Lifestyle Design and the Internet
(Image: courtesy of www.familyrocketship.com)
What is Lifestyle Design
Lifestyle design is an entirely new approach to business and life that can make you happier, freer and richer. Right now thousands of people around the world are adopting the principles of lifestyle design and using it to travel, spend more time with their families and to do the work that they love, the way that they want to do it.
But lifestyle design goes beyond that. It is also about changing our approach to our work/life balance. It is about embracing the promise of modern technology, and it is a movement and a cultural change that is very likely to be instrumental in shaping the future.
Does all this sound hyperbolic? Allow me to explain what lifestyle design is and why it is so important.
Lifestyle design simply means that you are designing your lifestyle. It sounds simple and obvious, but it is something that most of us never do. When was the last time you sat down and asked yourself what you wanted life to be like? What you wanted your daily routine to consist of and how you intended to get there?
A Lifestyle Determined by Your Job
If you are like most people, you will have fallen into a job because you had no other option and that was what you were taught to do, and you have kind of just survived until now. You live within your means and you work the hours you are set and you may have even chosen where you live based on your work.
So right now you have not really chosen your life. You have no choice about where you live, you have no choice about how you spend the hours between say 8 am and 6 pm, depending on your commute, and you probably have limited choice about how you spend the rest of your time due to time and budget constraints.
Adding insult to injury, you are probably also an employee, which basically means that you are doing what someone else says and exchanging your time for money. As an employee you will probably be given set work to do during the week and you will probably be reprimanded if you do not do it in time. And this is the part that I personally find harder to stomach. You will be reprimanded, like a child. You will also be told what you can and can’t wear and how you are allowed to decorate your desk. And a lot of these rules will be petty and arbitrary. Seriously, this couldn't be further from freedom.
And it is not just the hours that you spend working that affect you either. Just as bad is the time that you lose out on at home. When you only have a few hours and, more importantly, very little energy, it can make it hard to spend the time that you want with your family, or working out to get into shape or even just to read that book you’ve been wanting to read for a long time.
It is so bad that we end up looking forward to the time when we are old enough to retire. And you know something is wrong when we are actually looking forward to being old.
There is a Better Way
But, here’s the thing, it really doesn’t have to be like that anymore. These days, it is possible to communicate with anyone from around the world without leaving the comfort of your home. You can accept money transferred wirelessly, and you can get any information you need and generally it is possible to earn money from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
With all this in mind, why don’t more companies offer flexitime and allow their staff to work from anywhere, or at times that suit them? Sometimes it comes down to the requirements of the job. Perhaps you need to be at the office in order to answer the phone. But a lot of the time it simply comes down to the fact that a lot of businesses are stuck in the past and are unwilling to try new approaches.
But you do not have to work for a company at all anymore. You can provide a service freelance online, and that could mean:
Writing
Creating websites
Being a proof reader
Providing consultation of one sort,
Being a personal trainer or counsellor
Writing music,
Taking photos
Buying and selling products
Creating physical products to sell
Data entry
Running a blog
Programming
All these jobs, and many more can be performed online and and they can be handled by anyone on their own without a need to have a boss. Once you start doing that, you can set the hours you want to work. If you want more time to spend with your family you can choose to work less hours. You can decide precisely the kind of work you want to do and you can direct your business to do things in your way and get the pride that comes from that.
Working online also means that you do not have to commute anywhere. This means you can live anywhere in the world that you like or even travel the globe. This means you are not losing an hour or more a day just travelling to and from work and it means you can start dictating how you want to live your life instead of having it dictated to you. You are now in a position to chose how and when you work and that means you can choose to design your work to fit the lifestyle you want. It is a subtle shift, but it makes a profound difference.
Finally, lifestyle design does not just mean working online so that you can work away from the office. Rather, the whole concept represents an attitude shift which can affect you in all manner of different ways.