The Monday Read: The Little Things

Designing a Life You Enjoy

I took that photo walking home from work the other day. It was an almost blissful moment.

I couldn’t believe how beautiful the sky was, how pleasant it was to be walking, how satisfying the day had been.

Recently most days are pretty good for me. I enjoy what I do, I mostly have control of my life, and I’ve figured out what I like and how I like to live.

Most of the things that bring me joy don’t cost very much money. Some of them even save me money.

I walk or cycle to work. Walking takes me about fifty minutes, cycling about fifteen. Because I can do this, I no longer have a car. Not having a car saves me around 50,000 yen a month (all car related costs, calculated monthly, assuming a paid off car).

When I get to work I make my own coffee: grinding the beans with a handheld mill then brewing with an aeropress. I buy my beans in bulk from Costco. I’m definitely more of a coffee gourmand than a gourmet. My friends who are into coffee laugh at me, but I enjoy my Kirkland Starbucks Roast Espresso beans.

For most of the day I read stuff online, work on RetireJapan, or help my wife with her language school.

Recently I’ve been trying to get in shape so I cook lunch and go to the gym/jiu jitsu pretty much every day. Most days I also do 20-30 minutes of rowing.

After work I walk home again.

I usually do something similar on Sundays (my day off) but just for a couple of hours. About once a week I’ll have lunch with a friend.

I’m definitely on the introvert end of the scale so I need several hours of me time each day, but I also enjoy being around colleagues or students for a couple of hours, and it’s nice to have some time with the family in the evenings.

This daily routine makes me incredibly happy, to the extent that I miss it when we’re on holiday and find myself wanting to go home after a week or two.

And that is the (meandering) point I’m trying to make. Figuring out what you want, what you like, and making the effort to design your life around it has an insane return on investment. If you don’t love your life, see if you can make enough small tweaks to change that.

It’s very much worth it.

What are the small things that bring you joy?

RetireJapan TV

RJTV last week was a blast, and it was great to have so many people joining us live in the comments. Thanks to everyone who participated!

You can catch the relay on YouTube here. Podcasts are not up yet but I will do that tomorrow!

YouTube

Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. Completely failed to make a new video this week, but have a good idea for the next video so I hope you’ll enjoy that. お楽しみ！

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (36,309 posts so far). The forum rules are here. In essense, they are:

1. Be nice
2. Ask any question you like
3. Only answer questions when you have relevant knowledge or experience

Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

Picked up Get Honest or Die Lying, by Charlamagne tha God on a recommendation from Ryan Holiday, and Haruki Murakami’s Novelist as Vocation. I loved his running non-fiction book, so I hope this is similar (also love Stephen King’s On Writing).

This week’s product

I’ve been playing with gadgets to stay cool, and while the neck rings were a bit of a disappointment (they work well, but only last 15-20 minutes), this vest looks much more promising.

Comes with four medium sized ice packs, and places one in each armpit and two in the small of your back.

It arrived today so I am going to try it tomorrow morning when I go to school with my granddaughter (5m walk to the station, 15m on the train, 10m walk to her school, then 20m walk to work). If it stays cool the full 50m I’m going to call that a win.

Next on my list is one of those portable fans the high school girls carry.

Anything else I should check out? So far I have tried cool clothing (was sceptical, but they seem to work), the neck rings, and my little vest thing. I guess to be proper hardcore I would need to get one of those work jackets with the fans and the big ice packs, but I’m going to save that for later.

This week’s links

1. Ooof. Not a pleasant prospect: Life at the heart of Japan’s lonely deaths epidemic
2. I support people being able to keep working if they want to: Meiji Yasuda Life to extend retirement age to 70 amid labor shortage
3. Don’t see how they get over this tremendous mistake: Joe Biden and the Common Knowledge Game
4. This was excellent: 10 Things I Learned Losing 10 Million Dollars
5. Anyone close to retirement should read this: Am I as Rich as I Think?
6. Net worth goes up, purchasing power goes down… Yen Going to ¥170/$?
7. I thought this video was very well done: The Problem with the “FIRE” Movement
8. This would revolutionise traffic safety: Cat and mouse games
9. PSA: Japan doctor shares tips on how to prevent heatstroke during humid rainy season
10. This looks perfect: Dispatch from a Writing Shed
11. And this was a nice write up: Cal Newport, the man who never procrastinates
12. It’s a good idea to have a simple list of all your accounts/insurance policies, etc somewhere where your family can find it if they need to: A Painful Confession
13. Not just Japan then: The baby bust: how Britain’s falling birthrate is creating alarm in the economy

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

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