Wake up.
Hit snooze 3 times.
Check your phone.
Put useless thoughts in your brain.
Make coffee.
Sit in traffic.
8 hours of work you dislike.
Sit in traffic... again.
Complain.
Drown out the noise with cheap entertainment.
Go to bed.
Repeat.

Sounds horrifying if you ask me.

But most people are willing to make this trade for "stability" — gladly trading 5 days of their life, for 2 in return.

If I asked you to get into an investment opportunity with me, and said:

"You just have to put $100,000 in, and next year you'll get $30,000 back when it's all said and done... a - 70% loss!!! How's that sound?"

You'd (hopefully) laugh in my face and walk away.

Yet most people willingly make this trade with their time... a far more valuable and finite resource than money.

Consciously select your work, or let it be assigned to you.

We all have to work, there's no getting around it.

Rent. Food. Utilities. Health. Emergencies.

I suppose this isn't news to you: you need money for survival.

So if you'll need to work for a large portion of your life anyways, and the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts and the expenditure of your time and energy…

Why not consciously select work that you love, rather than passively allow others to assign work to you?

The kind of work that makes you eager to jump out of bed in the morning.

The kind of work that seems to warp time itself whenever you engage with it — allowing you to enter deep flow states.

The kind of work you'd do even if money wasn't an object of your concern.

(Paradoxically, this is also how you make the most money)

Why?

Because the amount of money you make is in direct proportion to the quality of service you provide, and the quality of service you provide is in direct proportion to your passion for the work itself.

That’s the secret.

Do what you love. Work less. Earn more.

Yes this is possible.

I've done it and so have millions of others since the dawn of time.

So in this essay, I want to help you ask the right questions and completely shatter the way you perceive time.

Ultimately, helping you chose work that envigors you, allowing you to "outwork" others and succeed effortlessly.

The Paradox of 'Hard Work'

When I started my first online business, a marketing & content agency, I had a motivation high unlike anything I'd ever experienced.

I had fully bought into the toxic hustle culture, and I could hear Eric Thomas' voice reverberating between my ears:

"When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breath, that's when you'll be succesful."

So hustle I did.

I had recently moved to England for an semester abroad, so I had 6 months, no friends around, no obligations, a clear vision, a $10,000 course I purchased with most of my savings that promised me $10k/mo in return.

I was all in, and completely delusional as to what it takes to build a sustainable business.

Nonetheless, I started doing the work and blasted my undifferentiated offer to what seemed like all corners of the internet.

I worked 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week, sending 70-100 cold emails per day, cold calling business owners who'd tell me to "F*ck off" daily.

I was miserable.

But in my mind, I was in the trenches and trying to make the little David Goggins in my head proud.

So after 6-months of mind-numbing cold outreach, and being at the merciless beck and call of my two clients I (unsurprisingly) burnt out.

"But Mikey, I thought you were going to tell me I need to work 7 days a week, and hustle like all the other productivity and success gurus"

"Isn't that the key to success? Hustle and grind for years and outwork your competition?"

No.

That's where I went wrong. That's why I burnt out.

This erroneous belief is why most people quit, and end up taking the terrible 5 for 2 trade with their time.

Turning Work into Play

Now before you raise your pitchforks at me and curse me through your screen, let's discuss this commonly misunderstood and problematic aphormism.

Because by no means does this quote mean that the 'work' won't be diffult, demanding, and stressful.

In highschool, Kobe would practice everyday at 5am before school started.

For the 2008 Olympics, Kobe would be in the gym 4:15am to make at least 800 shots before his teammates showed up for 8am practice.

Was this difficult, demanding, stressful, and taxing on his body and mind?

Of course.

Was he being assigned this work? Was he toiling and battling? Did he need to do this extra work?

No.

For him, this was play.

"Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen."

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

This is Flow — the optimal human experience as coined by renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

A concept I've been obsessed with recently as it points to infallible ancient wisdom.

An experience that I've felt every single day of my life since throwing in the towel on my marketing agency and going all in on content creation.

Reading. Writing. Wrestling with concepts. Video editing. Sharing my personal breakthroughs and "Aha!" moments in order to serve others.

