I’ve done my best work when I didn’t care about the money. Often I was working for free or working for myself. When money was my top motivator, I often found myself doing work I wasn’t especially proud of for clients who seriously irked me. It’s strange that it should be this way. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist and I have no qualms about making a profit or being proud of it. So why does money alone seem to be a bad motivator?
There is nothing wrong with establishing money as the goal of your work. It is completely moral to do so. But if all you’re working for is money, you’ll be competing with all the people who are so passionate about their work that they would do it for free. It’s pretty hard to compete with that level of intensity.
I can think of dozens of highly competitive jobs where the workers are extremely competent, passionate, and yet lowly paid. One of the worst is aviation. I know from experience, because I am an instrument rated pilot myself. I almost went on to become a commercial pilot, but my time hanging around airports clued me in to the reality of commercial flying.
Most people can understand that the days of senior pilots easily earning six figures are over, but they make the mistake of thinking that the average pilot makes a decent income. If only it were true, I might be among the clouds right now instead of sitting here writing these words! If you knew how many years of experience and training the pilot of your plane has, and how little he is paid in comparison, you might not want to fly… because you’d wonder how he could afford to consume enough calories to stay awake through the entire flight.
It’s not a joke. I knew several people who spent years flying passenger jets (as second-in-command) while earning so little that they needed to take on multiple roommates.
A good pilot loves every aspect of aviation so much that he will put up with low pay, horrible hours, and dozens of other complaints for the years it takes to get a career established (which, given the high rate of airline bankruptcies, is not so stable anyway.) I loved aviation but I realized that the lifestyle was not for me. I like to sleep in my own bed, wake up when I choose, make my own schedule, and not be under constant scrutiny forever. The people who can put up with it have more passion than I did, and I congratulate them for it. They may not be making big bucks, but they are doing what they love. And most of them would not have it any other way.
Doesn’t it sound exhilirating to live that way? Maybe low pay doesn’t sound too exciting, but what if you were so excited about your work every single day that you didn’t care how little you made? I would take passion over money in a heartbeat.
Everyone in the world should only do work that he loves. No exceptions.
Now you might say, surely the entire world can’t operate this way. We can’t have everybody in the entire world just doing the work that he enjoys doing. There are many unpleasant jobs that must be done. Or, you might love something that is unprofitable.
If that were true, then it would mean that work is a duty and it is destined to be a painful one. I don’t believe that. If everybody today refused to do work he didn’t love, and agreed to do only what he did love, much of the demand for the many pointless, soulless jobs would disappear. There can be no reason to do something you hate other than duty, and a duty imposed by society or God is unacceptable to rational, sovereign individuals. It is people’s fear of failure, and fear of self-expression, that keeps them in chains.
Imagine if thousands and thousands of people decided that they want to spend the majority of their time learning to play hockey, which is something that I do most days of the week. Instead of putting in eight hours at the office, maybe they put in half that time at some other job that pays less but allows for a more flexible schedule. Before you know it, the demand for hockey rinks would increase dramatically, as would the demand for Zambonis and Zamboni drivers and Zamboni repairmen. More skates and sticks would be produced. The better, more dedicated students would eventually become coaches to the others. An entire economy would grow up around people’s desires. What we now consider to be “merely fun and games” would become a viable career path for many, replacing the tedious jobs of today, which are no more essential to life than hockey. It all depends on what people value.
Millions of people now spend their days at work shuffling papers around and not getting a whole lot done, but work does not have to be like this. If people were more courageous, we would all probably be working less, doing better jobs in less time, at things that are more important, with more time to really enjoy life. Anytime we do something we don’t really want to do, it’s a huge sacrifice.
What if you decide to only do work you love and never again give your power away to work you hate? You might have to change your job, start a new career entirely, or become self-employed. You might be afraid that you will crash and burn in the attempt and go broke or end up homeless.
It might be the biggest challenge of your life, but is it worse to face the possibility of losing everything you own or face the certainty of trudging to a place you hate, to work with people you hate, to do a job that you think is stupid, for even one more day?
Life is too short to be miserable, and your work is a large part of your life. Only do work you can do with love.
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5 Comments
Interesting reading your blog – much the same outlook that I have.
I’ve often said, why spend so much time doing something you don’t like just to have money to do things you do like? Why not earn a little less doing what you do like and gain the time?
At the same note, to be truly successful, you need to be doing something that you’d do even if you don’t get paid. Think Wayne Gretzky.
But if one decides to get into a “passion” fields of endeavor, the sports, music, writing, acting and yes, flying, only the exceptional are well remunerated and usually by the less skilled people in those field who make so little money doing the same thing.
You might get a kick out of something I wrote some years ago on work, jobs and effort. It here, on my “under construction blog”, http://gseine.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/jobs-work-and-effort/
BTW, I found my way over here from OActivists and cheers, I be checking back to see if you fulfill the, too ambitious for me, month’s quota.
I would love to be Wayne Gretzky! I actually play hockey four or five days a week.
Once you have ethics down, it can be a challenge to figure out how to live your life. What career, what should I strive for, etc., can be truly hard to answer even for a dyed-in-the-wool Objectivist. I know more than a few people who think that if they aspire to be anything less than the CEO of a major corporation, they are being overcome by irrationality. I plan to think and write much more about those individual, psychological issues that don’t have a clear answer (unlike politics, for example).
Yeah, my quota was huge and the deadline looms… even if I don’t make it, I have a real appreciation of what it takes to put out good content on a regular basis. I don’t plan to let up, although I could never keep up the pace of one essay per day.
There’s an interesting book called “How to be Rich’ by J Paul Getty where he didn’t write about making money, just living life to the fullest. It might give you a good reference for that essay since Getty had a pretty good idea about the limitations of being a CEO. Discussed making up you own mind at some length – society’s biggest problem. Too many people want to make up other peoples minds and never think to explore their own.
Feel free to clip something off my site if it triggers an idea in need of expansion.
“Too many people want to make up other peoples minds and never think to explore their own.”
Garret, that is an excellent point.
Great post. I see a parallel here between: 1- Reason and emotions, and
2- Working for money or passion/love of the work (i.e. productive fulfilling work done according to one’s own rational judgment.
With a philosophy of reason and rational self-interest, “[a person's] mind and his emotions are integrated” (from Ayn Rand Playboy interview March 1964). (1)
Reason guides him to the proper emotions.
In the same way, with a philosophy of reason and in a free, rational society, the most objectively productive and valuable work would be rewarded with the most money. Any legitimate productive achievement or virtuous behavior would be rewarded accordingly. Reason guides people to properly value other men’s work, ability (including the ability to think long range), and moral character (i.e. honesty, integrity, self-esteem, purposefulness).
With the proper philosophy, one’s reason and emotions align, and in the proper society, money (i.e. salary, payment) and passionate, fulfilling, productive work would align as well.
-Jason
1. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/emotions.html