Thoughts and reflections about the past week or so from my own financial independence campaign.

Progress on my goals

Boat life

The tank ain’t moving.

We’re pretty sure the only option now is to cut it into pieces and drag them out. Which is a problem, because you either need to use an angle grinder very carefully or a nibbler tool to cut the stainless steel.

We don’t have either of those tools.

We’ve asked around, and it might be that we can borrow an angle grinder with a steel-cutting blade. If we sink the boat in the next month, don’t ask how it went.

Distractions and detours

Fitbit stats: four weeks in

So we’ve been tracking my lifestyle and exercise stats using the FitBit Charge 6 I bought last month.

Yeah I look nothing like this guy – but I do smile at the stats.

Highlights include:

  • My job stress is visibly harming me, as seen in the data: my heart rate variability (i.e. how much I relax at night) drops on my Sunday night sleep and stays low until I go to bed on Friday night.
  • I don’t get nearly enough sleep during the week, barely 6 hours of which I’m apparently awake for several bits of it.
  • My rest and stress scores are best if I have a really good exercise session that day and chill out with 1-3 cans of Doom Bar that evening. No joke. The optimum lifestyle for SierraWhiskyMike’s stress profile, supported by data, is a long run or thorough gym session followed by a quick one in the pub.

    I knew it!

    Weird one is that while exercise alone makes a visible difference to my sleep and stress management, and a beer without exercising is better than nothing, it’s the specific combination that gives me dramatically better results.
  • Lady SierraWhiskyMike however actually suffers if she has any alcohol in her day, regardless of exercise or being at work.

    Designated driver identified.

    She also has a worse stress reading the day after any exercise.
  • If I don’t exercise for two days, my stress management score drops really quickly. Can’t rest
  • We’re way more active than we’d expected and 10,000 steps is generally quite easy for us, unless it’s a rainy weekend and we sit on the boat all day. Then we tend to get 6,000.

What am I supposed to do with this knowledge?!

For starters: it’s a big motivator for my financial independence campaign. Nothing says “you need to take control of your time” quite like statistics that say my job stress is doing measurable harm to me.

That was actually quite sad to see. I know I’ve been looking at other options recently, but I thought that was me being flighty or having a preference. The data suggests it might be a pain/discomfort response instead.

For seconds: when I talk about exercise being important to me, it turns out that it’s a literally important thing rather than just a belief I have.

When I hit (or get close to) my goals, my best interests are served by ensuring that I get plenty of time for a good gym session most days and the odd cheeky beer of an evening (but not too many).

Obviously, in the long term, we want to proceed with the boat plan and try our hand at cruising longer distances. However, if the data continues in the same vein, there’s a chance that we might change our (well, my) lifestyle even sooner. Heavy stress has been credited with a shorter life expectancy, and while I haven’t looked too far into that I’m willing to bet my healthspan is likely to be shortened if I don’t find some way of making my working day less stressful.

Non-FIRE goals

My guitar rock god quest (AKA learning to play)

We’re doing Black Dog by Led Zeppelin. Well, the first riff. It’s a pretty long song and it’s on the edge of what I can do.

And yet… I can play it. I learned it, albeit I need more rehearsal time, pretty quickly in the lesson.

It’s really positive because that’s a massive amount of skill growth since I started in March 2023, when I couldn’t really play simplified Grade 2 songs after weeks of trying.

I’d started to get a little down about my playing this month, but my teacher is (I suspect deliberately) showing me how much progress I’ve made with just weekly lessons and getting a few practice sessions in each week.

Maybe the lesson here is the Atomic Habits lesson: get into the habit of practice, continue for a long time. In the same way that if you put sandpaper to anything long enough it’ll get smoother, results are likely to happen.

Or maybe I really am the younger clone of Eddie Van Halen..?

Practice space of legends.

Fitness

Yeah, my feet hurt.

I couldn’t manage a half-marathon this weekend, so we went for a long walk instead and did a bit of an explore.

Here’s a thing for non-runners who want to lose a bit of weight: going for a two-and-a-bit-hour walk and a play about burned around 1,300 kcal, and we did it in sandals and cargo shorts. In comparison: my 16-miler burns 2,300, but I do it in pricey sports kit, alone, and I’m not up for doing much else that day.

The difference for me was 3,500kcal (ish) burned on a walking day versus 4,300kcal last big running day.

You can’t really burn more than 0.5-1kg of fat per week, assuming it’s just fat burn. That’s 3,500kcal roughly, and it’s not like you can burn 3,500kcal on Sunday and then go back to maintenance calories during the week, is it?

So, conceivably, walk more and you can probably chin off a lot of cardio. At least, if you’re not training for anything other than weight loss and heart health.

I’ve still got my eyes on this marathon next year so no such luxury for me. Still, that’s a pretty good thing to know, wish I’d known it sooner to be honest!

This also tells me that the biggest reasons for getting a bit porky since becoming a civvy are (1) stress and (2) diet. Turns out I’m generally pretty active, so in theory I should be a bit leaner than I am. Then again, I really like beer and choccy….

Final thoughts

Still no tank, but I guess we have a big scary plan to carve up the inside of our boat. That’s progress, right? Right..?

I take back everything I said about the FitBit when I bought it: the thing is bloody fantastic. In fact, might even review it as one of my top spends for the year. Seeing the numbers and data has been great for planning my future training, keeps me maintaining my activity levels and gives me valuable insights into my stressors and de-stressors.

Is de-stressor a word? Sure. Why not?

It sucks a bit that I can measurably see my job harming my sleep. I haven’t posted the stats here, but it’s not just a small amount of harm, the change is dramatic.

Then again: that’s a powerful motivator.

Guitar was a welcome pat on the back this week. Being able to see that I still suck (but less than I thought) has been what I needed to keep this going. I get demotivated sometimes, and measurable progress is a nice correction of that.

I guess from a financial independence view this week has only really given me little insights into how I want to, eventually, design my life. Fitness and creativity are important to me. At some point – hopefully before I’m fully financially independent – I’m going to need to make a switch from corporate slaughter to something that fits one or both of these values.

My financial independence campaign continues!