Would You Do What You Do For Free?
I just published a book about money. It’s called, “Personal Finance in a Public World” and is currently in a $.99 launch sale on Amazon. Order here.
I love money! See my Racket conversation with my friend Andrew from Twitter.
It’s a different kind of love. But, it’s NOT my love language. That’s acts of service. I speak this language like this, “Honey, do the dishes!” or “Where’s my cell phone? Can you call it…please…honey”.
The Greeks have five words for love. I have six - their five and then the way I enjoy how money works.
I don’t think this special type of love is unique to me though. I have met quite a few people in the past year who have experienced a similar feeling. Doing research for my book led me to some fascinating conversations with these people.
My Favorite Tool
Money is just a tool.
I have been outspoken in many situations and outlets that I see money as a tool. I don’t see it as a goal. We can spend money. We can posses it. We can save it and hopefully, we will be able to increase it (inflation aside). But, it is solely for the sake of acquiring something else, whether that’s a tangible object or just the ability to acquire anything one could want.
It may seem counterintuitive that I love money but don’t see it as a prized possession. It’s a great relationship though.
Do You
Additional reading for this topic can be found in E-Impact 39 where I told a story about my old football coach, Rahim Morris (now the defensive coordinator of the Los Angelos Rams).
Has anyone asked you, “What do you do?”. HR Heidi Torres from Speaking of Impact episode 77 would tell you to have the answer perfected.
The assumption is that they are asking about your vocation - your job. It’s a reasonable question. Most people have to work for a living and it takes up quite a bit of time. Imagine you work simple forty hour weeks for fifty weeks a year. That’s 2,000 hours. If your career is forty years, that’s 80,000 hours or 3,333 1/3 days!
That’s a lot of life working - over nine years.
We may all question life from time to time and big changes are bound to occur, but it’s safe to say that we all have to do something to survive. Most people cannot just “live” without a concern.
I always encourage people to do what they need to do to support themselves and their families above all else (within reasonable legal and moral standards of course). But, at one point does what you do become what you must and cease being what you choose?
My question is worded very specifically.
I think most of modern society thinks that what we must do comes first and it is our right or hope that we can choose something different for our life. It’s backwards.
We tell young children to dream big. We expect them to want to be astronauts, doctors, fire fighters, and professional athletes. Yet, somewhere along the lines, we call into doing out of necessity and not because of our dreams.
Dreaming
In Speaking of Impact episodes 10, we heard from my high school Spanish teacher. His name is Angel Aloma. At the time, he was the Executive Director of Food for the Poor; a global organization providing food and much more to people in need.
To dream is to live.
Angel, or Mr. Aloma as I call him, shared a story about a man who told him that he lost the ability to dream.
In two days, you are going to hear the 2021 Speaking of Impact Highlight Special (listen to the 2020 Impact Highlight Special). Honestly, I thought about adding this story in because of how good it was.
The man that Angel speaks of was alive but he had lost all hope of joy. All he could do was execute the bare minimum to survive. It taught me two things.
One, no one should feel that way and it’s everyone’s job to make sure everyone else doesn’t either (step up, impactmakers!).
And two, if you don’t, chase that dream, for free.
The Quiz
Sorry to break it to you, but there’s a pop-quiz in this entry.
It start’s now. I know, you don’t like me.
Would you do what you do for free?
Think of how you would answer the networking style questions from above (What do you do?).
Once you have that complete the quiz. Yes, there’s only one question. Do you like me now?
I used to think that this was an easy quiz. It seems simple.
I knew when I was a teenager that I wanted to either play sports or talk about them for a living. That’s it. It wasn’t about the fame or the money. I hadn’t developed the sixth type of love yet.
It was for the game and the competition. If it wasn’t one of those two things, you were going to have to pay me a LOT of money (so that I could use it as a tool to chase something else).
Now, I see how the quiz is much harder for us adults. There’s too many other things to think about. What we “do” is not just our canned “speed networking” response.
Today in my life, I can say yes. I think it took me fifteen years to get here though and it takes continual effort.
Don’t be discouraged if you can’t finished the quiz before you continue reading.
Studying
Regardless if your answer to the question popped into your mind immediately or you need time to think about it, you always want to be studying the subject matter.
Periodic evaluation is important. We are humans and we each have some level of necessary change in life. Be aware as things happen to satisfy that need. Those points are pivotal for identifying if you are working to survive, working for free, or anything in between.
The most basic way to “study” is to just take the quiz every so often. This is the minimum viable action. It’s effective but not thorough.
To strengthen your efforts, consider these three uses of time:
“working” (career, job, side hustle, etc)
“escaping” (from the things above)
“interacting” (with loved ones and enjoyable activities)
Related thoughts will allow you to achieve balance. Ha! Just kidding. Ask Travis Parry and Drew Tarvin from Speaking of Impact episodes 16 and 20, respectively. about how possible work life balance is.
There is never perfect balance. There is acceptable and effective balance. And THAT is achievable for all.
It’s All Good
It’s Christmas Day, night actually, or even past midnight, and I am on a plane. My wife, mother-in-law, and I are on our way to Las Vegas! I’ve never been to that area of the United States so I am pretty excited.
It hasn’t been the smoothest trip though. Some very good friends of ours were supposed to pick us up at our house around four o’clock eastern time. They were also flying out tonight (last night). At about two, our airline e-mailed us saying that our flight out of Ft. Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) has been delayed and we were rebooked on a flight out of Miami International Airport (MIA).
We didn’t know anyone else flying out of MIA and certainly didn’t want to inconvenience anyone on the holiday to take us down there (about 45 minutes away). We used Uber (gotta love modern ride sharing). Thankfully, we arrived at the airpot in time and made it onto the plane.
While we were on the place, I was doing everything I could to avoid bumping my broken collarbone. I managed to do that but I wasn’t able to avoid peril. The guy across the aisle from me elbowed me on the side of my head with significant force while I was sound asleep. My reaction must have been startling and hilarious all at the same time. You would have expected the guy to ask if I was okay or say “sorry”. He did nothing.
I proceeded to stare at him for what seemed like a minute straight and I got no response. Not even, “You good?”.
Had asked, I probably would have said, “It’s all good.” When in reality, it wasn’t all good. He woke me up and made the side of my head hurt. Not cool bro.
We say, “It’s all good” as a way of indicated, yeah things aren’t in balance, but we can handle it. My head hurts and I’m now wide awake, but my life is significantly affected by your lack of spatial awareness and body control.
In the end, I’m fine. I am writing E-Impact and I’d do it for free! Wait, I do…
My experience this night relates to our “studying” because life is not going to be ALL good at any given time but if you can find the right mix of time amongst the three categories above, you can be “all good”.
Making the Most of It
Each person’s “all good” is different. But when you find it, your answer to the quiz is “yes”.
I thoroughly support time with loved ones but here’s my hot take on your time.
“Working”, “Escaping”, and “Interacting” are equally important.
Note: this does not mean equal amount of time should be spent.
Many would say spending time interacting with loved is most important. If I had to choose, that would be it. However, they are all important for humans to thrive.
You must have meaningful work. You must have time where you are not thinking about that work no matter how meaningful. And you must have healthy human relationships that you and the other parties rely on.
Monitor, or study these. Know when time is skewing towards one and away from another. Know how you feel when this happens. Spend more time on one when you need it and less on one when it’s overdone.
You’ll then be equipped to not only answer the quiz questions, but also be able to make needed adjustments to ensure a “yes”.
Show Me the “WEI”
Perhaps it’s the perfect night to close with “Show me the WEI”(pronounced “way”).
Christians often ask Jesus to show them the way and I wouldn’t certainly recommend that if you are a Christian to do so in this scenario.
Ask Him to show you what’s the appropriate amount of work, escape, and interaction.
If you know the “WEI”, you’ll never lose the ability to dream and you’d do what you do for free.