You may have heard of paying yourself first to gain success in personal finance. Well, if you're looking to expend your energy on some passion project, you need to dedicate your first energy of the day to that passion project.
If you have to go somewhere you're not passionate about for your 9-5, it's unlikely you'll be excited about working on anything when you get home. If you wake up on Saturday and go straight to the yard work or laundry or other domestic tasks, you're not going to want to skip that family picnic in the afternoon to work on your novel.
Expend your first energy every day on your project. This is even easier if you're a consultant or similar entrepreneur and you can set your own schedule. 30 minutes, 2 hours, whatever, take your best and most productive work and put it into your passion. Then give your leftovers to the other stuff you do to get by.
Other resources in similar vein but modernized are the Get Rich Slowly and I Will Teach you to be Rich websites.
In particular, Get Rich Slowly definitely resonates with me. The blog is not well organized for someone who just jumps in, but Forbes has a good getting-started reading list:
While much of the content is very reasonable it should be taken with a grain of salt considering it was originally created as marketing for banking and insurance companies. Obviously it is better for their business models if everyone invests in their businesses through savings accounts, insurance, and banking investment programs. Savings accounts (and often investments) can pay less than the cost of inflation, especially counting in the banking costs. Savings and investing are naturally good ideas, but stable goods such as land are often the best investment.
I'm not the OP, but it just means that when you get your paycheck, immediately deposit a certain amount into savings. Since your paycheck seems smaller, you'll hopefully spend less.
I know (not well anymore) someone who owned a business (multiple I think) who's said that same saying and I'm sure I've read it somewhere else. I always assumed it meant: when you have a business treat yourself as an employee and pay yourself so that you don't use all the money (on business needs is all I can think of: staplers, paper, etc) and can pay your bills.
I might have misunderstood it or whatever but I always thought it made a bit of sense since you need to take some money home at the end of the day.
this is an americanism, i think. not being one, when i first heard it, i found it confusing too.
what it means is that you put some money away for yourself (ie, pay yourself) before you spend it (ie, pay others).
if you're hearing it the first time, it sounds like the opposite of saving. i, for one, upon hearing it for the first time interpreted it as: "do something good for yourself, ie spend it on yourself" :)
If you have to go somewhere you're not passionate about for your 9-5, it's unlikely you'll be excited about working on anything when you get home. If you wake up on Saturday and go straight to the yard work or laundry or other domestic tasks, you're not going to want to skip that family picnic in the afternoon to work on your novel.
Expend your first energy every day on your project. This is even easier if you're a consultant or similar entrepreneur and you can set your own schedule. 30 minutes, 2 hours, whatever, take your best and most productive work and put it into your passion. Then give your leftovers to the other stuff you do to get by.