If you’ve spent much time with us at The Prosperity People, you may have heard us reference the “three freedoms of prosperity.” This idea, conceptualized by Prosperity People founder and CEO Mackey McNeill, is primarily used with clients of our sister company, MACKEY, as an ethos that helps business owners design a business they run (as opposed to one that runs them).
But the three freedoms are applicable far beyond the walls of business ownership, or even the world of work. In fact, they’re universal: Understanding and making decisions that get you closer to achieving the three freedoms is an exercise in attaining a prosperous life, and who doesn’t want that?
So, what exactly are the three freedoms?
Time Freedom
Money Freedom
Mind Freedom
Today, we’re exploring time freedom. (Stay tuned for future deep dives into mind and money freedom.)
Taking Back Your Time Requires Being True to Yourself
First, an important caveat: What prosperity means for you may not be the same as what prosperity means for others, which is why setting your prosperity intention is the very first step in the Prosper for Individuals process. Our dreams and goals are just as unique as we are. And that’s okay! In fact, it’s what makes life interesting.
This caveat, however, also means that time freedom varies from person to person. Finding and acquiring time freedom is a custom, unique journey. At The Prosperity People, we can help you forge your path, but you need to be at the helm.
Here’s an example of how time freedom manifests itself in two different individuals:
Reggie hates humidity. And bugs. And the jarring noise of a mower on a weekend morning. He also loves the look of a well-manicured yard and finds great joy in the time he spends with his family playing croquet, touch football, and BBQing in the backyard. But the idea of having to spend his weekend cutting the grass fills him with dread. He’d rather spend more time in the office before he wastes a beautiful Saturday mowing the lawn, so he outsources that task. Yes, it costs money, but paying the 9th grade, aspiring entrepreneur down the street to mow for him is a tradeoff he’s happy to make.
Delilah, however, loves to mow the lawn. Not only is it built-in time to be alone with her thoughts each week, but she also finds immense satisfaction in watching those diamond patterns form as she works her way across the yard. To Delilah, the act of mowing is in fact a gift of time, offering her the space to decompress from her busy workday.
For Reggie: outsourcing yardwork = time freedom
For Delilah: DIY yard maintenance = time freedom
Reggie and Delilah have different strategies, but what matters is that their approach works for them.
How To Cut Back on Work and Make Time for Life
Many of us enjoy our work and aren’t necessarily looking to do less of it, but for those who are eager to spend less time working and more time engaging in hobbies, focusing on self-improvement, or spending time with loved ones, here are our top two tips to increase your time freedom.
1. Outsource: Consider buying services to alleviate your load. Hire a cleaning company, a landscaper, or a personal assistant. Partner with a consultant to provide a one-time service of setting up your digital life so that the mundane, daily activities (like scheduling appointments, ordering groceries, and paying bills) are automated. Instead of DIYing that wainscotting in your living room, connect with a contractor.
Outsourcing costs money, but only you can decide whether the cost is worth it. Value is subjective. Remember Delilah and Reggie? It’s safe to say that Reggie would be willing to shell out far more money to hire a landscaper than Delilah and that’s because their personal preferences of how to spend their time (and money) are different. And both are okay.
2. Know your time ROI and plan accordingly: To understand your relationship with time, you need to understand how your time contributes to your earning power. If your income is based on time (say you track billable hours) then yes, the old adage is true: time is money. But if your income is based on your intellectual property, then perhaps it’s not so simple.
Let’s break this down a bit more:
If focused, deep work allows you to earn more in less time, then the “time is money” concept is a bit more complex than someone who works a set 40-hour work week with a pre-established salary or hourly rate.
For someone who is in a position where they can make more depending on their degree of focus, your ROI of time freedom has great potential. Let’s say you get paid for public speaking engagements within your industry. If a single day of focused, deep work allows you to develop a new speech which can be used on the conference circuit, resulting in multiple paid opportunities, then your ROI of time is pretty darn high.
Financially, this reality should (at least in theory) motivate you to carve out chunks within the day for that deep, focused, and highly profitable work, which, in turn also creates more time for other personal passions due to your higher earning capacity per hour.
The Tangled Web of Time and Money
While we’re focusing on achieving time freedom in this article, clearly the ability to achieve this is directly related to finances. Here are three real world examples of how time freedom is connected to your financial freedom.
1. Breaking free from your office cubicle and traveling the world: Pat and Steve took full advantage of the remote work trend during the pandemic. They packed their bags and headed to explore Central America. While they were away, they fell in love with the digital nomad lifestyle. Since returning to their home base, they’ve felt that wanderlust tugging at their heart strings. The solution? An extended digital nomad experience, traveling to multiple countries over the next few years.
The plan means they get to spend their time in pockets of the world that many only dream of. But it also means that sometimes, depending on their location, their jobs (which fund said grand adventure) require they make sacrifices about when they’re working and when they’re free to explore their latest location. For some, needing to dial in for a conference call at 10pm is a deal breaker. For Pat and Steve, it’s a no-brainer. Yes, they may have to take the occasional late-night meeting, but they started their morning with freshly baked croissants from the French patisserie down the road. At the end of the day, freshly baked pastries win.
2. Transitioning from lifelong 9-5er to a freelance consultant: Margo has felt enslaved to her 9-5 job for decades. She is excellent at what she does but feels frustrated by the parameters enforced by her employer. She wants to call the shots in her life. She wants to take back her time. After such extensive experience in her industry, she knows she has more to offer beyond the four walls of her current company. She decides to step away from her longtime role and start working as a freelance consultant.
It’s a bold move that comes with financial risk. So much risk that not everyone is willing to make that change, but Margo knows it’s the best path for her. The trade off? She has more control of her time than ever in her professional life, but she’s going to have to start hustling in ways that she’s never experienced before. Plus, her FICA taxes just went way up.
3. Opting for a soft entry into your retirement years: Vernon dreams of retirement. He eagerly awaits his 65th birthday because he can’t wait for the greatest gift of all: time freedom! However, in his early 60s a friend of his mentions a different approach: Work less, but for longer. Instead of retiring at 65, his friend has decided to retire at 70 in order to postpone collecting Social Security. In the meantime, though, he’s already cut back to working just four days a week. The selling point: three-day weekends, every weekend, beginning at age 60. The tradeoff: postponing full retirement by five years.
With Time Freedom, There Are No Rules
There is no right way or wrong way to achieve time freedom. It’s up to you! But one thing we do encourage is to give your time freedom-related strategies a test run before going all in. Remember Pat and Steve? They didn’t just pack up and leave after bingeing the Travel Channel one night from the comfort of their living room. They tried one, extended three-month trip to see what it actually feels like to live in a foreign country. They learned from their experiences. They came home. And then they developed a plan for their bigger adventure.
Ready to quit your day job and become a full-time professional dog walker? Maybe offer to walk your neighbor’s dog as a side hustle to make sure you actually like dogs that much before upending your life and walking from that 401k matching program.
Try things on for size. See how they fit. Learn what works and what doesn’t work and adjust course. And when you need some financial coaching to plan is doable, call us. It’s never too late to chart a new path, but only you can take those first steps.