One of those posts you read and feel as if it's personally addressed to you.
With no end really in sight for our lockdowns over here in Ireland (we now have the most days under lockdown in Europe), gyms closed, and a travel radius of 5km, it's been difficult to switch off. Especially when the feeling of progress, and the rapid dissolution of time that comes with a true 12-14 hour day coincides with being another day closer to freedom, it's harder than ever to stop working into the evenings.
Because when you work 'hard' (pushing buttons on a keyboard isn't really that hard), time flies by at a rate of knots. Blink and it's lunchtime. Blink again and the sun is gone. One more blink and you've got red eyes and you're back to 00:01.
But deep down I, and everyone else I imagine, know you're right on this. The work becomes easier, the mood becomes brighter, when the days are shorter, and more focused. But working with 100% intensity can be tough to start - your mind resists it - and especially when there isn't really anything to do after work ends (yes, books and walking are obvious examples, but bear with me), you start to get the voice telling you to slow down, take it easy.
You're going to be here all day, nothing else to do, so why not just slow it down a bit - then a 2 hour block of focused work becomes 4 hours of semi work, and so on and so forth.
Either way, as someone who has become aware of his deeply ingrained, schoolboy guilt from not working, abandoned in University and then re-ingrained by hustle culture, and through said awareness has let go of that guilt - I thought I would chuck in my two cents as to why I end up working so many hours.
Given that the post felt like advice from an older, wiser friend, I'm going to go and watch clouds for a bit.
Very insightful article, something I’m aware I need more of but struggle to make happen all the same. In my experience women struggle with this too, albeit in a different way. Last year I put in more work hours than my male colleagues in order to prove myself, but was still made redundant along with other female colleagues in the pandemic. As I live in a rural area, there aren’t many jobs around, so I went freelance, but it’s tough getting work right now. I’m not making much money so I put more hours in to try and make up for it. I work more hours than my partner but because he is paid well he currently handles most of the bills until I am on my feet again, and to make up for this I do all the housework. Basically, I don’t get much time to rest. I’m not resentful as I’m grateful he can support me while I work things out, but I think it’s typical of women to feel guilty or imposter syndrome if they aren’t constantly doing something for someone else. Whenever I ask my girlfriends how they’re doing, they say “busy” like a badge of honour, whereas my male friends say they “haven’t been up to much” or are playing/watching sports or video games. I think when men choose to switch off they have a better mindset for doing so.
I agree entirely. I think women are ‘naturally’ more well rounded and aware of this need for balance. However, in the world of business women are sadly expected to put in the same amount of hours as their male counterparts who often have this ability to put in insane hours because they have no life otherwise. Add on to that the image that has been sold to women that ‘you can have it all’ (high flying career, family, interesting social life, hobbies, stylish home, fitness and on and on) and you have a pressure cooker waiting to explode.
When men ‘get it’ regarding rest they embrace it more fluidly. But women have been very much indoctrinated to strive and to try and keep up a very difficult to maintain appearance in the workplace and in the world.
I don’t have a ready to hand solution. But at least identifying such issues is a step in the right direction.
Thanks for stopping by Madeleine. It’s appreciated.
Many great points here Thomas. I think we all agree that the toxic hustle culture comes mostly from the American Protestantism - after all, they're the only ones in History to have upholded "work until exhaustion" as a value in itself. The preachers of the Old books have always looked at Idleness with contempt, but the Puritans went a step futher, as everything that was not work was immediately associated with idleness and sloth, which is a sin in itself.
To me, this current "mindset" could be explained by 3 more points, a bit derived from your take:
1. The competition is broader than it ever was. Even 100 years ago, your direct competitors would be from your own region/state, to the exception of a few sectors. So there was less incentive to break your back at work. Nowdays, esp. with the service economy, your competion is all around the world. For many of us, we don't only need to "outwork" the guy from the next village, we need to outwork Chang from China, Rishabh from India and so many others. The burden of performance is just too high.
2. Most people have jobs that are neither high value nor really creative. Everyone will understand the need to rest for a creative job, and usually if you're good at your (high-value, creative) job, you have some leverage and are not that easily replaceable. But if you're just crushing un-ending excel sheets for 8 hours straight or working as an average sales account manager, you're mostly doing production/management tasks all day. People are less tolerant with your downtime or your needs to "recharge" because that's not fundamentally required in order for you to perform. And if you end up burning out, the company doesn't really care because you're not that irreplaceable anyway.
