Aka, finding time in the lost and found

So, there I was, scrambling to try to get any opportunity that could get me closer to my dream of a writing career, when I realized that I already had everything I needed. Not everything I wanted, but everything I needed. And that is ultimately the secret that can help you know how to recognize opportunity: it’s knowing what you really need. Because sometimes you’ll find that you have everything you need already. You just have to take a second look and find some spare time in the lost and found.

So, I’m a writer. The thing about writing books is that it takes a LONG time to write them, and generally there’s no one paying you until you have written enough books to be worth paying. But it takes money to live. Somehow you need money to live on while you’re also using the time you’d normally spend working to write the books that people will pay you for later… it’s a bit of a catch 22. You could get a normal job and either write a tiny bit during “free time” or learn to go without sleep for extended periods of time, or you can somehow configure your career so that it gives you time to write.

One option would be to pull a Sanderson and get a job where they let you write your books while working… so far, I haven’t found one that works for me, but if you find options for that, feel free to post them in the comments. I’m sure other people would love suggestions. For me, I’m the opposite of a night owl, so I needed writing time in the morning.

While I enjoy tutoring students in math and physics and eventually started Kuhn Tutoring, teaching in school wasn’t for me. I tried programming, small business, SWPPP, and banking, and applied for hundreds of other full-time positions, but none of them would get me the time I was looking for. Going back to school, getting a degree in engineering to eventually work my way over to lucrative contract work would take years, perhaps a decade or more.

I was applying, career exploring, scrambling to get any full-time or part-time position that would improve my situation and move me towards my goal. But after a while, sending out resume after resume after resume, doing interview after interview after interview, all of it just felt like spinning my wheels. I’d managed to get a pretty good part-time job as a bank teller and Kuhn Tutoring is doing alright. I was supporting my family (if not entirely comfortably) and beginning to question whether these positions I was applying for would actually improve our situation.

And that’s when my lightbulb lit.

I had enough to meet my family’s needs and time to throw away on endless applications and interviews. What if I instead used that time to write? I could just keep writing until I got my true dream job: Professional Novelist.

Sometimes the key to recognizing opportunity is to realize that you have everything you need already. My time was being lost, and now it’s found.

How to Recognize Opportunity

So, how to recognize opportunity? You take a hard look at what you really need and what you want most. I needed money to provide for my family. What I wanted most was a writing career, aka, time to write. Everything else was extra. More money. A house. Early retirement (FIRE, if you’re into that). Those were all nice, non-essentials. And even the richest person in the world can’t have everything they want.

Once you refocus on what you actually need and the 1 thing you want most, it’s easier to see paths that can get you there, because you’re not constantly getting detoured trying to get all of the other things you don’t care about as much.

And once you focus on paths that actually get you what you want most, you have fewer options to consider. It’s easier to recognize opportunity when you can narrow your focus down to only options that get you what you want.

Now, I am simplifying things a lot. Obviously, there are other things that make the “essentials” list, like eating at least reasonably healthy, tasty food, brushing my teeth, family time, church, supporting my wife in her dreams, etc. Helping Alicia with our booth at the local Farmer’s Market is a great synergy because it lets me tell people about a free short story where a 3D printer causes the apocalypse while helping my wife to sell 3D printed fidgets, dragons, and earrings. All fun fantasy stuff. And she’s an awesome entrepreneur who can teach me things about how to recognize opportunity. No wonder we’re best friends.

When you have everything you need

Speaking of my wife, she loves to declutter organizing our apartment to make it both beautiful and more conveniently functional. Which makes it ironic that the importance of “enough” was first driven home to us by a financial book, Your Money or Your Life. Basically, having too much can be almost as problematic as not having enough. It’s easy to clog your life, your house, your time and space with more than you need. It’s easy to get on the treadmill of earning money and not stop even when you have enough. So, find your “enough” point and let it tell you when to stop. Because there should be more to life than making a living.

I once had an English class where the teacher said you basically just needed to turn in one completed worksheet a week to get a perfect grade. I worked hard and could easily blow through more than 1 worksheet a day, but because I didn’t take the time to calculate my “enough” point, I wasted the time doing several more worksheets than necessary before using the free time for writing, as I’d originally planned. (And now that I think about it, if I’d been really smart, I might have negotiated with the teacher to see if he’d let me turn my writing time into official class work, skipping the worksheets altogether. Talk about how to recognize opportunity!)

Wasting time on getting more than “enough” prevents you from recognizing opportunities when you have everything you need already. So, find your “enough,” get your enough, and let it set you free. Looking for opportunities is how to recognize opportunity. Sometimes you’ll look back and realize that you have everything you need.