Saving Myself 150,000 Dollars 💰

Motion teaches and gives, inactive over planning costs.

Without overthinking, I will take action to overhaul my life professionally, shift the focus of my creative outputs, and save myself $150,000. The origins of this effort go back to a baseball game 19 years ago.

There I stood, naively unaware of the lucky kid I was, coached by my Dad alongside my teammates on our local baseball team. It was a hot Saturday afternoon, and though it was just an in-house baseball game at our local field, we were in a tight match that felt high stakes to a bunch of 15-year-olds. Such is the magic of playing a game for the love of it. Every game can become game 7 of your own private World Series. 

We were in late innings. My Dad paced the dugout, giving his usual concise advice before running out to the third base coach position. The ace on the other team was tiring out, and he told us our top priority was to get on base and drive up the pitch count as much as possible. Most average but smart players could handle this dual order. I was not like most average smart players. 

The next at-bat, I hesitated, overthought, and buckled my knees. I looked like I'd never held a bat. Three strikes and I was out. No higher pitch count, and I wasn't on base. If anything, I gave the ace much-needed confidence to last longer on the mound. I walked back to the dugout, cursing under my breath.

The genius of my Dad's next move still informs some of my decisions to this day. He recognized general team advice wasn't well suited to a simple thinker like me. In all my years playing, my Dad always joked I never met a first pitch I didn't like. Come hell or high water, I swung first and didn’t ask questions later. It wasn't always pretty, but my simple, quick aggression got me on base more. My Dad pulled me aside telling me to ignore his recent, game-day advice, get up there and do what I wanted to do; then he trotted to his spot. 

We had a good inning, and I was up at bat again. I looked down the third-base line for my coaching sign and met my Dad's comforting smile. He simply pointed to his head, shook his head no, and that was it. The sign was clear. Don't think, do your thing, and let's see what you got kid. 

Over Analysis of a Simple Swing and Hit Baseball Sign

Erosion of Swing First Mentality

In my 14 years of professional life, I gradually learned to overthink and under-execute. Maybe it's because I felt I feared less what I understood. Perhaps I got addicted to the safe island of learning without the risky voyage of actually testing ideas. Either way, I have become a safe overthinker to the detriment of my own development. While it is essential to "look before you leap," it is equally important to take action, create necessary motion, and learn as you go. My creative output has dug into different theories well, but still with no plan of action on how to test what I am learning. 

I don't know how I grew into an overthinker, but it's not necessary I figure that out at this point. What is important is how to gain more balance in my professional actions. I am at a stage of life where I know I need a trajectory shift but also that mid-life professional changes are challenging, and risk is not perfectly mitigated by extra planning. At a certain point, you have to listen to a mix of well-earned wisdom and gut instinct. 

Matrix of My Professional Life So Far…

Recently, I was the recipient of tough but much-needed professional feedback. If I wish to progress, I have some experiential weak spots that need to be addressed. Initially, I wanted to study life change theory and plan how to address these weak points. But that's what got me into this deficit in the first place. All study and no action. 

The silver lining is that new philosophy shifts in your mid-30s as a full-time working dad offer ample opportunities for testing. My instinct may have sensed this shift well before I was conscious of it. I have been gathering materials that resonated with me, but I needed to figure out why. I have been learning to curate information better, create more than consume, and express ideas in multiple ways that are public, fun, and accountable. These efforts are strong bricks for a school of self-driven education. What I needed was an exciting core theme to it all. 

Though I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring thoughts and inferences in my current field, it is time for motion on something new. My efforts, study, writing, and creative outputs will take a marked shift toward business, psychology, and entrepreneurship. A mixture of events and resources have serendipitously coalesced to inspire this new professional focus, but how that happened is a story for another day. In short, I will publicly showcase my self-taught adventure to gain a personal MBA, gaining the knowledge I need while saving $150,000 I would spend to get a traditional MBA. 

Unsurprisingly, the main inspiration behind this self-taught route is The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. There is a lot to explore and apply from this book, and Kaufman will serve as my teacher and guide. My self-assigned homework will showcase my hands-on approach to his material via my writing, website(still under construction), and YouTube Channel. 

I have looked down the third-base line in the game of life, and there is my Dad with his comforting smile and simple sign. Don't overthink. Take a swing. While I never was the strongest bat in the lineup, I got on base and crossed home plate far more because I leaned into my strength. Swing first, think later.