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I write this on a beautiful Friday afternoon where I ponder how I can convince more people to quit the corporate 9-5 trap of a career to hang out with me. Thank you to Jan, Christian and Brian for supporting my non-work habit through Patreon.
#1 Curiosity: Walter Isaacson says that the main lesson to learn from his biographies of Da Vinci, Jobs, Einstein and Franklin is that they all kept their childhood curiosity and were voracious learners across many domains.
#2 Work Less: Clive Thompson makes the case for working less. In the UK, a survey found that people barely work more than 25% of their days. The rest of the day is just adult day camp with computers and social media access allowed if you're lucky. Lets start a revolution and embrace the Darwin day, nap included:
"Darwin, for example, would beaver away for three or four hours in the morning, then knock off for the afternoon, maybe take a long stroll, write some letters, and top it off with a nap. He’d do another 90 minutes before dinner, then call it a day."
#3 Communist Manifesto: On the parallels between the communist manifesto and our present-day existence. On the powerful forces of capital:
"Capital’s success at spreading its reach via accumulation for accumulation’s sake is causing human workers to work like machines for a pittance, while the robots are programmed to produce stuff that the workers can no longer afford and the robots do not need."
#4 Do what you love: This Paul Graham essay provides some practical advice to "doing what you love" but also just some solid advice for attempting to navigate a life. Here is my tweetstorm commentary:
A friend re-shared this essay from @paulg - "How to do what you love" - it has some amazing insights. https://t.co/K9OnB4MxvW If I had to just send someone the key highlights:
— Paul Millerd (@p_millerd) June 18, 2018
#5 Future of Work Mindsets: I completed an analysis of a survey I conducted looking at the different mindsets and behaviors of full-time workers, alternative workers and "side-giggers." Summary of findings:
Entrepreneurs report the highest satisfaction in work and life followed by solopreneurs, then full-timers with side gigs and then full-timers
Alternative workers (entre and solo -preneurs) experience much more autonomy, ownership and judgment in their work and are looking for alternative ways to live, design their lives and learn
The biggest difference between alternative workers and full-time workers was the response to the question "I have the freedom and autonomy to work on things that matter"
The biggest difference between full-time workers and full-time workers with side gigs has to do with uncertainty. "Side-giggers" are 19% more likely to agree with "I am okay not knowing what work I will be doing in two years”
The lowest scores among alternative workers were focused on action, experimentation and focus, and finding community and purpose — challenges for most people, but likely there is more pressure to focus on these in self-employment without a clear definition of success.
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