The end goal of a career is not to suddenly stop working & live a life of leisure. Humans *need* the stimulation & fulfillment that come from challenging work.
The problem is that we associate “work” with soul-crushing jobs we can’t wait to escape.
👇
🤔 What if we reframed retirement from being a point in time where we stop doing *work we hate*...
...to a long process where we’re increasingly doing more *work we love*, on our own terms?
Think of it as a spectrum...
You start at one end of the spectrum, doing what you have to do to pay the bills and support your family. But over time, bit by bit, you steer your career toward work that is more fulfilling and aligned with your passions. Now you’re focused on mastery, a life-long pursuit.
At some point most of your work will be things you love - things you’d do even if you weren’t paid.
Now you’ve won twice and the idea of retirement becomes irrelevant.
I’ll make it personal: At this point I my career, maybe 50% of my work is things I’d do even if I wasn’t paid. I’ve walked away from money & status to increase that percentage and I plan to continue growing it steadily. I recently turned 50 & I feel like I’m just getting started.
You can do the same.
Now more than ever it’s possible to turn passion into income, but it’s not easy & it won’t happen by accident.
Are you on a path to do more work you love and less that you hate?
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My 14 y.o. & I get ☕️ each Saturday and brainstorm business ideas. For better or worse she’s a chip-off-the-block and it’s a fun way to connect.
The ideas are starting to get pretty solid. Today’s 2 best (80% hers) 👇
1️⃣ The Holy Trinity: An indoor/outdoor 3-in-1 restaurant & hang-out with coffee, ice cream, and pizza (thus the name). The logo is a cartoon Jesus with 3 arms holding, one food in each.
2️⃣ Coffee Cubed (written as Coffee^3): A coffee shop with a science-y vibe that has a selection of flavored ice cubes (mocha, vanilla, etc.) to add to ☕️. Customers can get a discount by solving a math problem.
12 ways to get more followers. 8 easy steps for buying a business. 6-pack abs in 5 minutes.
It’s a road to nowhere. Hacks rarely result in lasting value or satisfaction. They’re based on a misguided belief... 👇
...that reaching the goal - winning the trophy - is the reward. So why not take a shortcut?
Because - to use a climbing analogy - when you reach the summit there’s nothing there.
You’re what @patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard calls a *Conquistador of the Useless*.
The only thing that matters is *how* you get there. The journey *is* the reward - it’s a cliche because it’s true.
To build real value & experience true fulfillment, skip the hacks and aim for *mastery*, which is not a destination but a life-long pursuit - an unattainable goal.
Back in the Web 1.0 days I co-founded a company called iChoose. The product was a browser plug-in (this was before mobile was a thing) that automatically compared prices on products and offered coupons while you shopped at any retail site.
It was very similar to @honey, but 20 years ago & in many ways more advanced.
I knew that a killer demo would speak for itself so I re-taught myself to code (I was a teen hacker in the early days of PCs) and spent countless nights building a working prototype.
As a child Chris Sharma knew he was a good athlete but the usual sports didn’t click with him. Then, at age 12, he stumbled into a climbing gym.
What ensued is the single fastest rise to dominance by any athlete, in any sport, ever.
👇
Faster than Serena, LeBron, and even Tiger.
Within 4 years, the skater boy from Santa Cruz was the best climber in the world, having established some of the hardest outdoor routes & won a World Cup event…
...without training for it.
🤯Let's put this into perspective:
Imagine a 6th grader picking up a golf club for the first time, playing purely for fun, and by their sophomore year in high school winning a PGA Tour event.
Tiger won his first pro tourney at age 20, after 19 years of maniacal practice.
🔥Hot Take: Society celebrates people who are wildly successful in one thing, but the most satisfied people are *multi-dimensional*.
👉This means they strive for success in multiple unrelated pursuits.
Elon Musk has said...
👇
...that being obsessed with your work is the only way to change the world but it’s a tormented existence, not a path to happiness. You see this all the time in the business world. Some of the most “successful” people are unhappy and frankly, uninteresting🥱
A quick story:
Not long ago, I had an unexpected (and awkward) chat with a high profile billionaire - let’s call him Greg. Greg has it all: Private jets, pro sports teams, & connections to society’s elites. I knew that Greg, like me, was a climber 🧗♂️ so that was the topic.
Robinhood’s CEO whiffed on what may have been the *biggest PR opportunity in business history*. He could have become a legend overnight, creating the Tesla of financial services by playing a different game.
Here’s how he should have handled it 👇
1) He should have taken a page from @stoolpresidente’s book and approached this with an “us vs. the suits” attitude, but toned down about 30%.
He should have live streamed constant updates to twitter & WSB, creating a sense that we’re in this together.
2) The first rule of crisis communications is to be brutally honest and provide all the details. Vlad should have taken this to the extreme.
For example, the *instant* RH realized that they were approaching capital or regulatory limits, he should have communicated like this: