I know you’re thinking, “I’m not going to read this garbage about how busy you are old man, just hanging around with no real life.”  Believe me, I know your time is valuable, but give me a few minutes to show you how great your weeks can be.

Just think about this; think about the long holiday weekends when you get a glorious day off.  Friday holidays give you super bonus time before the normal busy weekend.  Monday holidays allow Sunday to be a looser and more enjoyable day because you can finish up stuff on Monday.  These long weekends are the very best.  They can be almost as good as a real vacation (short vacation) because you don’t have the travel, packing, planning, hectic running around to deal with.

Now there are some people—don’t hate them— who feel like every day is Saturday.  They can choose to perform many tasks on their to-do list.  They can go out and attend events.  This allows them to decide to put their feet up and avoid the “prime time” weekend chaos.  There’s no need to run errands and get the shopping done at the same time as everyone else.

The people who get to “live off-peak” can do their public errands mid-day, mid-week for the least stressful situations.  I’m referring not only to busy stores and long checkout lines but also crazy traffic heading to/from the stores.  Going to the movie theater mid-day Tuesday is awesome, empty and far cheaper than peak time.

Living off-peak also allows ample opportunities to perform mini adventures in your town.  The ability to explore between say 9a-3p opens up a whole new perspective of activities where you live.  Even something as mundane/nerdy as the public library can be quite amazing with all it has to offer (even online resources).

Performing tasks related to calling customer service even allows for optimization as I believe most call centers experience peak activity in the morning and evening hours.  The off-peakers can even save time on hold for these required tasks.

I’ve been FIRE’d for over 3 years and I’ve never actually had the opportunity to have one of those “hide out and just relax with netflix or read ALL day.”  It just seems like something ALWAYS comes up that allows me to get moving and perform some task (not painfully) ALL THE TIME.

The craziest part of FIRE to me has been my google task list.  I like keeping notes of things I need to, want to, should do and would consider doing.  My list is MUCH longer than it has ever been.  Over 100 items now grouped into 1. do now, 2. do soon, 3. do sometimes, 4. do maybe if I want, 9 shopping and 6/7/8 are family lists.  (I also have a learning list in there)

My Task list is no longer a to-do list, but rather a loose set of items pretty much centered around my schetchle.  I don’t feel stressed out from my long list, but rather see it as a list of opportunities/events. The freedom allows for happy growth in myself.

When you start getting close to FIRE, it will be time to make your own list and it will be awesome!