Would you rather get paid to do nothing or have an important, challenging job?
Timothy Ferris (in The 4 Hour Work Week) advocates the no work option. What could be better than doing nothing all day and still getting paid? Personally I wouldn’t refuse being paid to laze around the pool of the luxiourious Candado Plaza Hotel (which is proudly how and where I read the 4HWW). However retired people, those who could laze around all day if they wanted to, want to work. (78% of New Zealand retirees do anyway.) They don’t want to do nothing. For them at least, the reality doesn’t live up to Tim Ferris’ dream. Retirees want to work, but work won’t have them –at least not on their terms.
American Justice Sandra Day O’Connor thinks she knows why; she asserts that the secret of happiness is actually working extremely hard at something worth doing. That’s it. It’s not relationships. It’s not peace of mind. Do good work and the good life will follow.
The retirees’ issue reminds me of a 60 Minutes documentary discussing how Millennials (Generation Y) make difficult employees. They are a new breed who won’t do busy work, even when working for minimum wage. They are difficult. They need to be negotiated with. They don’t want to waste their lives any more than retired people do.
It seems that the answer is not about working hard or not; it’s the reason for the work that matters. It’s not ultimately a question of freedom and probably not a question of money either. No one wants to waste their time. So the question becomes: how can we find or create some meaningful work? Leading a Tribe seems like a good place to start.
