The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5

the new leverage points that define them—and how you can begin to use them to create more money, meaning, and freedom in your life, and the lives of those you love.

The ability individuals have right now to deliberately design their lives and realities is greater than at any time in history.

but the broadest segment of Western population is employed in the knowledge economy, and it’s that part of the economy that, over the past hundred years, has been responsible for creating most of the abundance and wealth now available.

The democratization of the tools of production means it’s easier to make something. The creation of new markets means there are more and more people to sell those things to, and the democratization of distribution means they are getting easier and easier to reach. Just as jobs are more competitive and threatened than ever, entrepreneurship has beco

This natural desire for increasing amounts of freedom has been one of the main drivers in the advancement of civilization. We’ve gone from one man, Luther; to a small group of men, the Founding Fathers; to a whole segment of society, the middle class Baby Boomer generation. And in each case, not only has the size of the group increased, but so too

Knowledge work, done in the Complicated domain, is no longer scarce—it’s getting more and more abundant. As global education standards, communication technology, and machines increase in supply, Archimedes’ lever is getting shorter and shorter. For macroeconomic reasons, jobs are getting more competitive and less profitable.

Times have changed. It’s now less valuable than ever to understand how to follow directions and implement best practices. It’s the work of understanding and operating in the complex and chaotic systems—entrepreneurship—that’s increasingly in demand.

According to a 2015 report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers based on data from the US Census Bureau, from 1948–2000, jobs grew 1.7× faster than population. Since 2000, the population has grown 2.4× faster than jobs.3

If our generation chooses it, if we seize it, the degree of freedom we can create is beyond the capability of human imagination. It’s entirely possible that the freedom you can create in your life within two decades will be beyond the imagination of many people alive today.

Happiness, he explains, isn’t just something that happens. We can’t buy it with money or command it to happen no matter how much power we have. It doesn’t depend on outside events, but our interpretation of them. Happiness is a condition which can be prepared for and cultivated. It’s that ability to control our own inner experience that will determ