 You know, I think one of the archetypal human struggles is the creative and the provider. Now, the creative almost represents the things inside of us that we want to bring into the world. They're the things we just like to do for fun. They're the things that are deeply meaningful, even if they don't produce any financial returns. Really, the creative is kind of like the soul of a person, what you really deeply desire to do. Now, on the other hand, we have the human material obligations. They're going to a job to pay our rent to exist on the piece of land we've chosen to exist on for the rest of our lives. But how do you reconcile both? Because one is meeting a spiritual or emotional need, while the other is meeting a material required need just to survive. In this video, I want to share what I think of as the creative roadmap to having both. Hey guys, Alex Hein, author of the book, Milk the Pigeon, a field guide for anyone lost in their 20s, which is on Amazon. And I've included a free download below this video, which is for a free goal-shading worksheet. If you'd like to plan out how to make this year the best year ever of your life, that worksheet down there below is free, and I'll show you exactly how to do that. Check it out down there. All right, so this morning I was journaling a bit, and I was reflecting on a very important piece of my journey, which is really how I made all of this stuff work. And I came up with this four-step process that I think can really help any of you, specifically if the work and financial quadrant of your life is the one you're deciding you really have to work on. So the first step to meeting and marrying those emotional creative needs with your tangible financial needs is to just get your baseline income to whatever survival level is for you. You know, for me, that baseline number was, as a single guy with no kids, if I just made 3,000 US a month, I could live on that no problem. Now for you, it may be either lower, depending on where you live or how spartan you live, or based on your financial resources, it may be 2,000 or less than that a month, it may be a lot more if you have kids. But the most important thing first and foremost, get your base needs met, even if you hate what you have to do. In the process of me figuring out how I could build something I liked to work on, while also paying my rent, the first thing I did was I had either one or two day jobs. So I had one job at first that was only 20 hours a week. And so I supplemented it by working a second job first as an entrepreneur. And then I was the front desk person for a local acupuncturist and integrative medicine clinic. So I had two day jobs that were basically meeting my base financial needs. Now, if I something happened and I just won Milano, I would have quit both of them the next day. Okay, so I didn't really want to be at either of them. They were just necessary evils for me to actually pay my rent and eat while I could do the other things that I wanted to end up doing. But every single night I came home and for a couple hours each night, I studied business, I studied the creative process and how I was going to build all of this stuff and really turn it into a real sustainable enterprise. So this archetype is basically get a day job, do your work and creative soul stuff at night. The second phase is really if you have the option, reduce the fat as much as possible. Reduce your day job hours as much as humanly possible, like really to the very, very, very core amount you need to survive. I had a coaching client once and he had a good salary. He was making like $80,000 as an engineer, but his work arrangement was pretty flexible. So as we were talking about this and as we realized he wanted to move more towards being a musician, what we did was he was able to negotiate going from 45 hours a week to 20. And he got a huge pay cut, he went from making like $80,000 a year to like 40, 45, but it was still enough to meet his base needs and focus on what was most important, which was time, time to build the new life that he wanted. So if you're able to do that in some way, then figure out what it takes to have just a poverty level income, poverty level, just enough to eat rice, beans and vegetables and pay your rent so that you get time back, the time to have no stress, the time to create what you want. So the third phase is do what you want. You know Bertrand Russell, this American writer, he has this great essay in praise of idleness and he talks about this utopian vision where what would happen if people only had to work four hours a day instead of eight? You know, then the painters that wanted to just paint, whether for profit or just for fun and soul fulfillment, they could just paint. And the inventors that wanted to create these unique creations could do that just for fun with no required outcome. And the scientists could make these fun, incredible new discoveries that would help people just because that is their heart's desire, you know, and that's what they want to do every day. The musicians could make music and all the other people could do what they wanted to do, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. And I love this idea. What would you do if you only had to work four hours a day to cover your base needs? If you only worked from eight to 12, the whole day was off, how would you spend it? You now have your freedom if you've gotten to this step. So do what you want to do and avoid trap number four. Trap number four is don't wobble, which all that means is if you start getting back enough time and you have just enough money to meet your needs, don't fall back into the money trap. And it's easy to do. You know, as soon as I had quit my full-time job, and now I was only working three or four hours a day in this business, the main thing was like, well, I have all this time now, I have nothing to do, but I'm only making 2500 US a month. So, you know, better get my ass in motion and try to increase my income. So you can guess what happened. Six months later, I found myself working long hours, doing things I never wanted to do, business stuff, marketing stuff, money stuff, to build up this business that now I disliked and I just quit a job that I disliked. I'm in this business I originally had built to do more things I liked, but now I'm doing things I don't like just for money because I wanted to earn more money because I didn't have enough. You see the circular logic here? The trap is that if you're just barely making enough and you have all this time that you're then just going to do things you hate because now you really do need more money. And then you've gone back into this prison that you were just trying to escape for years. So the real question is, can you get to that point of meeting your base financial needs and then create for the rest of your life free? Create freely what you want to create. You know, some of those things are probably going to make you money and some of them won't. But net net, if you have your base needs met, then you can go ahead and you can keep creating everything you want to create. You know, the books I wrote were purely out of love. They've made hundreds of thousands of dollars. The YouTube videos I'm making now are originally the break from my business. And now this is my business, the biggest chunk. So often the things you pursue just for creative growth will make an income. Not always, but sometimes. So if you don't fall back into the fear trap of just doing things for money, you can create unlimitedly just for an infinite period of time, the kind of life and the kind of things you want to make. So if I did it all over again, that's what I would do. Get to your base level to survive and then just do what you want. Some will make money, some will not, but you'll always be free and you'll always be excited about your days. That's what I got you guys. That is what I wish I knew years back then. Again, the first link below this video is for a free worksheet. I plan out how to make this year the best year of your life. You're also going to get a free email series on that topic. And then before you go, I have two related videos here.