you wonder whether it's even worth investing in these relationships . And that was something that Jared and I started to realize about a year and a half ago and started to change how we were doing things , where we're now intentionally going back to the same places so that we can maintain those relationships , and it's actually been really beautiful to have different groups of friends and relationships in different parts of the world where it's like , okay , I'll see you in 10 months . And so you know , using our own first principles of what's important to us and how do we define stability , while also taking advantage of how we want to live our ideal lifestyles . It's thinking okay , well , if we did that , then that's what we would want for our children too , rather than goodbye forever to your new friend . It's you know , I'll see you in six months , and so that's like a very real example of how you can totally question how things are done and what you're told , to design something from scratch , and it can be a lot of fun and really exciting and empowering when you realize that all of these decisions are ultimately yours to make .

Speaker 1 18:31

Some people can hear this and find it exhausting . Wow , that sounds like a lot of work for you to constantly be questioning things and to constantly be pulse checking if this is how things should be done , and I honor that reaction . I really do . It's less about being alternative and more about being intentional . It's not so much about rejecting how things are done , but more about choosing how I want things to be done for me . So it's not joining these subcultures and these fringe movements for the sake of being part of them . It's about aligning your lifestyle with your values , and there's a lot of societal traditions that I am here for . I really wanted to get engaged . I've wanted to get engaged my whole life and I didn't push back on that desire . I have a beautiful ring on my left hand , on my ring finger , and I love it and it makes me really happy and that is a tradition that I kept and was important to me , and so I wouldn't want you to think that committing to using first principles to design your life is committing to this lifestyle of examining everything and putting in so much effort and to pushing against the grain and for making things being really hard . It's more just about figuring out what are the most important decisions that are going to be impacting your life and being really thoughtful about the actions you're taking and being really intentional about the track that you essentially put yourself on .

Speaker 1 20:14

But I get exhausted too , like to be honest . We have almost canceled our relationships Celebration like five times , so we will see what happens on June 4th 2022 . But every time we kind of get overwhelmed and exhausted and just think this sounds like so much work . Why would we even do this ? We take a moment and we honor that . We're feeling really overwhelmed by the effort that would be required in order to bring this unique vision to life , and that is okay to feel overwhelmed by it . However , remind ourselves of the trade off . So if I didn't do this or I took that easy route or I followed the templated lifestyle , what is the trade off ? And then also let's look back at the times where we did the courageous thing , we put in the effort and we worked together and co-created and did the hard thing and how rewarding that was . So that kind of helps us when we're feeling a little bit exhausted about it and also reminding ourselves like you don't have to do it for everything .

Speaker 1 21:21

It's about deciding what's important to you and putting effort into those things and , honestly , if you're not putting effort into the most important decision that are going to shape your life , what are you putting your effort into ? I really believe if you're thoughtful about the most important areas of your life that impact you for the longest amount of time and shape more of your day to day is one of the best actions that you can take now to prevent a future scenario where you're living with regrets . I've seen people who live with regrets . I've seen people in my life who are at the end of the road and wish they did things differently and wish that they acted more courageously and wish that they questioned things more , that they used their own first principles to make decisions , to design their own lifestyle . And sometimes you see that midlife crisis but worse , you watch people kind of wrap up their life knowing that they had so many regrets .

Speaker 1 22:16

And I just believe that a lot of these decisions that we're making right now and being intentional about them , while they can be a lot of work , it's an investment in your future . It's investment in feeling confident and satisfied by your life . So I hope you can find inspiration in my own story and the way that I'm using these principles to design my life , but I hope you don't copy mine . I hope you just think about it next time you're going to do something and realize , hey , I've actually never questioned this before . Or wait a minute , let's take a step back and really make sure that I'm using my own facts and my own desires to make this decision that's ultimately going to really shape the rest of my life .

Speaker 1 23:00

So thank you so much for tuning in . I will be in your ears again next week with another interview at this episode . I'm so excited for you to meet my next guest and , if you haven't listened to the ladies who've been on this season so far . I really encourage you to go back to the last few episodes . I'm super proud of this roster in season four , but hey , if you caught up , there's three seasons before that . We're almost 60 episodes in . So have a listen and , even better , share this with someone in your life that could really use this framework as a way to start designing their own lifestyle and to make decisions for themselves , using their own first principles . Until next time , enjoy your freedom .