10 Reasons You Should Never Get A Job
It’s funny that when
people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they
assume it’s time to go out and get a job. But like many things the
masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst
things you can do to support yourself. There are far better ways to
make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude.
Here are some reasons you
should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job:
1. Income for dummies.
Getting a
job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea.
There’s only one problem with it. It’s stupid! It’s the stupidest
way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income
for dummies.
Why is getting a job so
dumb? Because you only get paid when you’re working. Don’t you
see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into
thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re
working? Have you never considered that it might be better
to be paid even when you’re not working? Who taught you that you
could only earn income while working? Some other brainwashed employee
perhaps?
Don’t you
think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating,
sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7?
Get paid whether you work or not. Don’t your plants grow even when you
aren’t tending to them? Why not your bank account?
Who cares how many hours
you work? Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much
time you spend at the office. Most of us won’t even notice whether you
work 6 hours a week or 60. But if you have something of value to
provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out
our wallets and pay you for it. We don’t care about your time — we
only care enough to pay for the value we receive. Do you really care
how long it took me to write this article? Would you pay me twice as
much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3?
Non-dummies often start
out on the traditional income for dummies path. So
don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been
suckered. Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for
money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better
way. And of course there is a better way. The key is to de-couple your
value from your time.
Smart people build
systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. This can
include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor,
or generating royalty income from creative work. The system delivers
the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in
motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not. From that
moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income
(by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining
your income.
This web site is an
example of such a system. At the time of this writing, it generates
about $9000 a month in income for me (update: $40,000 a month as of
10/31/06), and it isn’t my only income stream either. I write each
article just once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from
them year after year. The web server delivers the value, and other
systems (most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect
income and deposit it automatically into my bank account. It’s not
perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free
anyway. But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this
business, right? Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register
the domain name). Everything after that was profit.
Sure it takes some
upfront time and effort to design and implement your own
income-generating systems. But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel —
feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate
programs. Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours
to support yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with
your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money? If
you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right
ahead. If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free. As
long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting
paid whether you’re working or not.
Your local
bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others
have already designed, tested, and debugged. Nobody is born knowing how
to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn
it. How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because
the time is going to pass anyway. You might as well emerge at some
future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a
lifelong wage slave. This isn’t all or nothing. If your
system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant
step in the right direction.
2. Limited experience.
You might
think it’s important to get a job to gain experience. But that’s like
saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain
experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but
you gain ”experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real
benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years,
and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or
politician.
The problem with getting
experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited
experience over and over. You learn a lot in the beginning and
then stagnate. This forces you to miss other experiences
that would be much more valuable. And if your limited skill set ever
becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat. In
fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will be worth
in 20-30 years. Will your job even exist then?
Consider this.
Which experience would you rather gain? The knowledge of how to do
a specific job really well — one that you can only monetize by trading
your time for money – or the knowledge of how to enjoy financial
abundance for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again?
Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the latter experience.
That seems a lot more useful in the real world, wouldn’t you say?
3. Lifelong
domestication.
Getting a
job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You
learn how to be a good pet.
Look around you.
Really look. What do you see? Are these the surroundings of a
free human being? Or are you living in a cage for unconscious
animals? Have you fallen in love with the color beige?
How’s your obedience
training coming along? Does your master reward your
good behavior? Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your
master’s commands?
Is there any spark of
free will left inside you? Or has your conditioning made you a pet for
life?
Humans are not meant to
be raised in cages. You poor thing…
4. Too many mouths
to feed.
Employee
income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect
that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is
designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of
those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your
paycheck.
But you can bet that from
your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are
considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive
such as benefits. Even the rent for the office space you consume is
considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover
it. You might feel supported by your corporate environment,
but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it.
Another chunk of your
income goes to owners and investors. That’s a lot
of mouths to feed.
It isn’t hard to
understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their
income. After all, who has more control over the tax system?
Business owners and investors or employees?
You only get paid a
fraction of the real value you generate. Your real salary may be more
than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never
see. It goes straight into other people’s pockets.
What a generous
person you are!
5. Way too risky.
Many
employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support
themselves.
Morons.
Social conditioning is
amazing. It’s so good it can even make people believe the
exact opposite of the truth.
Does putting yourself in
a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two
words (“You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you?
Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?
The idea that a job is
the most secure way to generate income is just silly. You can’t have
security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of
anyone. If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional
gambler.
6. Having an
evil bovine master.
When you run into an
idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the
other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate
world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.”
Did you know that the
word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically
means master? Another meaning of the word boss is
“a cow or bovine.” And in many video games, the boss is the evil
dude that you have to kill at the end of a level.
