My wife and I have a plan.  This should not be surprising to anyone who knows us as we are both planners, though one is much more of a planner than the other.

Our plan is that by the time our daughter graduates from high school, we are able to go where we want to go, when we want to go there. In other words, we’re seeking to be location and schedule independent.

While it’s nice to dream of “early retirement” we’re going to probably need to do some sort of income generating activities.  My view is that I’ll always want to do something, so I want to make sure it’s something I enjoy that doesn’t require me to be in a specific location and to be tied to a specific schedule.

With my current gig I am mostly there. My wife has a little ways to go to get to that point.  My posts on effectiveness will cover the techniques I’ve used to get to location independence, what I’m working on to get to schedule independence, things we’re trying to get my wife there, and what we do to make the most of those opportunities.

I’ll admit, a lot of the tips and techniques that I’m going to share are things I’ve heard from the slew of personal improvement books, podcasts, blogs that are already out there.  So you may be wondering – why add to the overwhelming amount of content out there surrounding personal improvement.

That’s a good question, and one that I’ve struggled with for a while. I decided to go ahead with it because I provide a different perspective than a lot of the personal development and self help content out there.

First, I’m still going through the journey and will make some mistakes along the way.  I’ve found I do learn from mistakes, but I learn even more when I can talk through (or in this case write through) the lessons I’ve learned while they happen.

Second, while I have location independence, and I have a good income, that income is tied to a specific gig.  Many of the people I look to for personal development guidance have through one way or another removed the need for a a gig either because they had smash book sales, are bringing in revenue from course sales, had great investing success, or a combination of those things. I’m not there yet and I imagine a lot of people who also look at personal development information aren’t there yet either.  I can discuss how the personal development techniques I hear about work for someone in my context, and hopefully you’ll find that helpful.

Finally, I’m doing all this from a piece of paradise in the middle of Iowa, not a big city. That means that there are some time saving techniques and life hacks may not work exactly the same, and my role as #ubersherpa becomes even more important. At the same time, we’ve removed ourselves from some of the stressors that city life brings, so we wouldn’t trade it for the world.

I encourage you to join me on my journey to fulfilling our five year plan. Hopefully you’ll be able to pick up some ideas along the way that will help you with whatever plans you have to lead your own effective life.