3. The atomization of society and the end of "male-spaces" has left most men in a state of loneliness and the only collective hobbies left for them are at best working out, and at worst drinking together or playing online video games after work. "Hobbies" even bear a bad reputation, as if it was some childish whim, eventhough they've always been held in high esteem in the past.
Just a few thoughts here. Anyway, I gotta get back to work....
Exceptional points - and I think on the second point, the prevalence of AI and automation will eventually lead to getting rid of those jobs entirely, much sooner than people realise.
What we do with all of these people afterwards remains an unanswered question - people point to UBI, but that seems closer to slavery than anything else when you stare long enough.
I'd like to see a Wildean world of artists - but I imagine it's much too idealistic a dream, at least in our lifetimes.
In among the forest of index cards I have pinned to my cork board with essay ideas one says: ‘UBI and Wilde’ interestingly enough. Might have to move this one up to the top of the docket if I can remember what the point I was going to make was again...
I've been thinking about that "hobby" and Leisure stuff, and why it seems so contrarian to the American way of thinking...
When you think of it, people who are capable of letting go, relax and adopt a "come what may" attitude are fatalists: they are convinced that not everything can be controlled or forced into existence. So they put down the ego and let their mind in a state of mental availability, which is the only "mindset" that will allow them to wait for something beyond their will to happen and hopefully seize the opportunity when it comes.
But most of us cannot handle this silent responsibility, as it is frightening and anxiety-provoking to accept the fact that many of the things that will happen to us are beyond our reach. You see it all the time; people willingly complicate their lives and make sure they're always busy to keep that sense of control.
And so, leisure and having hobbies just for the sake of it are profoundly anti-american; because it comes from a mindset of fate-acceptance/ letting go and not the Promethean ethos of "You have complete control over your destiny and with enough work you can have and become anything you want".
Great insight around hobbies and they are sorely lacking in today's world. on a somewhat related note, I cannot stand the push to 'monetise' your hobbies. I personally enjoy boxing and I cannot imagine anything ruining the 'reset' it provides me with trying to get a buck out of it.
I think on a whole we need to start seeing hobbies and activities as an end unto themselves and not as a means to something else then to something else. Chasing the dragon so to speak.
Great insights as always Sebastien. Hobbies is a whole topic unto itself so I’ll leave that to one side and put it on my growing list of topics to write about in the future.
Competition is real sadly, and in some of the low paying, long hours, hard labour jobs I have worked it is fierce. I get it, I really do. I think there is a danger in my work that people will misunderstand and think that I am advocating sloth and apathy which are very different things to rest and idleness.
I suppose what I want people to take away from essays such as this, if they are able to read between the lines and have some discernment, is that they should aim to get themselves into a position where leisure is possible. This may involve using leverage, lowering materialist expectations, or indeed enduring a period of very hard work to dig themselves out of a hole. Individual cases will vary.
But a balanced life with relaxation, quality hobbies and *time* should be the goal. And it shouldn’t take too long to make real strides in that direction. It is not an expensive pursuit. It is largely a question of letting go and learning to enjoy things for what they are. All of which is easier said than done.
But then this is also true of everything in life that is worthwhile.
I had a bolt-out-of-the-blue realization a few years ago, when I was trying to increase my hustle: we value those insights about work while we walking or cooking or relaxing, because we value work. Those insights also pop up while we're working, but about non-work issues: our family, our goals, our relationships, what we'll eat next, you name it. It's because the mind keeps working on what it considers important even when our attention is elsewhere. Why priviledge those insights about work, when it's clear our mind values all these other things as well? Certainly there's focus and self-discipline, but if our minds consider our relationships, our diet, and our liesure important enough to bring it to our attention when we're focused on work, we should make time for them at least as seriously as we make time for work.
And on that note, I will retire to read for the rest of the evening before curling up in bed at a reasonable hour. Cheers!
And yes, the intuition tends to *know* all of these things and sends up clues and warnings about the direction we are heading in. But sadly there is a lot of work done to divorce us from our intuition as the conclusions that it often leads us to are the opposite of the Rat Race and other activities which increase GDP.
I love some good serendipity. A quote from last night's book, "It is not the business of gentlemen to have occupations."