So if your boss is really
your evil bovine master, then what does that make
you? Nothing but a turd in the herd.
Who’s your daddy?
7. Begging for money.
When you want
to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for
more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some
extra Scooby Snacks now and then?
Or are you free to decide
how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own?
If you have a business
and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.”
8. An inbred social
life.
Many people
treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They hang out with the
same people working in the same field. Such incestuous relations are
social dead ends. An exciting day
includes deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts
to Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the
unexpected delivery of more Bic pens. Consider what it would be like to
go outside and talk to strangers. Ooooh… scary! Better stay
inside where it’s safe.
If one of your
co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a friend? If
you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never get to talk to
women above the rank of receptionist? Why not decide for yourself whom
to socialize with instead of letting your master decide for you?
Believe it or not, there are locations on this planet where free people
congregate. Just be wary of those jobless folk — they’re a crazy bunch!
9. Loss
of freedom.
It takes a
lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent
will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy
manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This
leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that
s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something
incomprehensible. Thus, the employee will likely
conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without
question. Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve
got a freshly minted mind slave.
As part of their
obedience training, employees must be taught how to dress, talk, move,
and so on. We can’t very well have employees thinking for themselves,
now can we? That would ruin everything.
God forbid you
should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the company policy.
Oh no, it’s the end of the world! Cindy has a plant on her desk!
Summon the enforcers! Send Cindy back for another round
of sterility training!
Free human beings think
such rules and regulations are silly of course. The only policy they
need is: “Be smart. Be nice. Do what you love. Have
fun.”
10. Becoming a
coward.
Have you
noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine
about problems at their companies? But they don’t really want solutions
– they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone
else’s fault. It’s as if getting
a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into
spineless cowards. If you can’t call your boss a jerk now and then
without fear of getting fired, you’re no longer free. You’ve
become your master’s property.
When you work around
cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on
you? Of course it will. It’s only a matter of time before
you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar
of fear: first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity…
and finally your independent will. You sold your humanity for
nothing but an illusion. And now your greatest fear is
discovering the truth of what you’ve become.
I don’t care how badly
you’ve been beaten down. It is never too late to regain your
courage. Never!
Still want a job?
If you’re
currently a well-conditioned, well-behaved employee, your most
likely reaction to the above will be defensiveness. It’s all part of
the conditioning. But consider
that if the above didn’t have a grain of truth to it, you wouldn’t have
an emotional reaction at all.
This is only a reminder of what you already know. You can
deny your cage all you want, but the cage is still there.
Perhaps this all happened so gradually that you never noticed
it until now… like a lobster enjoying a nice warm bath.
If any of this makes you
mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of
consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the
time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If
you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge
on the doorstep of courage. And when that happens, you’ll
have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living
like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the
domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be.
Happily jobless
What’s the
alternative to getting a job? The alternative is to remain happily
jobless for life and to generate income through other means. Realize that you earn income by providing
value — not time – so find a way to provide your best value to others,
and charge a fair price for it. One of the simplest and
most accessible ways is to start your own business. Whatever work you’d otherwise do via employment, find a way
to provide that same value directly to those who will benefit most from it.
It takes a bit more time to get going, but your freedom is easily worth the
initial investment of time and energy. Then you can buy your own Scooby
Snacks for a change.
And of course
everything you learn along the way, you can share with others to generate
even more value. So even your mistakes can be monetized.
One of the greatest fears
you’ll confront is that you may not have any real value to offer
others. Maybe being an employee and getting paid by the hour is the
best you can do. Maybe you just aren’t worth that much. That line
of thinking is all just part of your conditioning. It’s absolute
nonsense. As you begin to dump such brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize
that you have the ability to provide enormous value to others and that people
will gladly pay you for it. There’s only one thing that prevents you
from seeing this truth — fear.
All you really need is
the courage to be yourself. Your real value is rooted in who you
are, not what you do. The only thing you need actually do is
express your real self to the world. You’ve been told all
sort of lies as to why you can’t do that. But you’ll never know true
happiness and fulfillment until you summon the courage to do it anyway.
The next time someone
says to you, “Get a job,” I suggest you reply as Curly did: ”No,
please… not that! Anything but that!” Then poke him right in the
eyes.
You
already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want. So
don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise. Learn to trust your inner
wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for doing
so. Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the
best decisions you ever made.
Final thoughts
While I
wouldn’t recommend starting an online business for everyone, for many people
it’s one of the best ways to generate income without a job. It has certainly
worked disgustingly well for me.
~ Stevepavlina
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