If you do what you love, you'll never have to work a day if your life.

[DCT]

Interesting article and video. I'm good friends with these guys.

How many people love what they do for a living?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenb.../#53cf0c926c95

[joosttx]

Interesting article and video. I'm good friends with these guys.

How many people love what they do for a living?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenb.../#53cf0c926c95

I do. I wish I started it earlier.

[Blue Jays]

I make a reasonable living and enjoy cool bicycles due to my employment.

[TMB]

I did once upon a time.

Not so much anymore.

It’s why i’m retiring.

[zetroc]

IDK, I'm in Miya Tokumitsu's camp on this one.

I do something I'm pretty good at for a living, but it lets me do what I really like as a hobby (picture framing, riding bikes, photography, etc.) More fun that way.

[jumphigher]

I like what i currently do. And I also like and remain super positive about my entire life, which work is an extenion of. As I always tell people 'these are the good old days', so live in the moment, not in the future or past. Your outlook is everything, imo.

[dgaddis]

I've done it, didn't make much money, went back to a real job. I wouldn't say I "love it" at all, but I certainly don't hate it, and I like my co-workers, and the extra income allows me to do stuff I really enjoy.

Work doesn't have to be life-fulfilling and something you love. That's nonsense. That's why it's called work and not Super Happy Fun Time. Just from a practical standpoint, the world wouldn't work if everyone did something they love. Now if you can make it work - that's great, more power to you! But I've always believe a job is just a job, it's a means to an end.

My job is not who I am - I am not what I do. What I do just pays the bills so I can be who I want.

EDIT one last thing - the 'you'll never work a day in your life' thing is total BS too. In my experience if you're doing something you love, you're willing to work your ass off for it. But it's still work, it's not vacation. Even if it's something you would do for free because you enjoy it, once it becomes a business, it is not the same as doing it for fun. Not saying it isn't enjoyable, but it is work. But the work is worth it - that's the difference.

Also, this is a good read.

[DCT]

EDIT one last thing - the 'you'll never work a day in your life' thing is total BS too. In my experience if you're doing something you love, you're willing to work your ass off for it. But it's still work, it's not vacation. Even if it's something you would do for free because you enjoy it, once it becomes a business, it is not the same as doing it for fun. Not saying it isn't enjoyable, but it is work. But the work is worth it - that's the difference.

Also, this is a good read.

Good point. This is the sweet spot!

[bigbill]

I'm along the lines of doing what you don't hate to have the resources to do the things you love. I work as an engineer in high speed manufacturing but that ends on 5/4. I'm already retired from 27 years of military service, but that income isn't sufficient to do all I want to do. I did get the bonus of my high school senior son getting an appointment to the Naval Academy, so I don't have to worry about his college now.

Now I have to figure out what I want to do after I take two months off. I interviewed for another engineering job in San Antonio, but likely won't get that because of the timing. I had kind of put it on the back burner, but I'm leaning towards doing the month at UBI and getting multiple classes done and then pursuing a job in the bike business. It'll still be a job, but perhaps it would be less stressful and help support my bike habits. I have an untouched GI Bill, it would pay for all the classes.

[j44ke]

I sort of think you have to be happy beyond what you do for a living. You may be happy doing what your are doing now, but if that goes south due to some pervasive greed in the markets or a failed leader's lack of intelligence while guiding the country, where is your happiness? The times I've been happy about the work I was doing, it made me nervous because it made me beholden to my job for happiness, which meant a lot of things in terms of negotiations on salary, choices on free time, co$t of being happy, etc.

That doesn't mean it is a bad thing to be happy with what you are doing for work, but just that you need a wider more expansive sense of happiness in life that can survive the impermanence of employment, fluctuations in earnings, living conditions, etc.

These guys did an excellent job with their company, and they should be happy with what they've achieved. But I expect that they've also figured out a way to be happy that lies outside of what they are actually doing for a living. In fact, that concept is probably the life-style-model they are using to sell their clothes. They are offering to their customers a sample of that sort of larger happiness in a pair of khaki shorts, madras shirt, etc. And conveniently their customers may not be entirely happy with what they are doing for work!

[Saab2000]

I agree with the idea that what I do is not who I am. I fell into my line of work totally by accident in 1996 by answering an ad in the Tages-Anzeiger. Twenty two years later I'm still in the same industry but doing a different job now. I don't love it as much as one might think but it's what I do and it pays the bills. I certainly don't hate it either but aspects of it are tiresome and physically and mentally fatiguing and it can be stressful at times. When I retire from what I do I don't think I'll miss it but I better have a plan in place to occupy the time I'll have. I certainly didn't grow up wanting to fly airplanes but somehow I ended up doing it anyway. It's not really fair because many people dream of it and it never happens for them.

