You Are Allowed to Work, Earn Money, and Do Nothing Else.

Here’s how to reverse your brain and wake up to life.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-with-hand-on-temple-looking-at-laptop-842554/

In 2015 I interned at a mid-sized company, a bicycle manufacturer. I was a semi-professional cyclist. I had a normal 40-hour week. I worked from 9 to 5 and I was heartbroken.

Because nothing I did there gave me the joy and satisfaction of a job well done. I wondered if it would make a difference if I earned more money for the same work. If instead of the $500 intern salary I earned $50,000.

My answer was no. I would still be unhappy and dissatisfied, only with a bigger apartment and a great car. The 40-hour week was too much for me.

You programmed yourself this way

If you focus only on earning money, you don’t even notice how time is slipping through your fingers.

It’s not just eight hours of work at the office.

One of the biggest mistakes that many people in the corporate world make is to believe that a job exists primarily to make money.

Sure, we all need money. Ambitions depend on each individual, but we all need a minimum to live. Yet to think that work doesn’t need to be fun or shouldn’t give you at least some satisfaction is a fallacy.

It’s not just eight hours in the stuffy office. It’s most of the day that goes into work.

You start at 9, so you have to get up at 8 at the latest. You barely get home before 7 at night. If you go shopping or do anything else, later. With that, the day is pretty much over.

Life is not all work. Doing something that doesn’t satisfy you for five days to get two days off. We trade five for two. Not exactly smart.

The problem is not work as such

You wake up every day and have to drag yourself out of bed. You eat a quick breakfast and then head to work in the crowded subway — or drive there in a crazy traffic jam.

The only thing that motivates you is knowing that it is already Wednesday. Just two more days and you will have your freedom back.

The fact is that we all have to work — and most probably we have to work very hard. However, the real problem is not working hard, but permanently doing something that does not satisfy us.

Making a lot of money has no direct connection with happiness

I realized that money doesn’t change as much as we think or as society tries to sell us. Money should only be a means to an end, not rule our lives.

However, when we work 5 days a week in a job we don’t like, we allow money to run our lives. We don’t live independently. But work can also be something completely different.

Work gives us the opportunity to help other people. We should not see work as an inevitable activity to earn our daily bread, but as a way to express and fulfill ourselves.

I don’t want to live only to work

I have been working hard on my writing side hustle online for the last 19 months. I write about money, crypto, and side hustle and help readers not to worry about money. I am not yet making enough money to live well, but I am working on my first product.

I usually work late (I have another side job to make money) and it’s not always fun. Working will never do that, even if we find our dream job.

The difference, though, is that it fills me up. I know it’s my thing, I know I help other people. And that makes my day better and changes everything.

I get up in the morning and I’m so motivated and looking forward to another day when I can do something that satisfies me and feels right. I don’t trade five days for two anymore. I also don’t trade four days for three. I don’t trade anything else. Because I am doing something I enjoy.