Why Work

When Tim Ferris taught us that only 4 hours of work was required to make ends meet (as opposed to 40 or 60) he forced us to re-evaluate this important question:

Why would anyone work anymore?

A few possible answers to the question:

• Ferris just wrote the book so he wouldn’t have to work anymore.
• Having a normal job is safer and easier than planning globetrotting adventures.
• The daily rhythm of going to work is soothing and necessary.
• Your parents expect you to work a normal job.
• You’d get bored if you didn’t have have a normal job.
• Work is your platform for making connections, serving people, doing your art and changing the world.
• Your job is deeply connected to your identity and feelings of worth.
• You don’t work to make money, you work to make meaning.
• Your work is more than a necessary evil.
• You love your customers.
• Your boss would never let you skip 36 hours of work day.
• Self-help books are a pile of crap.
• Mastery requires 10,000 hours.
• Disrupting the way things always have been is too scary, too bold.
• You’re afraid of being perceived as pulling less than your weight in society.
• Work is part of your way of restoring and healing a broken creation.
• Work is influence.
• You need a reason to get out of the house every morning.
• Your co-workers are your community.
• Work is your way of hiding.
• You actually enjoy working.

Whatever your answer, it’s worth considering. “Gotta pay the bills” just isn’t good enough anymore.