# Renaissance fields for developing skills > by the book *Early Retirement Extreme* ## 1. Physiological - [ ] Maintain optimal levels of physical and mental health. - [ ] Know how the human body functions and physiologically adapts to imposed demands like stress, overeating, lack of exercise and their opposites. - [ ] Know why and which kinds of food promote health and which kinds of food destroy health, and why. - [ ] Maintain good eating habits and the discipline to avoid destructive foods. - [ ] Know how to preserve food and how to tell when food is spoiled. - [ ] Be able to compete in local sports competitions (does not include jogging/walking a 4+-hour marathon). Those who focus on sports rather than one of the other five areas should eventually be able to compete on a regional level. - [ ] Be able to perform physically while exhausted, hungry, or tired. Be able to perform under the worst conditions such as carrying an unconscious person out of a burning house or pulling oneself up while hanging from a gutter in case of a fall, or similar real-life demands. - [ ] Know at least basic first aid. --- ## 2. Intellectual - [ ] Be able to prioritize the relevance of information and be able to quickly research and find relevant information in many different areas. Learn independently and have an interest in doing so. - [ ] Have enough generalized knowledge to be able to understand the information and put it into the context of a mental framework, a model or a procedure, and use it to ask further questions. - [ ] Recognize which problems the model applies to, take the solution to one problem, generalize it, and apply it to another problem. - [ ] Be able to critically analyze the model, refine it, and combine different models to achieve an objective. Practice critical thinking in all aspects of life to reach a degree of rational certainty. Be open to new ideas but do not accept anything uncritically. - [ ] synthesize interdisciplinary information and laterally connect similarities which are not immediately apparent, discovering new models and procedures. - [ ] Evaluate different methods, models, and procedures while effectively ranking them for utility, and picking the best one while recognizing the pertinence of other methods. Pursue relevant and correct knowledge persistently and consistently. Master the fundamentals. --- ## 3. Economic - [ ] Understand the difference between price and value. Value is psychological; price is determined by the market. - [ ] Learn to consider more than the immediate consequences of a choice. Also consider the future consequences--for example, opportunity cost and the time-value of money. Learn to see the unseen. - [ ] Learn to consider more than the consequences of a choice for just one group of people, but for all others as well. - [ ] Realize that economic agents all represent special interests that typically interpret the situation according to their own interests or political views. - [ ] Understand the difference between assets and liabilities. Understand leverage and cash flows. In particular, learn what is an investment (an income generating asset) and what is not an investment (items for personal use). - [ ] Know the law of supply and demand, the difference between savings and investments, and the difference between present and future value. - [ ] understand how the stock, bond, and/or real estate markets work, both in theory and practice. - [ ] be able to do your own tax return, make a budget, and balance a checkbook. --- ## 4. Emotional - [ ] Be able to appraise value in all matters to make sound decisions. - [ ] Not waste time, money, effort, or resources. - [ ] Not be subject to emotional manipulation or engage in wishful, magical thinking, believing things are true because he would like them to be true--or worse, believing he can influence external events by thinking positively about them. - [ ] Have a strong character, persist, cope with adversity, be resistant to stress, be calm, and displace frustration. - [ ] Develop a passion, appreciate the arts and what it means to be human, rather than just a "human resource". - [ ] Be empathetic and understand that people and situations are complex. - [ ] Make social connections and increase the value of interpersonal relationships. - [ ] Be able to patiently await a better solution and be willing to compromise and accept something that is close, but not exactly your ideal. --- ## 5. Social - [ ] Get to know people outside your profession, hobby/club, religion, political party, socioeconomic stratum, country. - [ ] Start or join a co-op. This can be anything from buying groceries to participating in a tool shop, to sharing movies with other people. - [ ] Learn how to sell, barter, swap, and give things away. - [ ] Learn how to network and build your social capital. - [ ] Get involved in politics on some level. --- ## 6. Technical - [ ] have knowledge of the skills of different professions to be able to critically judge the services of professionals. - [ ] have a working understanding of all the technology you use to understand its limits and benefits. - [ ] learn how to select the optimal tools for your use, how to maintain them, and how to repair them when they break down - [ ] learn a common trade to be able to barter your skills for other things. --- ## 7. Ecological - [ ] Know the names of five grasses, five birds, five trees, etc. local to your area, and be able to recognize them. - [ ] Know which food is in season and how much oil, water, and fertilizer it takes to grow/raise the food (out of season, out of location) and how it is sensitive to Liebig's Law of the minimum. - [ ] Grow and sustain a garden without using pesticides, hybrid seeds, chemical-based fertilizer, etc. A garden and indeed any system will achieve maximum integrity when it is in balance, and when growth is stable and resilientwithout ongoing external interference. - [ ] Promote functional diversity to retain adaptive capacity, to allow evolution to happen when the environment changes. Adaptive and evolutionary potential should be considered before interfering. Actions always have reactions, and so action is not always a good idea. - [ ] Always consider the system and understand both the parts and the whole. No parts exist without the whole and the whole doesn't exist without the parts. Everything is related to everything else, mostly indirectly. Thus, changing one part will change the whole. - [ ] Recognize multiple bottom lines, flows, and balances in terms of primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers, producers, and decomposers. - [ ] Use the maximum power principle, which states that systems strive to maximize the rate of useful work--that is, to not waste energy to its environment. - [ ] understand the concept of characteristic scales in terms of change and the effect of limits on competition and cooperation. Understand the difference between positive feedbacks and negative feedbacks (both are needed) and how linking feedbacks lead to cycles, runaways, or overshoots. - [ ] study the structure and principles of different systems to build a collection of models, in order to understand other systems. --- ## List of services and things to stop outsourcing 1. **Hair cutting.** If necessary change your hairstyle into something you can do. Be flexible! 2. **Mending clothes and darning socks.** 3. **Cooking**, preferably from scratch. Heating something in the microwave or mixing powder with water doesn't count. Again, if necessary, change your diet. 4. **Buying something used** instead of new or **swapping** something. There are now many websites to facilitate this. 5. **Getting somewhere without a car.** Use public transportation, commute by bicycle or try walking a few blocks to the grocery. 6. **Borrowing a book from the library.** It's amazing how many people do not take advantage of this free resource. 7. **Planting a garden of edible vegetables.** Start with spices. Move onto high-cost/low-effort plants like tomatoes (not potatoes). Look into permaculture and intensive gardening. 8. **Making simple nontoxic household agents from scratch,** like laundry detergent, toothpaste, insect killer, window cleaner, or beer. 9. **Bicycle, motorcycle, or car maintenance.** At least start by washing it yourself. Move on to fixing flats, cleaning, changing oil, and lubricating parts. Graduate to disassembling the drive train and engine.