“What are you studying in school?”
“Uh, computer science.”
“Why do you like computer science?”
“Well I don’t, but there are lots of jobs in that field right now.”
Oh teenage David. Look at me. I’m twenty-nine and currently hatching a plan to escape from my second career. It’s not horrible, I just don’t want to spend half my waking life helping rich land developers get richer. I never did, though I didn’t always think I could do better.
Before you sign on for a chunk of college loan debt so you can learn what others say you should, hear me out.
What is normal in our society is to sell your time (customarily, forty hours of it per week, in five eight-hour stretches) for an agreed-upon flat rate. This is what most people do and what most people will tell you to do.
This is your time on earth. We’re talking about sizable pieces of the only life you’re going to have, sold to a company that — and let’s be honest — is probably not doing for the world what you’d like to do for the world. Do you really want your role on this planet to revolve around smoothly-running data entry systems? Insurance policies? Widgets?
But most people don’t see another way. The standard way to make a living is to rent yourself out for the better part of five days a week to achieve someone else’s purpose. In the time that remains, the weekends and the fleeting hours of the evening, you can live your life, or at the very least recover from your workweek. Sounds like a regular deal with the devil.
Rent out your forty hours like that, and somebody else gets to decide:
- When that forty hours is (right through the prime daylight hours, almost always)
- How you are to be spending that time, and why
- What you are allowed to wear, do and say during that time
- When you can take a vacation
- Who you work with
- When you deserve more money
- What your purpose is, at least until 4:30
- Whether to continue to supply your income or not
Once you’re playing this game, the main strategy is to make a lot of money for your boss, and over time they will share a small fraction of it with you in the form of incremental bumps in your salary.
You may luck out, of course. Some people do find that their own purpose matches the purpose of the person they sell their days to, so there’s no conflict there. But that’s not reality for most of us.
Don’t get mixed up in this racket.
What can you do instead? Do what your would-be boss is doing. Create something of value, and find the people who value it most. A service or a product that people value, and that others aren’t delivering as well, or at all.
If you need help to produce it, you will certainly be able to find a lot of people willing to sell you their time for a flat rate. If you need a method, there are hundreds of established, tested models in the library, online (yes, online), and at the bookstore. Pick one that speaks to you and see what happens.
The idea of running my own business always sounded preposterous. I fell for one of the biggest entrepreneurial myths: that you must risk a large sum of money to start a business venture. I think I came under that impression by watching an episode of Roseanne in which a financial advisor tells her she’d never heard of anyone starting a business for less than fifty thousand dollars. I missed the part where they said they were talking about restaurants.
I’d heard most businesses fail within five years (or something) and of course I pictured myself becoming part of that majority, ending up penniless in a green shack at the corner of Baltic and Mediterranean.
No, I dismissed any entrepreneurial ambitions long before I was done high school. I knew that such an uncompetitive, unambitious soul would always have to work for someone else. That was just reality.
So I jumped on the lucrative professional field du jour, computer programming. Four years later, I’d racked up some debt, run my self-esteem into the ground, forgotten everything I’d learned about computer programming, and started again in the engineering industry.
Now it’s another six years down the road, and I’ve left my job to travel abroad. When I return, I’m devoting as much time as it will take to create a bossless income. I’d rather work twelve hours a day for myself than eight for someone else.
Without this advice, teenage David will be entering a cycle of employer dependence he may never know he’s in. He’ll go to school, rack up some debt, and get a job. He won’t exactly hate his job, but he’ll still dread the fleeting, final hours of Sunday evenings, and he’ll still think Friday is necessarily a better day than Tuesday. Over the decades he might eventually trudge his way up to high five figures, possibly even topping out at the low sixes. He will always depend on others for his income and will only be able to travel in two-week stretches for the first sixty years of his life.
So, teenage David: Don’t sell your time to someone else’s purpose. You can do better. Be poor for a while if that’s what it will take.
***
Article from: http://www.raptitude.com/2010/02/3-pieces-of-advice-id-give-my-18-year-old-self-if-i-could/
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