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This is how today's society thinks your life should look. You have go to school for the
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first 20 years of your life.
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Then you have to find a high paying job that you'll work for the next 40 years.
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And after that, you can retire and finally enjoy your life for the last 20 years.
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If you're lucky to live that long of course. This is basically the life plan.
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Work hard now, so that someday in the future you can kick back, relax and enjoy when you
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have the money. The 40 years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path.
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But is this the only way?
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Not at all. Today we're going to challenge this notion by summarizing one of my favorite books.
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The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I would recommend this book to anyone with aspirations
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to have more freedom in their life. Many people think that the point of this book is to work
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just four hours per week, sit on the beach and sip pina coladas.
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Well that's not really the end goal, because you'd get so bored doing that.
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There's only so many you can drink before you want to do some type of work again. This
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book is about working smarter and not harder.
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It's telling us that we can accomplish a lot more if we manage our time more effectively. Although,
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if you're doing something you're truly passionate about, you're inevitably going to work hard anyways.
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In fact, probably much harder than you would working a job you don't care about. So the
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real objective of this book is to help you avoid doing what you dislike, and to also
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have the freedom to pursue your dreams. So let's first talk about retirement and why
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it sucks. If you're currently working a 9-5 job in exchange for occasionally relaxing
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weekends, you might think that retirement is the end goal.
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A light at the end of the tunnel, as you finally have the freedom to enjoy yourself. However
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relying on retirement should be nothing more than the absolute worst case scenario.
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If you think it's going to be great when you retire, then I have to tell you something
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right now; it's not going to be great, your current job straight up sucks and you're wasting
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the best years of your life. I mean, who the hell wants to wait until he's an old man,
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before he starts living life on his own terms? Let me add that over 50% of people, over the age
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of 65, have some sort of disability.
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So those last 20 years of your life, are basically a coin flip.
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You're not really free if you're old, sick and fragile. A good question to ask yourself
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is this: What would you do if retirement wasn't an option?
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How do your priorities change? It really makes you think. Do you keep working at a shitty
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job for the rest of your life?
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Or do you find a different one?
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Maybe you start your own business?
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You'll have to find the answer to that question yourself. Another problem with retirement is
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that one week into it, you'll be so damn bored.
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Suddenly you have 8 extra hours in a day, but nothing to fill this empty void.
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You'll probably want to look for a new job or start a company.
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Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of waiting, doesn't it? I'm not saying don't plan
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for the worst case.
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But don't mistake retirement for the end-goal.
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This next concept changed the way on how I view money.
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I found out that a dollar, can sometimes be worth more than just a dollar.
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Let me explain what I mean by looking at this fifth grade math problem. This is Jane.
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Jane makes 100,000 dollars a year. And this is Mike. He makes 50,000 dollars a year.
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This clearly makes Jane twice as rich as Mike.
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However this is only measured in yearly or absolute income.
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Now let's take a look at this from a relative income standpoint. Jane makes 100,000 dollars
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a year and works about 50 weeks per year, which means she makes 2,000 dollars a week.
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Due to her demanding job, she also works 80 hours per week.
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If we do some quick math, we learn that Jane earns 25 dollars an hour.
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Not bad. Mike makes 50,000 dollars a year and he also works 50 weeks per year, which means
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he makes around 1,000 dollars a week.
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But here's a twist.
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Mike only works 20 hours per week.
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This means Mike makes 50 dollars an hour and, in relative income, he's actually 2 times
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richer than Jane. But it gets even more interesting.
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Jane works in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in America.
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Her cost of living there is around 80,000 dollars per year, which means she doesn't
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save that much of her income.
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But she also can't leave the city, because she has to be physically present there, to
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do her job. However Mike makes his money online.
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He's not tied to any city or country.
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He can live anywhere he chooses to.
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And he chose to live in Thailand, where his cost of living is about 15,000 dollars per
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year. This makes Mike in relative income, even richer.
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He has complete freedom to choose when, where and how to live. When we look at yearly or
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absolute income, Jane is richer than Mike. But that's because absolute income doesn't take
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anything else into analysis.
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It's just a raw number of how much someone makes per year. In relative income however,
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we look at the money earned per hour and how much freedom someone has.
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By freedom I mean; controlling what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with
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whom you do it. So in this case, 50,000 dollars per year, is worth more than 100,000 dollars
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per year.
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This is what I meant when I said that a dollar is sometimes worth more than a dollar. Sure,
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Jane has more yearly income than Mike, but who has it better, really? Another important
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idea in this book is to avoid work for work's sake. Some people are really good at being busy.
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They shuffle papers and check email all day long.
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When you meet them on a Friday night, they're so proud of it as well.
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They say: "I worked 70 hours this week! Hmp!",
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just to make themselves feel like they've accomplished more than the other person.
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And yet they seem to get nothing important done.
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They are busy and even efficient, but they're busy with the wrong things. You don't want
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to be like them. A lot of people work at a job where they could finish their work in
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4 hours.
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But because their employer thinks they have to work for 8 hours, a completely arbitrary
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number, they become extremely good at deceiving themselves and others that they are productive.
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Otherwise they could get fired from their job or wouldn't get paid.