All of these things bring me immense joy, and help me enter deep flow states.

For this reason I'm able to wake up at 4am every single day to get 3-4 hours of writing, filming, or editing done before I have to tend to my other tasks and duties.

This isn't work to me, it's play.

The work itself is rewarding, I work for the sake of work itself, not some externaly-imposed promised land of internet fame and a luxury lifestyle.

Viktor Frankl summarizes this beautifully in the preface of his book Man's Search for Meaning:

"Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself."

— Viktor Frankl

Now, obviously writing, Youtubing, and coaching is not everyone's path.

So I'm not gunna tell you that "This is the best business model in 2024" or that everyone needs to start creating content... because that's simply not true.

When I share the potential upside of 'synthesizing' on Youtube it is simply to share a path for those who are like me, but I recognize that it does not apply to everyone.

But what I want you to take away from this whole thing, is this:

What you should be questioning is the work itself.

If your work doesn't make you want to get up early in the morning, forget to eat meals, or stay up late at night pursuing a feeling of mastery...

Then, your work is the problem.

Not how much time you 'have to' work.

Time is not real.

Let’s go meta and philosophical for a second:

Years. Months. Weeks. Hours. Minutes. Seconds.

None of these things exist. They’re not real.

They’re all man-made distinctions and categories which have been useful to bring order to the collective consciousness and understand the world around us.

But at a fundamental level, time is not real.

At least not in the sequential sort of way that we chose to experience it in.

Therefore, letting the calendar or clock dictate what you do with your life is probably one of the stupidest things you can do.

“Oh it’s Saturday, I deserve some rest, I’m gunna take the day off, watch some movies and eat pizza”

“These past couple of months at work have been brutal, I’ve been depressed, lacking energy and my relationships have took a toll…but I have vacation time coming up so I’ll be able to relax and enjoy myself then.”

“Oh it’s (insert holiday name), I should rest a couple of days, have a few drinks with the boys and watch the game”

The excuses and things you do you because of “time", should hopefully begin to sound pretty stupid to you.

And I’m not saying you shouldn’t rest. Not at all.

I believe that time to rest, wander, and play are crucial parts of living a good life.

But why does when you do those things have to be dictated by time?

Why are you letting the quality of your life experience be dictated by these illusionary man-made distinctions?

Why does the calendar or clock tell you when you should work, rest, and play?

We didn’t do that as children and we were much happier then…

So perhaps it’s a better strategy to chose to live life on your own terms, rather than operating within the unquestionable and imaginary boundaries that been assigned to you.

Instead of trading 5 days of work you hate and sluggishly carrying out mindless tasks, for 2 days of “rest” in return (which if we’re being honest mainly consists of cheap entertainment and satisfying your base impulses)

How about you define a purpose, a goal, a mission — and look to serve others through an expression of your own gift…

Define your life's journey. A definite chief aim.

The kind of goal that makes you excited to get up in the morning and get to “work”.

The kind of goal that allows you to enter a state of flow when you engage with any of its necessary tasks.

Making time pass without your conscious awareness of it.

Because guess what?

If you don't feel that way about your work, you'll get outworked and lapped by someone who does.

Closing Note

Now, I want to recognize this isn't easy. And that I've been extremely blessed to have discovered this path for myself at an early age.

So in response to whatever resistance or self-limiting thoughts you've had while reading this, I'll say this:

You're right.

Maybe you are in an extremely difficult and unique situation.

Maybe it is different for you for X and Y reason...

But what other choice do you have?

You're smart enough to know that money, power, and social status isn't the key to happiness right?

And we have a wealth of knowledge from philosophers, religions, psychologists and neuroscientists to confirm this is true.

So I'll repeat what I said in the beginning:

You're going to die. I'm going to die. Everyone will move on.

You'll have a lot of money at times, and you'll have little money at times.

All of these things are transient.

So if time and energy are the only truly valuable thing you have...

Why not consciously select work that you love, rather than passively allow others to assign work to you?

Why not spend 7 days of the week 'working', and loving every second of it?

I hope this serves you,

— Mikey