This week's resource roundup focuses on three useful books for adjusting one's approach to money, work, and lifestyle. The end result? You could no longer be a wage slave, in debt, or stuck in an office. Triple win for personal sustainability.
On the personal financial front: Your Money or Your Lifepretty much says it all. A seminal work of the Voluntary Simplicity movement, this book puts you squarely in front of any money issues you have, and helps you take charge. It helps the individual decide what is appropriate for their life, what constitutes "enough", how to eliminate debt, maximise savings, and focus on enjoying life. The latter chapters about investing can be taken or left depending on personal preferences, but some useful guidelines are there.
Taking a similar take charge approach, this time to the work environment, is Why work sucks, and how to fix it. Over a several year period, the authors helped Best Buy create a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) across their corporate operations. The result? Happy employees, flexible schedules and work locations, increased results and achievements, lowered operating costs. If you dread Monday mornings, this book is for you. At Forward, we are a huge fan of this approach.
And finally, if you are looking to go way out on a limb, to boldly go where few have gone before, check out Four Hour Work Week. The approach does have a certain excitable, New York Times Bestseller eccentrism to it. But once you have dug in, the author gives away a precise blueprint of how he accomplished a business that hardly needs him at the helm, yet supplies him with a comfortable, flexible standard of living. The author calls this process "Lifestyle Design." Given his achievements, its hard to argue. This book definitely follows in the footsteps of PT by W.G. Hill and is written with an equally relatable humour.
*Important note: Forward has no financial or personal interest in promoting these useful references. There are no returns, kickbacks, commissions, or other reward for us other than us getting the word out to people, and hopefully helping change the way the world works in the process. Use these resources at your own leisure, discretion, and risk.