In theory, I love the concept of lifestyle entrepreneurship.
Making your
living online, being able to do it from anywhere in the world as long as you have an Internet connection.
It all sounds great ...
But most people talking about "lifestyle entrepreneurship" seem to be all about the promise of making big bucks while hardly ever working.
Ads that feature the smiling entrepreneur sprawled out on a white, sandy beach with a margarita in hand ...
Talk of never working and just soaking up the sun 24/7 (while occasionally hitting refresh on the Macbook to watch those 7-figures roll into your bank account) ...
It's not that I'm opposed to free time.
This workaholic has been improving his work/life balance in the last year, since there's no glory in working 24/7 and then burning out.
But do I ever long for a
4-hour workweek and the rest of the time spent twiddling my thumbs?
Nope.
Free time is overrated.
It's good up to a certain point, but humans need to be kept active or we get bored, dull, and our brains venture into negativity (even if we are in a beautiful, tropical location).
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport recounts the findings of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(try saying that ten times fast!):
Ironically, jobs are actually easier to enjoy than free time, because like flow activities they have built-in goals, feedback rules, and challenges, all of which encourage one to become involved in one's work, to concentrate and lose oneself in it. Free time, on the other hand, is unstructured, and requires much greater effort to be shaped into something that can be
enjoyed.
I'm not suggesting that you go toil away doing something that you hate. I'm reminding you that the promise of working just a handful of hours a week is seducing, but would become pretty boring after awhile.
We humans have to be doing more. We have to be productive - it's in our DNA.
I do what I do because I love it, and it would drive me crazy to work very
little at it.
It doesn't even feel like work.
Do I sound crazy? Maybe. But if it sounds like you, you're probably a fit for this:
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work I
go,
Marc