I wonder how much the fall of the aristocracy has impacted the general view of work/life balance. When the upper echelons of society were respected and imitated, leisure, their principal occupation, was valued. Now society has a need for the rags to riches story. Even a small inheritance is enough to snuff your story of 'self-made' when the reality is we have all inherited the best time to be alive and no one can rightfully claim to be purely self-made. It seems to me that it's this obsession with and glorification of 'pulling yourself up by the bootstraps' has killed the value of leisure and rest for the general public.
Not to descend to the level of political discussion and gossip but it is an easily observable fact that plebs like me were quite fond of Prince Harry when he was a hedonistic, fairly feckless Jack The Lad, but are no utterly ambivalent to him since he has become a striker who seems keen on celebrity and doing work. Seems a terribly gauche and middle class thing to do. It should be beneath someone of his blood and stature. But such is the world we live in.
Incidentally the phrase ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ was originally coined as an absurd joke because to do so is impossible. That obvious fact has been obscured by the passage of time. Shame, really.
Perhaps the middle class has been the enemy all along... Jokes aside, it does seem that middle class values now dominate and hard work, striving for the next rung definitely fits the bill.
Interesting. How appropriate that an old joke is used to describe one of today's prevailing mentalities towards work and even life.
There’s more going on psychologically with this mentality which I haven’t fully figured out enough to be able to articulate it at present.
But I do know that being one of the 1% of people who actually acknowledges that they are part of the 99% is very freeing and puts you on the right track mentally.
Only way to really discuss a topic. All’s I can do with these essays is plant seeds and maybe influence people to stop taking ‘content’ and ‘hustle’ to heart.
Doing this in itself is enough to help improve my sleep at night. Public service.
Such a fluent and enjoyable read. I’ve only recently come to the conclusion that rest is indeed a valuable facet of success. I’ve been a workaholic since forever but I’m now at an age where mental serenity and inner fulfilment are way more valuable then mainstream benchmarks for success.
In the words of William Wordsworth: “Rest and be thankful”
Thanks Josh, and thanks for taking the time to comment. The greatest irony about rest is that even if your goal is to be hugely successful rest is often the missing ingredient. In music conservatories, for example, it is found that the great musicians, as opposed to the merely very good, all sleep and nap more than the others.
The brain can only integrate what it learns through rest. It is the crucial factor.
Great essay as usual Tom. I have a thought to share after reading it. I’d appreciate your opinion on it.
First of all, I completely agree with the premise. Having spent much of late 20s and early 30s “pushing” as they say, I have found that taking more time to rest and spending less time hussling has improved both my results and my overall life quality. If your life is purely work focused then it would suggest to me that something is off. I’d even go so far as to say that it suggests a kind of narcissism and lack of confidence, that talking about how hard you’re working suggests that you’re trying to fool yourself into thinking that what you’re doing is more important than it is.
That said, I think I some people are just playing the game. If one is ambitious one may have to signal that they are busy / always working / have no time for hobbies etc. for them to be seen as credible. I have learned over my career that what you signal is just as important as what you do. I suspect that this means in a professional context that people are signalling that they are working far harder than they actually are. People can’t surely be watching the volume of Netflix they’re watching and working that hard can they?
Absolutely agree on that signalling aspect, James. In many of my own lowly jobs in the past I have made sure to carry either a cloth, a mop, a pen and pad or at least an expression of concentration so that the bosses think that I am hard at work and not a mere malingerer. The games people play.
But the problem with careerist signalling for the ambitious is that it is an example of acting ‘as if’. You become what you regularly do and think. You start to believe it, if at first only subconsciously. And so the pretending to be a workaholic eventually leads to actual stress and lack of perspective and then burnout.
Couldn't agree more with this philosophy. Working is often confused with appearing busy for the sake of appearing busy. Do what needs to be done, then either rest or move on to the next thing. Rest is associated with laziness and that's a shame. As you point out, rest is scheduled and needed, laziness is just procrastination. Neither are the same. Great email as always, my friend.
One of the real indignities or low paid work especially, is that you have to pretend to be busy and you have to wind down the clock, so to speak, rather than work intensely and efficiently for a short time and then relax with impunity.
I think the avoidance of this is one of the main perks of entrepreneurship.
One of those posts you read and feel as if it's personally addressed to you.
