When I had first started reading about FI/RE (Financial Independence Retire Early), it was mostly about cutting unnecessary costs and saving lots of money. I devoted a lot of my brain space to these ideas, even if I did feel that some of those “unnecessary” costs were important to my life (they stayed).
Even going gung-ho on the project, I could see that it would be many more years until I could retire in the style to which I aspired (Physician on Fire would eventually christen it “Fat FIRE.”)
Not too long into my journey, however, I came across this piece by The White Coat Investor: Using a Venn Diagram to Decrease Burnout. The posts from WCI have much catchier titles these days, but this article has stuck with me for 5 years.
Inspired by that Venn diagram, I have tried making a change or two to make my life better. After nearly a year of the pandemic, and a significant increase in my investment accounts, I am thinking more seriously about changes to build a better life now, rather than waiting for the future.
The Venn Diagram of Work
The idea of the exercise is to compare your ideal practice (or life) with the one you already have, paying attention to the overlap area. If the overlap area is decent sized, that’s good. If the overlap isn’t as large as you would like, then you need to work on moving your current job more to the right. Or get a new job that works better for you.
In the example below, we are talking about the light green area where your current job looks more like your ideal job.
That doesn’t look too bad. Not nearly as bad as this set up:
Honestly, this looks like an emergency. Either it’s time to look for a new job, or you need to have a very frank discussion with your boss. Possibly both.
This looks more ideal:
This job might not be perfect, but it looks a lot more like one that you might want to stay with for the long term. You might even choose to keep working here, even once you are set for money.
Designing the Ideal Job
The trick to this whole Venn diagram exercise is to know what your ideal job looks like. Keeping in mind that your needs and desires will change over time.
Another blog post that has stuck with me over the years is this one from The Happy Philosopher, titled “Alligators and Kittens.” Go read it, I’ll still be here. The main point: If you want to make your life better, you can’t just load up on the fun stuff; you also have to get rid of the bad stuff that makes your life miserable.
I have been thinking about this a lot in the past several months, and I have a few thoughts about what I would like to change.
Improving my hospital time
When I work in the hospital, everything else gets pushed to the background.
You may have noticed in my fitness logs that I have a hard time getting in any exercise: I can’t make it to class or a training session. In the winter months, when it gets dark early, there is little walking outside either (safety). Plus, it’s cold.
Other activities get put on hold as well, as my time and personal energy gets used up by work: blogging, reading for pleasure, even studying MKSAP with my buddy all had to be suspended for my last rotation. Also on hold: sleeping in, dealing with the mail, decluttering. My phone calls with family tend to get put off as well.
Right now, I don’t see much that I can do to make my time in the hospital less painful, unless I just want to do a bad job.
However, I can make the whole situation less painful if I can reduce the number of weeks I work there. Cutting out 1 or 2 rotations (or maybe more) could go a long way to make my life easier.
Improving my clinic time
Although my worst pain points, at the moment, are related to my hospital work, I am sure there are ways to improve my clinic weeks as well.
Working from home has introduced a number of improvements to the day:
- With no commute, I can sleep in later.
- The dress code is more relaxed.
- I don’t need to wear a mask!
- There are fewer interruptions in my office at home.
- The work load is, generally, lighter. Most of my patients prefer to see their doctor in person.
- With no commute, and no co-workers who might need my attention, I can reliably attend an afternoon yoga class (especially when I only commute down a flight of steps to attend via Zoom).
There are plenty of pain points as well. For these, I made a simple table of problems and (potential) fixes.
I am not sure if I will be able to arrange solutions to some of those issues. The high-brow approach of actually fixing a problem as opposed to slithering out of dealing with it seems to involve a lot more work. We will see how badly I want to address this.
The Cost
The astute reader will note that most of adjustments to bring my job closer to an ideal involve… working less.
Therefore, I had better plan to be paid less, if I can arrange the changes I desire. This is where efforts to achieve FI can pay off.
I know that I am not yet ready to retire: not financially, and not emotionally either (though I wouldn’t mind being able to take a long vacation).
However, knowing that I am getting closer to the financial finish line (maybe “Coast FI,” where I have enough saved for retirement so that all I need to do is cover my current costs), makes me feel much more comfortable at the thought of taking [another] pay cut.
If I have to, I can certainly keep working at my current level, and plan to quit altogether when I have enough money. But I would rather work on making my life better now, rather than waiting until the “promised land” of retirement, which may not come for several more years.
The Hoped-For Benefits
I don’t know how things will work out until I try a new schedule. Maybe I will hate it. Maybe I will love it. Maybe I will feel that it is not worth the decrease in pay.
I am particularly hoping that two benefits will come of cutting back further.
The first is that I will be happier now. With less work, I can hope to take care of myself better: with exercise, with rest, with time for personal growth. (My ideas on how best to use that time can be found in my latest Future Me post.)
The second benefit is that I will enjoy my job enough to improve my work longevity.
It took a long time to get to my level of experience. I don’t really want to throw in the towel right now, and I feel I can still make a (good) difference in my community. If I can enjoy my work enough to continue an extra 3-8 years, even at 50%, that’s still many hundreds of patients I can help.
Of course, a few extra years of working part-time–enough to cover expenses–while investments compound, could also be very helpful to my bottom line in retirement. Just saying.
Any theoretical benefits–modeling self-care behaviors to my partners and residents, advocating to reduce the burden of non-physician tasks–would be a total bonus.
What Now?
I have already put in my request to cut back a little more at work. We will have to see how it goes.
I may decide that my life isn’t that much better. Or that I’m am not using my new free time well enough to make the pay cut worthwhile. In which case I suspect I can always ask to work a little more.
I suspect that won’t be a problem, though.
Have you thought about cutting back? Or made plans to align your current work with your ideal job?