I am writing this post from a McDonalds outlet in Singapore using my iPad. It’s already November and I’m clearing some leave as it will expire if I do not by end December 2011.

In our journey towards financial freedom, it is important to take a break now and then to renew, refresh and re-energize ourselves for the long journey ahead. It is in this spirit that I take some timeout for me-time and downtime. In the busyness of day to day work, it’s easy to fall into the trap of chasing after short term deadlines without taking a step back to consider the strategic implications of what we are doing.

One of my colleagues came back to work sick yesterday.Her work is actually quite manageable but she has a lot of other activities as she is at that stage of life where she is pursuing a career while doing part time studies and also running a blog shop. In juggling her varied commitments, her health suffers a little as I think she doesn’t have enough time to sleep well.

Since I had my ankle sprain three weeks ago, I now cherish good health more and the ability to exercise without impediment and pain from recovering from an injury.

I realize that I am at a pivotal point of my life in transition from being a doer to managing outcomes and outputs. More and more I need to exercise leadership and managerial skills which needs me to interact with people more and more in within work and in my other activities.

At the same time, there is tremendous opportunity for growth as I aspire to get my class 2B motorbike licence as well as to pick up conversational Korean. I am also considering getting an MBA as a means to network as well as a means to add more broad based business qualification in my quest to be an independent director of a listed company.

At the same time, I want to spend time with my daughter and see her grow up to be an self reliant and well adjusted individual.

These aspirations exist within a framework of building up my net investible capital towards achieving financial freedom.

Taking time out to see how these big rocks fit into my life helps me establish a measure of perspective. I met up Musicwhiz to catchup and it was interesting to exchange views on things in general as well as to get to know one another as fellow travelers on this journey towards financial freedom.

Have you taken some time out to rest and recharge in your journey towards financial freedom?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and proposer.

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I remember a meeting in one of my previous organisations that I worked with with a senior person in that organisation. She talked in analogies and used one that is useful to remember when we are caught up in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life in our journey towards financial freedom.

The analogy was that of the perspective that one takes as we go physically higher into the air. When we take a flight out to another country, the airplane starts off at sea level on the tarmac. As it moves off the airport runway and flies into the air, it gains altitude and we as passengers in the airplane start to see Changi airport buildings, the surrounding sea shimmering in the Singapore sunlight.

As the airplane goes higher and higher, we start to see the islands of Indonesia or the plantations, towns and roads of Malaysia. The higher we fly up, the more we can make out the lay of the land as if it were a map that we were reading.

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