With no end really in sight for our lockdowns over here in Ireland (we now have the most days under lockdown in Europe), gyms closed, and a travel radius of 5km, it's been difficult to switch off. Especially when the feeling of progress, and the rapid dissolution of time that comes with a true 12-14 hour day coincides with being another day closer to freedom, it's harder than ever to stop working into the evenings.
Because when you work 'hard' (pushing buttons on a keyboard isn't really that hard), time flies by at a rate of knots. Blink and it's lunchtime. Blink again and the sun is gone. One more blink and you've got red eyes and you're back to 00:01.
But deep down I, and everyone else I imagine, know you're right on this. The work becomes easier, the mood becomes brighter, when the days are shorter, and more focused. But working with 100% intensity can be tough to start - your mind resists it - and especially when there isn't really anything to do after work ends (yes, books and walking are obvious examples, but bear with me), you start to get the voice telling you to slow down, take it easy.
You're going to be here all day, nothing else to do, so why not just slow it down a bit - then a 2 hour block of focused work becomes 4 hours of semi work, and so on and so forth.
Either way, as someone who has become aware of his deeply ingrained, schoolboy guilt from not working, abandoned in University and then re-ingrained by hustle culture, and through said awareness has let go of that guilt - I thought I would chuck in my two cents as to why I end up working so many hours.
Given that the post felt like advice from an older, wiser friend, I'm going to go and watch clouds for a bit.
Cheers Tom, great post.
Very insightful article, something I’m aware I need more of but struggle to make happen all the same. In my experience women struggle with this too, albeit in a different way. Last year I put in more work hours than my male colleagues in order to prove myself, but was still made redundant along with other female colleagues in the pandemic. As I live in a rural area, there aren’t many jobs around, so I went freelance, but it’s tough getting work right now. I’m not making much money so I put more hours in to try and make up for it. I work more hours than my partner but because he is paid well he currently handles most of the bills until I am on my feet again, and to make up for this I do all the housework. Basically, I don’t get much time to rest. I’m not resentful as I’m grateful he can support me while I work things out, but I think it’s typical of women to feel guilty or imposter syndrome if they aren’t constantly doing something for someone else. Whenever I ask my girlfriends how they’re doing, they say “busy” like a badge of honour, whereas my male friends say they “haven’t been up to much” or are playing/watching sports or video games. I think when men choose to switch off they have a better mindset for doing so.
I agree entirely. I think women are ‘naturally’ more well rounded and aware of this need for balance. However, in the world of business women are sadly expected to put in the same amount of hours as their male counterparts who often have this ability to put in insane hours because they have no life otherwise. Add on to that the image that has been sold to women that ‘you can have it all’ (high flying career, family, interesting social life, hobbies, stylish home, fitness and on and on) and you have a pressure cooker waiting to explode.
When men ‘get it’ regarding rest they embrace it more fluidly. But women have been very much indoctrinated to strive and to try and keep up a very difficult to maintain appearance in the workplace and in the world.
I don’t have a ready to hand solution. But at least identifying such issues is a step in the right direction.
Thanks for stopping by Madeleine. It’s appreciated.
Many great points here Thomas. I think we all agree that the toxic hustle culture comes mostly from the American Protestantism - after all, they're the only ones in History to have upholded "work until exhaustion" as a value in itself. The preachers of the Old books have always looked at Idleness with contempt, but the Puritans went a step futher, as everything that was not work was immediately associated with idleness and sloth, which is a sin in itself.
To me, this current "mindset" could be explained by 3 more points, a bit derived from your take:
1. The competition is broader than it ever was. Even 100 years ago, your direct competitors would be from your own region/state, to the exception of a few sectors. So there was less incentive to break your back at work. Nowdays, esp. with the service economy, your competion is all around the world. For many of us, we don't only need to "outwork" the guy from the next village, we need to outwork Chang from China, Rishabh from India and so many others. The burden of performance is just too high.
2. Most people have jobs that are neither high value nor really creative. Everyone will understand the need to rest for a creative job, and usually if you're good at your (high-value, creative) job, you have some leverage and are not that easily replaceable. But if you're just crushing un-ending excel sheets for 8 hours straight or working as an average sales account manager, you're mostly doing production/management tasks all day. People are less tolerant with your downtime or your needs to "recharge" because that's not fundamentally required in order for you to perform. And if you end up burning out, the company doesn't really care because you're not that irreplaceable anyway.
