notes app; sliding doors & cosy homes
housing affordability crisis!!
I’ve got thirty minutes to burn, right before I head out for a keshi concert, determined to make sure my notes app updates get published on Tuesdays once again. Here are two things floating in my mind that I’ll invariably carry as I bang my head to iconic, Asian sad boi tracks.
On sliding doors 🚪
One of the underpinning thoughts going through my mind is sliding door moments.
It’s not quite the definition of sliding door, which comes from the 1998 Gwyneth Partlow film of the same name referring to how a seemingly insignificant action/inaction creates incredible aftereffects that redefine where your life could have gone.
Jeff Bezos, of all people, has a really accurate mental model to describe how I’m feeling at the moment, which he calls Type 1 and Type 2 Decisions.
Type 1 Decisions (one-way doors) are characterised by an irreversible, massively consequential impact which require a ton of deliberation, careful decision-making and input from all the experts in your life. Type 2 Decisions (two-way doors) are the opposite, with relatively inconsequently impact and easily reversible should you make the wrong choice, and as such decisions ought to made quickly to find out whether something works or doesn’t.
Currently, I’m being faced with a pretty significant one-way door to walk through. At least, I’m of the impression that it’s a one-way door because of the way it asks the following, confounding questions:
What kind of skills do I value more than others?
Do I actually value progression as much as I say I do?
Is this actually a one-way door that I cannot turn back from?
Alas, I’m also in a state of overwhelm and that’s less to do with the one-way door but more of everything else going on - which is odd, because I can’t really articulate why exactly I’m feeling perpetually cloudy. Perhaps due to my subtle lack of sleep, I feel like I’m running low on the gasoline of mental energy, all to keep life afloat - which hasn’t afforded me the mental energy to think properly more this one-way door and the consequences, both positive and negative, that may lie within it.
Jeff has a comment that as organisations grow bigger, they have a tendency to regard Type 2 Decisions as Type 1 Decision, leading to a slowness to react. I don’t think I’m feeling that. I think my Type 1 Decision is very much real but it is the decision-making-procrastination-due-to-feeling-overwhelmed and fear-of-stepping-out-of-my-comfort-zone that is preventing me from slamming the hammer of YES or NO.
The details of my one-way door are quite confidential so I won’t talk about my rationale until I’ve chosen to enter or leave (in which case, you probably won’t hear about it at all and all this would fade into obscurity).
There is one future sliding door moment that I have been thinking more about recently though that I’m more than happy to bicker about, and that’s apartment-hunting.
On cosy homes 🏠
Sydney is up there for one of the most scuffed aces for housing affordability. The median house floats for a staggering $1.6 million dollars and your typical apartment is a sizeable $900k. This is literally 15x the median pre-tax income of $60k such that I have no idea how the numbers add up for anyone without a ludicrously high income, support from parents or a $20 million Lotto win.
I’ve been fortunate to have two of the three things stated (guess which one I don’t have) and while it’s still a decent chunk of time in the future, I’ve had some joy looking at (catastrophising) the kind of property I’d like to live in, what my wants/hates are, where that would approximately be and by what age I’d have paid of my mortgage.
(By my estimations, it’s about 43 years old for a dingy two-bedder unit. Fuck. But honestly, could be a lot worse.)
It’s a super rough draft but here are some things that I’ve decided are super important to me:
Layout: Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, one indoor parking space and not a shit stupid layout
Public transport: Less than 10 minute walk to the closest train or metro, with a line that runs till at least midnight
Amenities: Supermarket and Asian grocer within a 15 minute drive
Nature: Has to have some level of greenery, within 20 minute drive to a beach and park
Location: NOT facing the main road, well-lit and safe
Cost: Mortgage repayments cannot be more than 40% of income of when I start
Other: No carpet flooring, air conditioner and laundry in-house, elevator (unless on the 1st floor), good cell phone and internet coverage, WELL-PLACED WINDOWS ESPECIALLY IN BEDROOM
And here I’ve got a couple of nice-to-haves:
Layout: First floor unit with a front/back porch that works as a second entrance — otherwise, a small balcony connected to bedroom
Amenities: Coffee shop and small grocery store within 10 minute walking distance
Location: Eastern suburbs or inner west of Sydney in a more Asian-dominated suburb
The suburbs that have peaked my interest right now and sit in the I-believe-will-continue-to-be-reasonable range of $800k to $1.0m (fuck) are West Ryde, Beaconsfield, Strathfield, and surprisingly so - Sydney Olympic Park. I have at least the next three years to think about it though so I won’t give it much thought right now. Who knows? I might find myself perched at the Southern Highlands or off at a fishing town in Hokkaido.