It’s like heroin.
Getting paid for work you’d happily do for free is the best feeling in the world. I’ve been lucky to reach this goal. I want more people to experience this.
Here’s what it’s like and how to get paid doing sh*t you love (hat-tilt to Alex Hormozi for the quote in the headline).
Boring work makes no money
Why? It lacks emotion.
We feel nothing so we do nothing. Because emotion is motion. It’s energy that helps us to do the real work. And real work we get energy from is hard. Hard work is easier to achieve when you’re not living a 1% battery life.
I spent much of my career doing boring work. I sat in an office and pushed buttons for a bank. The jobs I did could be done by an AI now, if only someone in the bank would buy the subscription already.
People make the mistake of doing work for money.
“Law pays great.”
Or “running a hedge fund is a great way to make a lot of money.”
These types of thoughts force people do dumb stuff for a living. The test of any work is to first make sure you give a crap about it.
When I write on the internet I can’t sleep. I think about writing 24/7. It’s the only thing I ever want to do for the rest of my life. There’s a level of finality about it.
Like, when you find what you’re going to do until the day you die and your daughter waves goodbye, there’s a sense of freedom. It’s bizarre and so many problems in life explode like a nuclear bomb.
A weight gets lifted off your shoulders.
The weightlessness helps you excel further in your field. Strangers make random comments like “dude, you seem to have it all going on.”
Not really.
There’s just something about work you love that’s addictive.
Creativity increases
A lack of creativity at work is the real epidemic.
No one talks about it. Walk into a standard office though. How much creativity do you see going on? Not a lot, right? It’s because they’re there for the money first, and the love, last.
When you make a living doing work you love it compounds your creativity levels. You start at level one creativity and charge through the game rapidly.
Ideas don’t run out. They have babies and fill up your brain. Ideas even make love to each other and produce weird combinations.
When high on creativity you can do crazy stuff you never previously dreamed of. You come alive.
The lure of self-sufficiency
Normal work is soul-crushing.
That’s not the worst part. You’re always reliant on some middleman to manhandle you and put your shelter and food at risk.
When you make money doing something you love, you can build an entire career separate from middlemen. This is possible because your work speaks for yourself.
It becomes a magnet for the ‘right people.’ Those people are happy to pay you without you having to think quietly, “pay me b*tch.”
The demand side of the marketplace is solved for you. All you’ve gotta do is produce the supply of work fuelled by your true passion.
Ownership and full profit of your work
Boring work is tied to oppressors.
You do the work because you have to. It gets money into the bank account. The trouble is a salary for doing boring work is a drug too.
It’s just enough money to keep you out of bankruptcy, but not enough money to get paid what you’re worth.
When the demand side is stripped away because of a lack of love, you’re taken advantage of and most of the profit doesn’t go to you.
Worst of all, the ownership of your work doesn’t go to you.
When you don’t own the work you don’t control the pay or the work conditions. You become a human that says “how high you want me to jump today, boss?”
A level of freedom that sets a trapped mind free
The money from work you love is nice.
It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, though. The money buys your time back. It allows you to say “f you” to anything or anyone you’re tired of. This type of freedom removes many of the obligations from your calendar.
They’re those events you can’t normally say no to because they piss off those who control your destiny.
With a freer calendar there’s time to think for once.
Photo by Josue Michel on Unsplash
Here’s how to find addictive work that requires zero motivation
A few steps that help reveal the path forward…
Don’t worry about status
Traditional work is all about status games. Job titles tie your ego to a base level of nothingness. If you give up status and don’t care what career levels your work earns you, the money comes thick and fast.
The people who can give you financial opportunities don’t give a crap about your status in society. They’re attracted to your love for your work.
Don’t worry about your parent’s dreams
Your parents value things from their generation. Many of those things are dead in your generation.
The work they want you to do isn’t the work you want to do.
Forget about X goal by Y date
“By 30 you should…”
Blah blah blah. There’s no magic age for any goal. I did stuff-all for most of my life until about 35. That’s when I realized I wanted to bleed on the page through writing for the rest of my life.
Addictive work doesn’t strategically find you and bless your life.
The date to achieve any goal is before you’re dead. The sooner the better, so go get started.
A huge clue is what you do in a flow state
A flow state is when you do some type of work and get lost in it.
The #1 sign is when you lose track of time. The perception of time starts to shift, too. 8 hours feels like 1 hour.
Every time you get that feeling, you’re hugging your customized version of the most addictive drug in the world.
That’s your thing, no matter how bizarre it is. Look for flow.
Money is a by-product of consistency
I said the naughty word: consistency. Soz.
But you know this to be true. Work that makes real money is consistent. How the heck do you be consistent at work you don’t give a flying fudge about? You don’t.
Consistency is how you get good. It’s where the skill is developed. So it’s not about reading Atomic Habits again or doing more reps.
It’s about being consistent at work that is self-motivating. Work that produces energy that creates more energy.
Take a damn risk for the love of god
The whole process is scary.
Being addicted to a work drug might get you in trouble. The crazies may scream hustle culture. Maybe it doesn’t work out.
Maybe you love the work but it earns you bugger-all in cashola. No one can predict how it’s going to pan out. But not even trying is what creates so many problems in life.
Yes, it’s easy to give up or scream there’s no work I love. But what have you got to lose?
I think of life like a video game. When you play Super Mario you don’t worry if you die or get bitten by a turtle. All those things don’t matter. It’s just some fun before your eventual death. You can die as many times as you like with zero consequences.
Life is similar, except you only die once. That’s why you should have an enormous sense of urgency to chase drug work ASAP.
The bitter alternative to doing drug work for money
Maybe all of this sounds too hyperbole.
What’s the alternative? Burnout. You hear this phrase all the time. People toss it around like it’s a bat virus you accidentally catch in an elevator.
But you don’t burn out from work that feels like a drug. It’s the opposite. You can’t get enough.
The alternative is you do boring work and die at 25 while being buried at 75. Live like a zombie. Hurl abuse at strangers because you don’t know what to do with your life. That’s no way to live.
Find work that feels like a drug or die trying.