3. The atomization of society and the end of "male-spaces" has left most men in a state of loneliness and the only collective hobbies left for them are at best working out, and at worst drinking together or playing online video games after work. "Hobbies" even bear a bad reputation, as if it was some childish whim, eventhough they've always been held in high esteem in the past.
Just a few thoughts here. Anyway, I gotta get back to work....
Exceptional points - and I think on the second point, the prevalence of AI and automation will eventually lead to getting rid of those jobs entirely, much sooner than people realise.
What we do with all of these people afterwards remains an unanswered question - people point to UBI, but that seems closer to slavery than anything else when you stare long enough.
I'd like to see a Wildean world of artists - but I imagine it's much too idealistic a dream, at least in our lifetimes.
In among the forest of index cards I have pinned to my cork board with essay ideas one says: ‘UBI and Wilde’ interestingly enough. Might have to move this one up to the top of the docket if I can remember what the point I was going to make was again...
I've been thinking about that "hobby" and Leisure stuff, and why it seems so contrarian to the American way of thinking...
When you think of it, people who are capable of letting go, relax and adopt a "come what may" attitude are fatalists: they are convinced that not everything can be controlled or forced into existence. So they put down the ego and let their mind in a state of mental availability, which is the only "mindset" that will allow them to wait for something beyond their will to happen and hopefully seize the opportunity when it comes.
But most of us cannot handle this silent responsibility, as it is frightening and anxiety-provoking to accept the fact that many of the things that will happen to us are beyond our reach. You see it all the time; people willingly complicate their lives and make sure they're always busy to keep that sense of control.
And so, leisure and having hobbies just for the sake of it are profoundly anti-american; because it comes from a mindset of fate-acceptance/ letting go and not the Promethean ethos of "You have complete control over your destiny and with enough work you can have and become anything you want".
Great insight around hobbies and they are sorely lacking in today's world. on a somewhat related note, I cannot stand the push to 'monetise' your hobbies. I personally enjoy boxing and I cannot imagine anything ruining the 'reset' it provides me with trying to get a buck out of it.
I think on a whole we need to start seeing hobbies and activities as an end unto themselves and not as a means to something else then to something else. Chasing the dragon so to speak.
Great insights as always Sebastien. Hobbies is a whole topic unto itself so I’ll leave that to one side and put it on my growing list of topics to write about in the future.
Competition is real sadly, and in some of the low paying, long hours, hard labour jobs I have worked it is fierce. I get it, I really do. I think there is a danger in my work that people will misunderstand and think that I am advocating sloth and apathy which are very different things to rest and idleness.
I suppose what I want people to take away from essays such as this, if they are able to read between the lines and have some discernment, is that they should aim to get themselves into a position where leisure is possible. This may involve using leverage, lowering materialist expectations, or indeed enduring a period of very hard work to dig themselves out of a hole. Individual cases will vary.
But a balanced life with relaxation, quality hobbies and *time* should be the goal. And it shouldn’t take too long to make real strides in that direction. It is not an expensive pursuit. It is largely a question of letting go and learning to enjoy things for what they are. All of which is easier said than done.
But then this is also true of everything in life that is worthwhile.
Cheers.
Another great post, Tom!
I had a bolt-out-of-the-blue realization a few years ago, when I was trying to increase my hustle: we value those insights about work while we walking or cooking or relaxing, because we value work. Those insights also pop up while we're working, but about non-work issues: our family, our goals, our relationships, what we'll eat next, you name it. It's because the mind keeps working on what it considers important even when our attention is elsewhere. Why priviledge those insights about work, when it's clear our mind values all these other things as well? Certainly there's focus and self-discipline, but if our minds consider our relationships, our diet, and our liesure important enough to bring it to our attention when we're focused on work, we should make time for them at least as seriously as we make time for work.
And on that note, I will retire to read for the rest of the evening before curling up in bed at a reasonable hour. Cheers!
Good for you Steven!
And yes, the intuition tends to *know* all of these things and sends up clues and warnings about the direction we are heading in. But sadly there is a lot of work done to divorce us from our intuition as the conclusions that it often leads us to are the opposite of the Rat Race and other activities which increase GDP.
But that’s another subject for another time.
Happy reading.
I love some good serendipity. A quote from last night's book, "It is not the business of gentlemen to have occupations."
