A blog I’ve been reading on and off for a few years now after a single link from Boing Boing (which sadly, I simply don’t have time to keep up with anymore) is Steve Pavlina’s “Personal Development for Smart People”.
His most recent article is written in an unusually unrestrained style that has really connected with me. This passage in particular is powerfully delivered and I have highlighted some of the key points:
You have to stay focused on creating and delivering value. Everything that detracts from this focus should be viewed as an expense, obstacle, or just plain evil.
This is so important, but most people just don’t get how important it is.
Getting a job is such a bad idea if you want to enjoy long-term financial abundance. The odds of success on that path are so low, it’s not even worth considering.
Seriously, you are better off being broke and homeless, so you can focus on creating and delivering value from that place. You’re much worse off if you have to waste day after day showing up to work for someone else. That won’t move you closer to financial abundance. It will only distract you further.
If I had to choose between being homeless and getting a full-time job, I’d go the homeless route. Having a job would be 10x worse. As a homeless person, I could stay hungry and focused on creating and delivering value. I might not have the means to produce much value at first, but at least I could get out there in front of people and deliver something. It would be a good start on the right path.
A job is just a monstrous distraction. In many ways it’s a modernized form of slavery.
Homelessness is a huge upgrade from traditional employment. Have you ever talked to a homeless person? Some of them find the idea of having a job insulting — it represents a loss of freedom. Sure you smell better and can get a nicer place to live, but you lose your humanity in the process. Perhaps such people realize something you don’t.Employment is the ultimate form of destitution.
I take it you re-read that last line a couple of times and are still gathering your scattered, battered senses. I read that this morning (I have a holiday today, feels good…) and it felt like an ice cold shower. Bear in mind that Pavlina rarely writes in such a provocative way. Always easy on the eye, Pavlina usually coaches you gently and persuasively, with examples from his own interesting life.
In these recessionary times (soon to become the total collapse of capitalism as we know it) it makes for a powerful rallying cry to self-employment.
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I agree with this entirely (apart from the “collapse of capitalism as we know it” stuff, which gets trotted out at the beginning of every recession). It’s ironic that, despite all the rights conferred on employees, working for someone else can be so debilitating. I fear that living without those employment “protections” is now too scary for most people in Britain, so that even fewer are prepared to risk self-employment and building their own business. Once again, the state counters the efforts of our parents to bring us up to be adults by trying to re-infantilise us.
Employment is a bit like agreeing to live in a zoo. Regular feeding, but little freedom and no intellectual privacy.
But self employment in an environment of “creating and delivering value” is also a bit stale. Freedom to replicate the infinite cycle of consumer profit and growth for your own wealth is hardly going to move society forwards. Unless of course your new enterprise is something special.
I visit Steve Pavlina’s site every now and again too, a bit better than the usual happy-clappy self-help stuff.
If I gave up my job, I would probably have more time to study and pursue things I care about; I would also be with three kids and possibly nowhere to live.
I might just forward this post to my manager to let her know that in employing me, she is oppressing me, or I might just not.
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