Sunday 21 July 2013

Roller coasters are fun. When you are a kid.

So by now it seems pretty much official that I will not be working on a new start up. That crazy roller coaster ride of emotions, filled with amazing highs and horrifying lows. From making £50,000 a month profit to basically bleeding money. Roller coasters are fun, but maybe I am a little bit too old for that now! After all, 5 years in a start up seems to have accelerated my life by at least 10 years, if not more. Life is too short to do that all over again.

Of course, I have a few little ideas here and there that I may set up at some point. These ideas will be based on the principles outlined in "The E-Myth" and popularised by authors such as Tim Ferris. Principles that basically should free up my time to do whatever the hell it is I really want to do, and at this moment, that is mainly playing chess.

My goal is to have at least 6 months off every year. While I unfortunately do not have any crazy savings from my start up adventures, I am quite confident one of the first ideas I implement will make enough to make this lifestyle choice sustainable. After all, most of the western world's working force, does spend 6 whole months working just to pay their taxes. Meanwhile, for my first 6 months, I have just enough saved up (kind off), my bank balance flirts with £0 all the time. But that's another story.

Okay, so I will have tons of free time, what will I do with it? The plan is I will study chess really hard to hopefully become a chess grandmaster. I realise most grandmasters start as kids, but well, I kinda played a few games back in the day! I will learn languages. I will learn new skills that I do not yet possess. I will climb mountains. I will read books. I will travel. I will rock climb. I will play tons of footie. Lastly, I will definitely try really hard to keep writing this blog, just because I need to get better at writing ;-) (see learning new skills goal above).

To close off my first post, I would like to document where my chess skills are at the moment. I started playing chess seriously about a month ago and in that time frame I've gone from 75th percentile on chess . com to about 88th on timed and non-timed settings. This was achieved mainly by playing a lot of games to get some match fitness! However, that is not the way to become a grandmaster so since last week I started taking it really seriously and studying it properly. At the moment, since I am managing my budget tightly, I am studying solely on chess . com. Once I hit a roadblock there, I will probably study with a coach. I also plan to read some more instructive chess books and have a second read of Philip Ochman's "The Process of Decision Making in Chess".

Wish me luck. (and if you follow me on my journey, I will reciprocate and follow yours!)

PS. Please follow this blog, go on! Thanks :)

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Book I'm currently reading: Jonathan Dimbleby - Russsia

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