I wonder how much the fall of the aristocracy has impacted the general view of work/life balance. When the upper echelons of society were respected and imitated, leisure, their principal occupation, was valued. Now society has a need for the rags to riches story. Even a small inheritance is enough to snuff your story of 'self-made' when the reality is we have all inherited the best time to be alive and no one can rightfully claim to be purely self-made. It seems to me that it's this obsession with and glorification of 'pulling yourself up by the bootstraps' has killed the value of leisure and rest for the general public.
Not to descend to the level of political discussion and gossip but it is an easily observable fact that plebs like me were quite fond of Prince Harry when he was a hedonistic, fairly feckless Jack The Lad, but are no utterly ambivalent to him since he has become a striker who seems keen on celebrity and doing work. Seems a terribly gauche and middle class thing to do. It should be beneath someone of his blood and stature. But such is the world we live in.
Incidentally the phrase ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ was originally coined as an absurd joke because to do so is impossible. That obvious fact has been obscured by the passage of time. Shame, really.
Perhaps the middle class has been the enemy all along... Jokes aside, it does seem that middle class values now dominate and hard work, striving for the next rung definitely fits the bill.
Interesting. How appropriate that an old joke is used to describe one of today's prevailing mentalities towards work and even life.
There’s more going on psychologically with this mentality which I haven’t fully figured out enough to be able to articulate it at present.
But I do know that being one of the 1% of people who actually acknowledges that they are part of the 99% is very freeing and puts you on the right track mentally.
I’m not sure I can help you there. Truely the only way to discuss this properly would be over a pint or two.
Only way to really discuss a topic. All’s I can do with these essays is plant seeds and maybe influence people to stop taking ‘content’ and ‘hustle’ to heart.
Doing this in itself is enough to help improve my sleep at night. Public service.
Such a fluent and enjoyable read. I’ve only recently come to the conclusion that rest is indeed a valuable facet of success. I’ve been a workaholic since forever but I’m now at an age where mental serenity and inner fulfilment are way more valuable then mainstream benchmarks for success.
In the words of William Wordsworth: “Rest and be thankful”
Thanks Josh, and thanks for taking the time to comment. The greatest irony about rest is that even if your goal is to be hugely successful rest is often the missing ingredient. In music conservatories, for example, it is found that the great musicians, as opposed to the merely very good, all sleep and nap more than the others.
The brain can only integrate what it learns through rest. It is the crucial factor.
Cheers.
Great essay as usual Tom. I have a thought to share after reading it. I’d appreciate your opinion on it.
First of all, I completely agree with the premise. Having spent much of late 20s and early 30s “pushing” as they say, I have found that taking more time to rest and spending less time hussling has improved both my results and my overall life quality. If your life is purely work focused then it would suggest to me that something is off. I’d even go so far as to say that it suggests a kind of narcissism and lack of confidence, that talking about how hard you’re working suggests that you’re trying to fool yourself into thinking that what you’re doing is more important than it is.
That said, I think I some people are just playing the game. If one is ambitious one may have to signal that they are busy / always working / have no time for hobbies etc. for them to be seen as credible. I have learned over my career that what you signal is just as important as what you do. I suspect that this means in a professional context that people are signalling that they are working far harder than they actually are. People can’t surely be watching the volume of Netflix they’re watching and working that hard can they?
Absolutely agree on that signalling aspect, James. In many of my own lowly jobs in the past I have made sure to carry either a cloth, a mop, a pen and pad or at least an expression of concentration so that the bosses think that I am hard at work and not a mere malingerer. The games people play.
But the problem with careerist signalling for the ambitious is that it is an example of acting ‘as if’. You become what you regularly do and think. You start to believe it, if at first only subconsciously. And so the pretending to be a workaholic eventually leads to actual stress and lack of perspective and then burnout.
But you raise a great point.
Thanks for the insight, James.
Couldn't agree more with this philosophy. Working is often confused with appearing busy for the sake of appearing busy. Do what needs to be done, then either rest or move on to the next thing. Rest is associated with laziness and that's a shame. As you point out, rest is scheduled and needed, laziness is just procrastination. Neither are the same. Great email as always, my friend.
Well said, Chief.
One of the real indignities or low paid work especially, is that you have to pretend to be busy and you have to wind down the clock, so to speak, rather than work intensely and efficiently for a short time and then relax with impunity.
I think the avoidance of this is one of the main perks of entrepreneurship.
Thanks as always for reading, Chief.