Most mornings I spend 10 minutes with coffee and a spreadsheet.
I’m not trying to optimize every last basis point or categorize every swipe of a credit card. I want to know three things: what my family is spending, what our savings portfolio is worth, and whether the trend is moving us closer to financial independence.
That kind of measurement is useful. A lot of FIRE and bitcoin people blow past useful and drift into self-soothing complexity, with more dashboards, more tax scenarios, more on-chain metrics, and more spreadsheet tabs, as if more data will remove uncertainty. It won’t, and pretending otherwise is usually just procrastination dressed up as diligence.
Good measurement gives you direction. Bad measurement gives you the feeling of control while stealing time and attention from the work that actually matters: earning more, spending with intention, and stacking bitcoin.
Run the numbers. Just don’t build your whole life around them.
I wrote more about the difference between useful measurement and spreadsheet theater in Run the Numbers.
https://firebtc.io/p/run-the-numbers
I’m not trying to optimize every last basis point or categorize every swipe of a credit card. I want to know three things: what my family is spending, what our savings portfolio is worth, and whether the trend is moving us closer to financial independence.
That kind of measurement is useful. A lot of FIRE and bitcoin people blow past useful and drift into self-soothing complexity, with more dashboards, more tax scenarios, more on-chain metrics, and more spreadsheet tabs, as if more data will remove uncertainty. It won’t, and pretending otherwise is usually just procrastination dressed up as diligence.
Good measurement gives you direction. Bad measurement gives you the feeling of control while stealing time and attention from the work that actually matters: earning more, spending with intention, and stacking bitcoin.
Run the numbers. Just don’t build your whole life around them.
I wrote more about the difference between useful measurement and spreadsheet theater in Run the Numbers.
https://firebtc.io/p/run-the-numbers