I’ve been asked what the topic of this blog is. The lifestyle design posts prevent it from being philosophical while the philosophical posts don’t fit an economics blog and the economics blog posts don’t jive with the life updates. This blog is not about those things, not in a vacuum. This blog is about building self-contained, resilient, efficient systems.
What? That’s a lot of words with not a lot of meaning. Let me provide an example. This is my life system over the last, roughly, 8 months setting it up
I life in an apartment directly beside my primary job, close enough to walk home on my lunch breaks, accomplish something, and walk back. My living room contains my computer from which I can do my second job. It also contains, steps from this computer, my entire home gym setup consisting of a smith machine, cables, dumbells, olmypic bar and weights, ect. My default weights for exercises in areas of by body I want to target in particular are loaded at all times to minimize the effort to doing this. I purchase, as cheaply as possible, food that can be prepared good and fast and keep it in the fridge. Snacks are available at all times. I have a car, but it is not often used except to travel for work on occasion.
Under this system, there is no resistance to working out. Nutrition is the default since I keep a ready supply of nutritious foods that are easy to grab. I keep my second job’s page open at all times on my computer, allowing me to easily crank out an extra 30 minutes of work in time i’d otherwise have wasted. The entire apartment is small enough that there is not a lot of room between these things; the gym is visible from my computer, where I may be tempted to waste time, to help me not do that. The home is placed next to work to make it even easier to do these other things. The car is, intentionally, a five minute walk from my house, causing resistance to using it where walking would otherwise work, causing additional walking (this combined with an intense gym routine has dropped my resting heart rate by 10bpm in the last month, now sitting at a clean 65, more to come). My partner’s job is online and we are right beside her classes, so she benefits from the same. Both of this allows us to spend a lot of time together, making out relationship stronger, which also emboldens us in other areas of life, lets us take more risks, ect. due to feeling the support of the other. We work out together, keeping us both consistent. Therapy helps regulate the mental stresses that I had to unpack from earlier in life, and our good communication patterns (built on the aforementioned trust) make our relationship virtually stress-free, once again making everything else easier. This setup is also immune to most all forms of disruption. This is all cheap, meaning I have copious amounts of extra money and could easily survive for half of my current age in years without working another day in my life. I could have children, both my partner and I could take five years off, and we would never worry about money due to this setup costing little.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is good systems design. Permaculture is an excellent other example of this; animals feed the plants feeds the animals, plants are selected to help other plants, and work is minimized. Extra work needed is a sign of inefficient design and should be fixed.
Let me give you an example of an inefficient design. You live in the suburbs, which is far from work, say a 30 minute drive. This is also a 10 minute drive from the gym, which, incorporating the time to start the car, park it, get out, and get to the gym, and get back, means you waste an extra 30 minutes when you go to the gym. You also must drive to the nearest grocery, which is not far, only 5 minutes. However, this time detracts from your partner/kids. You also do not quite have the time to cook nutritious meals, causing you to either eat less nutrition, easier meals or suffer financially more when you buy lots of food out. You do not tend to yourself mentally (in a healthy way, not a victim-complex way. The way where you take responsibility) and as such you are more stressed, especially sitting in your 30-minute commute.
Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts in the above example? Clearly not.
Everything this blog does is one part of, or in some cases an entire, system. There are many valid systems. The way I live is just one of them, and those who choose not to do this live an equally valid life. I simply think designing like this leads to a more fulfilling life. So this is why the posts seem unrelated to eachother at times. You are seeing a part of a much larger whole, and there are a great many things behind the curtains. Someday, I’ll take the time to make a much more comprehensive record of different possible systems design examples and use cases.
In the meantime, you may wish to check out https://permies.com/ for some cool examples of this, if you’re a nerd like me.
Best,
Whisper