Part 1: The Trident

Part 1: The Trident

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This is a judgment to be made in the face of competing priorities. Not before you pick your path, and not something to be resolved before you start walking — the shit you'll take is a daily persistence test, with periodic shit storms resulting from nemeses and adversaries of all types and to all sorts of degrees.

Take the advice to fight with the Trident: What You Can Do, What Someone Will Pay You to Do (hopefully well), and What You Enjoy Doing. They say that engaging two of these edicts is more than most people accomplish. No matter the compensation, having all three is said to be tantamount to Bliss.

Allow me to simplify all that shit. If you're gonna take shit no matter what you choose — how do you really want to be?

Are you looking to sit on your porch and not see the neighbor? Do you want nightlife in the concrete jungle or nightlife on epic vacations? Do you want a simple life somewhere in between? More? Is your Bronx apartment your blissful place, or the shit you have to take to get your ass down to South Beach and live free at the end of that Trident? Is that Midwest town of your youth your origin story or your blissful resting place? Are you going to watch your great-grandchildren every day your heart holds out because you got the land, worked the land, taught your folk to carry on?

There are masters of this material whose shit is easy to read and can explain it in depth, but we all need a 2-4-8 Trident — also called a Be-Do-Have Plan.

In order: determine how you want to Be. Comfortable as a backcountry specialist in something like wells? Solar panels? Generators, maybe? Then map out what you have to Do to be able to Be that way. Finally, you'll be able to determine what you are going to need to Have — to Do the thing you need to Do, to Be the way you want to Be.

A good childhood friend decided he wanted his grandkids to have the kind of relationship with him that his grandfather had with him. To Be in the trades, or a vocational specialty, would allow him to afford a large family, always find good paying work, and build a solid retirement plan so he could enjoy his grandchildren. He chose Licensed Electrician as his Do, and the Have was easy from there: he needed tools and training.

Of course, there are all kinds of other little "things" and "relationships" in the Be bucket, but those are the little rocks you fit in around the big rocks. Check out the video of Steven Covey going over this. His Big Rocks, Little Rocks task management is the best, and could have been gloriously practiced by cave people for all we know.