Happy Summer Everyone!
Last week we were in Florence, Italy to hang out with my wife’s family.
That’s me in front of the famous Florence bridge, the Ponte Vecchio.
Carol’s grandfather was involved in the restoration work of that bridge as an engineer and was the lead team re-building another bridge in Florence over the Arno river, the Ponte alle Grazie, after it was destroyed in WWII.
Carol’s mom even has some of the original restoration drawings for the Ponte Vecchio. Wild eh?
Florence has got to be one of my favourite cities in the world. It’s magical.
The food, the wine, the steaks, the espresso, the sorbet, the history, the art, the views, and of course, the people! All fantastic.
We’re definitely fortunate to be able to do these types of trips with the family.
On this trip, we did a Vespa tour of the Florence countryside and we’ll never forget it.
We saw one supposedly experienced rider almost smash their Vespa into a wall and another skid out into some bushes before we got on ours … it was a tad unnerving, LOL!
Other than getting lost from our guide for a little while, the tour was a big family highlight.
These experiences are the ones that we seem to talk about together as time marches on.
Time with family is the most precious of things … there’s no doubt about that.
Time is the most precious asset of course.
That’s a universal law we can all agree on.
It’s funny … Nick and I went from starting Rock Star Real Estate when he was in his late 20s and I was in my early 30s.
It seems like yesterday but 17 years have passed in a flash.
Over that time, we’ve both learned a lot, been through a lot more and picked up some amazing relationships with people along the way.
And we’ve come to realize there are really some universal truths to living life on your terms.
Here are some of the ones that stand out.
This first one is newer to us and we agree with it wholeheartedly, it’s how we’ve lived our lives and continue to…
Wilson’s Law: Valuing knowledge over wealth. This law is grounded in the belief that if you prioritize knowledge and intelligence then money will continue to flow to you.
We can tell you with absolute certainty that any time we’ve reversed this it has been a horrible decision.
Luckily, more often than not we’ve always prioritized knowledge over money and life has worked out beautifully.
Always lead with knowledge. If an opportunity seems too good to be true and you don’t fully understand why, with close to 100% conviction, you’re lacking an information advantage over the situation.
Here’s another that has proved useful over the years…
Falklands Law: Only think about the things that are absolutely necessary. If you don’t have to make a decision right now, don’t concern yourself with it. Instead, focus on the things that are actually important and need attention.
This type of living has helped us a lot over the years. We found that whenever we had “small” problems that we felt we had to make decisions about, our time would be occupied endlessly with low-value items.
So instead, whenever we have found ourselves getting stressed over something we ask ourselves if the problem is worth the concern.
And if it’s not, we list out other, larger and more important problems that we should be focusing on … then we work on those.
Magically, almost every time, the stress of the smaller problems vanishes and those smaller issues seem to somehow take care of themselves almost immediately.
It’s wild, give it a try.
Here’s the next law that has served us well…
Kidlin’s Law: If you write down any problem into its smaller component parts, and do so very clearly, then the matter is half solved.
Any time we feel overwhelmed, we do this. We write out what needs to be done as clearly as possible. And like magic, our stress comes down and the situation always feels much more manageable.
We share this with our kids all the time as well. Write down your tasks, and your so-called “problems”, and magically the process of writing them out seems to take your stress away and organizes your efforts.
And finally let’s talk about our most precious asset again, time.
There’s a law we know to be very true and it’s this one:
Parkinson’s Law: Work will expand to fill the time allowed for its completion.
If you want to get things done, just reduce your deadlines for the task and hold yourself to it. I can’t tell you how many times I have a presentation to create or an article to write and it will magically fill up 8 hours if I allocate that much or 1.5 hours if I allocate that little.
And if I give a deadline of two weeks away for the task … then it will often be exactly at the two-week mark it gets completed and not a moment before.
If you’re not getting the things done in life that are important to you, try applying Parkinson’s Law to the situation. It’s life-changing.
And speaking of time … that’s all the time I have allocated for this week’s email!
Hope you’re enjoying the summer.
Remember, don’t fret over whatever the politicians are saying, whatever the central bankers are doing, whatever the media is screaming about, it’s all a distraction, instead…
Be ruthless with this and you’ll be living life on exactly your terms in no time.
We know this is possible for all of us.
If these two Mississauga brothers can do it, then you absolutely can too!
Hope you’re enjoying your summer!!
Tom & Nick
