With $300 AUper week, I can’t afford much. $35-50 on foods, a shit ton on rent and whatever meager leftovers as either tourism or a meal out. As such, my meals taste so good, despite not having much. The restrictions elevated my experience of foods. Despite the fact it’s nothing more than some sausages, salads and a bit of relish, I’ve never had such a good meal in my life.

  It also elevated my meals out. Because of how finite my funds are, because of how my meals must be extremely cheap, a meal out is godly. In addition, the restriction of no oil and low carbs means my options for home meals are basically meat, salad and veggies, nothing else. When I eat out, there’s no restrictions, it’s full on food goodness.

  Restrictions, even though artificial, changes ones perspective on life. Much like how you only notice things after you lose them, the same story applies here. If you could meat wagyu steak everyday, then is it really special? Same story with rump or porterhouse steak. Only when you can’t afford it regularly does eating it become special. For how long did you have to wait to afford that steak? For how long have you been craving it. Finally you can cook up the steak and enjoy it. Not being able to afford it for a while only serves to heighten it’s value.

Although I wouldn’t do this forever, it is quite an interesting experience. It must be longer than a week though, at minimum 1-3 months. You see youtube videos of people trying to live under poverty for a week, but that means nothing. Why? Because it’s only a week, in the back of their minds, they can just go back to porterhouse steaks in a few days. With a month, the distance is far too long to imagine going back properly, thus you must change your lifestyle to accommodate a new way of living.

  Why wouldn’t living with $300 per week, in a first world country, be great in the long run? Well, you can’t really go anywhere or do anything. Friends wanna go out and eat? Sorry, I can’t afford that, my budget is $15 dollar meals. Going to some adventure room? Sorry, I cannot afford that. Eventually, they’d just stop inviting you all together. After all, your answer would always be how you couldn’t afford it anyway.

Don’t celebrate in a linear fashion, otherwise celebrations will slow down to near non-existence. Celebrate the journey with random milestones, ones that aren’t tied to any particular destination.

It’s a natural tendency to celebrate things in a linear fashion. Say you have a youtube channel, so you’d celebrate the 1st view, 10th, 100th, 1,000th, 10,000th, 100,000th, 1,000,000th and so long. Except, this is a terrible idea. Look at how much each increment increases by. Progressively, celebration becomes few and far between. Then what motivation would be left? We constantly get bombarded news of overnight success, or fast rising stars. Too bad that’s not the same for all of us. There’s an availability bias on fast rising stars, everyone wants to report on that. It took Gigguk, the anime youtber, 10 years to reach 1 million subs. In contrast, it took a vtuber a few months to hit 400k. There isn’t as much fanfare for Gigguk’s long and arduous journey. So media gives the illusion of constant overnight success, instead of the slow slow and tedious road towards success.

  With a linear celebration and the illusion of instant success, we’ll all be constant depressed at our slow progress. Instead, celebrate incremental progress and the milestones. Don’t make things about some arbitrary number eons away. Make it small and constant. Instead of 1,000 to 10,000, make it each 1,000 people. Or create our own goals, things that matter and mean something for us. Celebrate along the journey, constantly, to feel it’s a path worth taking, to feel the pride and joy of our accomplishments. Don’t let some random number dictate whether we should celebrate something we take pride in. Don’t let those numbers halt all sense of feeling it reaching it.

  Even for my own podcast and blog, I don’t look at the numbers. No matter what the number is, I’d be disappointed it’s so low. So instead, I celebrate the small things, an interesting topic that episode, how my recording and vocals have improved, or improving my description by learning from other podcasts. In reality, it’s likely that I’ll never earn enough from the podcast or blog to sustain myself. I’ll never have millions upon millions of daily downloads like Joe Rogan. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a cake at the 50th episode, to celebrate the long and arduous journey thus far. So take joy in what we do, slowly, surely, and do it constantly with small, non-linear milestones.