Why do you work?

so much of the way we’ve derived our identity, our sense of accomplishment, achievement, contribution, value, self-worth, is subject to radical overhaul in the next decade and the one following that and beyond. More jobs will be automated, augmented, enhanced, and yes, eliminated. And certainly new jobs will be created, but we can’t wait for them t... See more

Throughout our upbringing and our time in the educational system, we are taught that an expenditure of effort leads to an immediate reward.. The issue is that this chain breaks down when we want to walk our own paths. When you direct your attention to your personal curiosities, there’s no immediate reason for society to value that. Society only val... See more

#29 We want to be useful

Most people want to contribute. Even in nomad hubs where people could easily stop working forever, I find most people do things to help others, create, etc.. Realizing this can help you realize how important it is to search for the "real work"

I want work that is meaningful and rewarding but that also allows me to pick up my kids from school or edit this book from a beach house. I don’t want to be shackled to a desk in some tower from nine to five, Monday to Friday. But I also don’t want a life where I sit at this desk in my house, in the same sweatpants, day in and day out, logging in a

... See more

It’s not that people don’t want to work. It’s that their jobs feel, for whatever reason, unsustainable: unsustainable for their mental and physical health, but also unsustainable for their family, and their longterm survival. Many people actually really like the work that they do, if they were, indeed, allocating the bulk of their time to doing tha... See more

People who do exceptional work may be glad to be paid and even more glad to be well paid, but they do not work to collect a paycheck. They work because they love what they do.

People have become anti-work because work used to be a source of meaning and prosperity, and now it isn’t. But meaningful work is the one of the only sources of meaning along with family and religion. If we lose it, we only have nihilism. Freddie deBoer on why the left is a labor movement. From David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs: “Perhaps the reason the... See more

People love to ask what you do for work and understand your professional trajectory. Often, it’s a surface question. Or, used to quickly categorize people in familiar boxes. But beneath this lies a far more interesting story. 
I don’t think you can truly answer questions about work without exploring ambition and identity. Looking back over the... See more