Start small habits and pave the way for your FIRE career

In the blink of an eye, we have entered a new year. I hope that in 2022, with the popularization of new drugs and vaccines, the world can be free from the threat of the new crown epidemic and return to the life of free travel and free dinners in the past. In addition to this big wish of "world peace", I believe many people will choose to set new goals for themselves at the new beginning, right? I am also one of them. Since I was a student, I have set new goals for myself every New Year, but I often give up within a month. When the next New Year comes, I realize that I have not achieved any goals in the past year. Every year, when I look at the goals set last year, I feel annoyed secretly, "If I really follow this goal, I should have achieved the expected results by now, right?".

Indeed, time magnifies the small efforts we make every day that may seem insignificant at the time. Even if your goals may seem distant at first, the process of execution may be laborious, or the goals may seem unrealistic to others, as long as you can Persistence for a long time will surely achieve the desired results. It is also true that we want to live a more financially free life earlier. Although this goal is indeed not easy for us who were not born with a golden spoon in our hands, as long as we have a clear goal and start with a long-term persistence from the establishment of small habits, the FIRE life is not far away. and dreams . But what exactly should you do to keep yourself from sticking to these habits? I think there are many ideas and suggestions in "Atomic Habits" that have been on the bestseller list in bookstores for a long time.

If you want to live in FIRE, you must first change the way you think

There is an important key here. If you want to establish a habit, the point is not to establish this habit with your heart (I agree with this very much, because this is equivalent to making this thing a task and pressure, but it will make people not want to to do it), but to change one’s own identity . For example, to lead to a more financially free life, we should establish the perception, "I am someone who will enter a financially free life in X years, so I need to be more careful in evaluating the way I spend money", and escape is only temporary Behavioural changes, such as "I need to save money well, not spend it indiscriminately", to manage your spending by thinking like this.

A very realistic finding is that winners and losers in society have the same goals, so the point is not how often you set your own goals, but whether you have the perseverance to persevere. Thinking and doing like this may make our journey to FIRE life easier: 1. Know who we want to be , "I'm going to be financially free in X years", 2. Victory came to prove to himself that he was closer to his ideal , "Successfully saving XX every month, how close is the goal of a financially free life". By doing this, a positive cycle can be formed. Our identity as "financially free life" allows us to build new habits, such as "spend more careful evaluation and focus resources to achieve goals", and our habits come back to strengthen us identified identity.

Four Laws to Build Good Habits That Get Us to the "FIRE Life"

Rule 1. Make the prompt obvious

1. Make a note of your current habits so you can keep recording and observing.
2. Make the habit more specific, such as adding when and when I want to perform the habit.
3. Habit stacking, superimposing new good habits on the original habits, such as shopping home account (old habit), and then calling up this month's expense table to assess how much credit is left for this month (plus new habits).
4. Create an environment that fosters good habits. For myself, I downloaded an easy-to-use accounting program on my mobile phone, and immediately recorded all kinds of consumption, which was convenient for me to calculate and manage my expenses as a whole at home.

Rule 2: Make Habits Attractive

1. Use Temptation Binding to pair "want" and "need" behaviors. For example: spend more carefully evaluated, if I really can't resist the temptation to buy something (want), I will punish myself to reduce my entertainment, such as reducing the time to watch favorite albums (need) within two weeks.
2. Join culture and imitation. For example, if you want to move towards FIRE life, you can consider watching more or joining the discussion circle of FIRE life, and you can strengthen each other with other people who are also working hard!

Rule 3: Make Action Easy

Start by lowering the threshold, for example, by breaking the habit into two-minute segments, make it easy first, and then continue slowly so that the habit becomes a standardized behavior. Don't set a habit for yourself that requires effort to adapt and cooperate from the beginning, it will have the opposite effect, and may soon give up halfway.

Rule 4. Make the reward satisfying

Give yourself an immediate reward when you complete a habit. The author mentioned using a habit tracker, which is also a very common method for me. For example: I will list the tasks that need to be completed, and tick when they are completed. This visual Prompts can be motivating and help me review my performance and think about ways to improve.

Although FIRE life may sound like an unattainable dream at first, as long as you can clearly set your role (ideal future lifestyle), set a clear and flexible plan with a general direction, and have a clear implementation method ( All kinds of small habits) and persistent attitude, you will also be able to achieve your dreams.

Focus on:

1. If you want to lead a FIRE life, you must first change your way of thinking

2. The Law of Establishing Good Habits for "FIRE Life"

1. Make the prompt obvious

2. Make the habit attractive

3. Make action a breeze

4. Make the reward satisfying