Seeking advice: Overcoming the Comfort Zone in Productivity

I am an investment advisor. I've been in my current phase as an independent RIA since 2004 and I expect this is what I will do for the rest of my career. I've never spent time prospecting for new clients. My first wave of clients came from when I started blogging way back then. I absorbed another advisor's practice in 2018 and it looks like I will be absorbing another advisor's practice this year. Along the way I also picked up a couple of writing side-gigs too. I just do my thing, the right thing always, and let events play out. This is probably a variation of The Secret.

My actual work is simply helping clients navigate to their retirement and then through their retirement and always trying to learn more to do a better job. There's no goal embedded there, more of a stasis.

In 2022 I applied for a $250,000 grant toward the purchase of a new Type 3 wildland fire engine. The specs may make it possible for this truck to also be a Type 1 structure fire engine if we can figure out a solution for ladders. I was thrilled when we got the grant of course but then the next step in the evolution was building out the truck with the manufacturer. Once we did that, the next step evolution was fundraising to close the gap between the grant amount and the final cost, this is still ongoing. Right now I am working on a much smaller grant for much of the equipment that will need to go onto the truck, mostly fittings, couplings and hose. We should get the truck this month or next and we'll need to do some work on the compartments to organize the equipment.

This truck is brand new, we sort of need it to be because it can bring in revenue from assignments on fires out of our area. The revenue that truck brings in can go to updating other parts of of the fleet with newer used vehicles. This is more of an evolution to me.

It is very common for people to have weightlifting goals. "I want to deadlift some amount of weight" or benchpress some amount. My objective is simply to be able to do what I enjoy doing to an old age. This is known as healthspan. Living here requires some amount of strength and stamina to do work like snow removal. My firefighting hobby requires strength and stamina.

Stasis or evolution is a good way for me to think about these things. There's no letdown here. My life long ago got to where I wanted it to be in terms of being happy at home, setting my own schedule, making a fine living (not a lot of money but enough for the bills, saving, emergencies and fun) and being able bodied to do what I enjoy. So one dimension to this is putting in the work to be able to continue living my life the way I want.