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And the same problem applies to self-employed people.
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Instead of doing 4 hours of quality work, they're busy for 8 hours, but accomplish the
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same amount. In today's world, doing less is considered laziness. But that's simply not
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true. Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater importance,
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is NOT laziness.
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This is hard for most to accept, because our culture praises being busy, instead of being
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productive. In the book Tim talks about efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is performing
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a given task, whether important or not, in the best way possible. Effectiveness is doing
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the right things, which get you closer to your goals. For example: The best door-to-door
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salesman in the world is efficient.
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Refined and excellent selling without wasting any time.
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But he's completely ineffective.
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He would sell much more of his product using a different method, such as e-mail or any
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other type of advertising.Efficiency is important, but it's useless unless it's applied to the
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right things. So first be effective, then be efficient. I've already made a video talking
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about the Pareto's Law, but I'll go over it briefly. The Pareto's Law states this: 80700:08:51,800 --> 00:08:55,860 of consequences come from 20% of causes.
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This means that 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results. But the inverse is also true.
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Which means that if you want the last 20% of results, you'll have to put in 80% more
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effort. So, what you want to do is to identify those 20% that produce 80%.
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You then want to focus on the 20% and become efficient at them.
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Eliminate the other 80% which produce only 20% of value. There is no point in spending
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your time on them.
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If we eliminate the things that don't produce a lot of results, we could then use that extra
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time, to focus on the 20% that produces the most results. Just by applying the Pareto's
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law you can cut your workload by shit ton. Now if you want to free up even more of your time,
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there's a next step to it.
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And it's called outsourcing. So let's say you have an online business and you make 50 dollars
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an hour.
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However your lawn needs mowing and you really don't feel like doing it.
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You could: A.)
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mow the lawn yourself, but it's going to take 1 hour of your time, or B.)
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pay someone else to do it for you, for 20 dollars. Since you don't want to mow the lawn
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and your hour is worth 50 dollars, paying someone 20 dollars for 1 hour of work is a
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good trade-off for you.
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You basically buy yourself extra time. Now you might be thinking; I know I can do a better
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job than the guy I hired, so why shouldn't I do the job myself?
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Again the point is to free your time to focus on bigger and more important things.
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You can always do something more cheaply and get it done the way you want it done, by doing
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it yourself.
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However this doesn't mean you want to spend your time doing it.
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If you spend your time, worth 50 dollars an hour, doing something that someone else is
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willing to do for 20 dollars, it's simply a poor use of resources.
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That's assuming you dislike mowing lawns.
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If you get enjoyment out of it, then go ahead and do it yourself. However you should never
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outsource something that can be eliminated in the first place. Don't forget the Pareto's
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law we just talked about. So it's better to focus on doing the tasks only YOU can do.
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Let others do the easier tasks for you.
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When you look at millionaires, they all have personal drivers, chefs and maids. Someone
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could say they are lazy, but really, they're simply using their resources more effectively
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by outsourcing tasks that are not important to them. Since they basically buy more time,
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they can now focus on the 20% of things that will make them even more money.
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Or they could spend more time with their families, whichever they choose. So the basic idea here
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is to get in to the habit of outsourcing unimportant things and to buy yourself time so you can
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focus on the things that are important to you. Now we'll discuss the last and most important
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topic in this book.
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Why are a lot of millionaires and old retired people, depressed and unfulfilled with their
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lives? Both the retired and ultra-rich are often depressed and neurotic for the same
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reason: too much idle time. But wait a second...
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Isn't more time what we're after?
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Isn't what this book is all about?
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No, not at all.
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When you remove all the bad and unimportant things in life, you are not left with everything good.
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Sunshine and rainbows isn't what remains.
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Far from it. You're actually left with an empty void.
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So doing nothing isn't the goal.
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Doing what excites you and brings you joy is. If you free yourself from your job, but
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you haven't filled the void with anything non-business, like a hobby, you're just going
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to continue to work to keep yourself busy.
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Otherwise you'll be bored out of your mind. Knowing how to spend your free time is also something
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that needs developing.
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It's not something we're automatically good at. The media might tell you that sipping a
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cocktail on a sandy beach will get rid of all your life problems.
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Sure, you can do that for some time. However there will come a stage, whether it's two
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weeks or two years later, when you won't be able to see another beach and drink another
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cocktail ever again. You'll be over it. So what should you do with your free time?
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Well Tim says: to live is to learn.
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You want to continuously challenge yourself, not be idle. Start playing a sport, learn a
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new language or play an instrument. Read more books, focus on improving yourself and your
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relationships with other people. Basically, try out different things and see which hobbies
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you like or enjoy.
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You could also start making an impact in the world.
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Help out your local community, donate to charity or create a company that shoots rockets into
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space. Always keep on improving yourself and do what excites you.
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Thank you for watching the video till the end, I hope you enjoyed it.
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Make sure to leave a like and subscribe.
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Now if you would like me to make more free videos, then consider supporting this channel. There's
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a link in description where you can buy me a coffee.
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Every coffee counts as it helps me improve the rate at which I make videos.
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Again, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video, that will
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make you better than yesterday.