Over the last few years, I have worked on quite a few entrepreneurial projects. They have all stopped for one reason or another. In all honesty, I did not commit 100% of my time to them. Here again, I am in NYC work on various projects and not committing to one project.
I just read the posts that I wrote myself 3 years ago about choices in career. I am somewhat not in finance any more, back to work on various projects. Apparently, I have not found my calling yet. I re-read Paul Grahm’s article on love again and this paragraph stood out for me.
“The test of whether people love what they do is whether they’d do it even if they weren’t paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?”
One of my business now is importing lumber and supplying other goods via government contract. I am pretty sure I can safely say that I would not be doing it if I was not getting paid.
Gosh, if money was taken out of the equation of deciding what work I love to do, I would be at a complete loss.
The search continues.
What do you want? What does everybody want? Money? Health? Better relationships? Love? In the end I think what we all want is happiness. Are you happy? How happy are you? Can you be happier? What will make you happier?
So how do we go about finding happiness and determine how happy we are? That depends on what makes us happy. For example, money to some people is very important, they maybe happy just seeing a big number in the bank statement and the security of having that money for emergencies makes them feel secure and happy. To others money allows them to do what they love doing. If you have money and love traveling, money allows you to not work and go see the world. As another example, some people treasure vacation time more than money. They would rather have four weeks of vacations a year rather than two and they are willing to be paid less for it. Free time is what we all don’t have enough of. When I was younger, I didn’t value free time too much, but since I have been traveling, I think about all the places I want to visit and new activities I want to do and people I want to meet along the way. What I don’t have enough of really is time. Often traveling is less expensive than one imagines. There are many beautiful amazing places to see in the world. Working and earning in the US or other first world countries allow us to leverage the differences between our economy and economies of countries we visit. A school teacher earning 35,000 a year in the US can afford to Central America two months a year on a comfortable budget. However most people in the US only have two weeks of vacations a year, so free time is what we lack and therefore is valuable. So how do we use free time to make us happy? For me, I love learning anything new. You may love playing sports or sit around shooting the shits with friends or you may love playing poker. When you have the free time to do what you want, you probably would be happier.
We can also compare and contrast happiness today and happiness in the future. For example, some people work hard all their lives to save up money for a grand retirement. They are not happy at their job, but they know when they retire, they can do everything they want to do with their money saved. They sacrifice happiness today for happiness in the future. People who work in investment banking often puting 80 to 100 hours a week to get ahead in their career. Then they plan to retire by their mid-30′s with a few million dollars in the bank. Again, it’s a choice of sacrificing happiness today for happiness in the future. Which is better, being relatively happy everyday or not being happy for a few years and then have the freedom and happiness much later?
We need to know how and why each area of our lives affects our happiness, whether they be free time, love, money, health, relationship or whatever they maybe. If we can say ” money gives me freedom to travel but I don’t need 50 million dollars today. I only need at least $20,000 in my bank account to travel at leisure, then I’ll be happy.” Or “Having free time makes me happy because learning to play piano gives me a lot of joy”. “Family time makes me happy because I want to share my life with my loved ones” “Being in a great relationship makes me happy because it satisfies me emotionally and physically.” “Having faith and being involved in my religion makes me happy because I can feel spiritually fulfilled.”
When we can define how and why each area of our lives contribute to our general happiness, we can then see what we are lacking and where we need to put our focus to make us happier.