When I quit this work I want to take several significant cycling trips per year to various parts of the globe, but that's another thread for another time.

[steve garro]

Been working on bikes for 30 years.

Bikes have been very good to me, but I got into it to allow me to ride them, not because I loved working on them.

"Love" is a pretty strong work to attach to toil, I'd go with Deeply Satisfying or Rewarding, which it is.


Talk to some super burned-out Grand Canyon river guides to see how a love of the GC can turn into yelling at people and alcoholism.



Me, i just want a few cool millions to disappear forever and go fishing and learn Spanish.

Maybe work on some bikes in the shade when it fancies me.


- Garro.


IMG_6292.JPG

[caleb]

I find a lot of satisfaction in my work, and I never dread it. When I'm away for an extended period, I look forward to getting back to it. And every single day I spend time doing things that are just plain fun. My work is pretty central to my identity, and if I weren't doing what I'm currently doing, it would be something of an existential crisis for me. It's still work, but it doesn't feel much like any other job I've had.

But waking up and doing something I like every day means not pursuing more ruminative forms of employment, and being able to make that choice to forego potential income is a privilege. I don't think it's a choice that everyone can or should make. I would certainly have thought differently if I had children, or my wife was having trouble finding work, for example. The work-as-personal-fulfillment model isn't universally possible, desirable, or responsible.

There's also a lot to be said for the idea of working to live, not living to work. Generations of honorable and upright men have gotten up early to work jobs they don't really like in order to provide for their families. Not only is there no shame in that, I suspect there's something healthy that I often miss out on by being able to walk away from work when the shift is over.

[bigbill]

Talk to some super burned-out Grand Canyon river guides to see how a love of the GC can turn into yelling at people and alcoholism.




- Garro.

Seen it first hand. "I want you, you, and you on my boat, not you".

[TMB]

To clarify my point above. I used to love what I do. The reality of the type of work I do, and the work that many of the people here do, is that as you get older, more senior and therefore more expensive, is that you get further and further away from why you started doing it in the first place.

I am still in the same field, but I no longer get to do the fun stuff. My work now is the administration, the sales / relationships management, the bureaucracy. All the stuff that saps the life out of you.

I will go back to selling myself on a per diem, for the parts of the year I want to work, doing the part of the job that is actually fun.

And if no one is buying, I don’t care. We have enough to live comfortably.

[TMB]

I'm along the lines of doing what you don't hate to have the resources to do the things you love. I work as an engineer in high speed manufacturing but that ends on 5/4. I'm already retired from 27 years of military service, but that income isn't sufficient to do all I want to do. I did get the bonus of my high school senior son getting an appointment to the Naval Academy, so I don't have to worry about his college now.

Now I have to figure out what I want to do after I take two months off. I interviewed for another engineering job in San Antonio, but likely won't get that because of the timing. I had kind of put it on the back burner, but I'm leaning towards doing the month at UBI and getting multiple classes done and then pursuing a job in the bike business. It'll still be a job, but perhaps it would be less stressful and help support my bike habits. I have an untouched GI Bill, it would pay for all the classes.

A bit of news. Scot and Karen are moving back to PHX. They are going to use our house for their home base for the next few months while they move and house hunt. So next spring, he's there!

[bigbill]

A bit of news. Scot and Karen are moving back to PHX. They are going to use our house for their home base for the next few months while they move and house hunt. So next spring, he's there!

That's great, I hope I can make the trip next year.

[Dave]

I love teaching kids, maybe I love talking to and with kids. However, I now hate teaching as I so.fundamentaly disagree with the absolute bs coddling I am forced to do from the higher ups. I grew up hard, but teach in an area that would remind you of the movie Clueless...if you were ever forced to have to have seen that.

I use to love teaching, inspiring kids with words and actions. Those days aren’t tolerated anymore, just data data data. No wonder we have such a poor track record of stopping mentally ill kids from creating horrible history in our country. Like many of you deal with, I have parents telling me how to do my job, who don’t even know how to teach the math and science I teach.

Anyway, there are the summers and. I have 5 more weeks until I can wake up and simply ride, play with my kids, and...whatever I can get into.

[fa63]

Don't love what I do (engineer). Same for my wife (also an engineer). But two engineer salaries plus a relatively frugal lifestyle (and no kids) mean we are looking at retiring at age 40 or before.

We figure we can do what we love after that.