Two common themes of advice given in personal development and make money advice is:
- Do what you enjoy. Then, you never have to work. And you’ll outwork others and succeed! And possibly get rich!
- It’s not about enjoying it. It’s all about discipline and willpower. Continue to build this muscle. People succeed by being able to do what they don’t want regardless of their feelings continuously for long periods of time.
These seem to be in direct contrast to each other. Which one is right?
I believe they both have some truth to them and some nuances.
The vast majority of people would prefer doing stuff they enjoy and getting paid a lot of money to do it. Unfortunately, there’s a limited supply and a lot of demand for very fun, easy jobs that pay well. Therefore, life just isn’t that easy that we can all do that.
However, some gurus say the Internet has made it so that a lot more of us can do more of what we enjoy and at least make a modest wage it doing it if we didn’t sell ourselves short, give up so soon, and try out new things. Many of us are still trying to do so rather than give up. We haven’t figured that part out yet, so we’re on our journey. Some have been on this journey of trying to figure it out for many years. We still have our full-time gig that pays the bills, and that pursuit of something better is on the side during our personal time. But this beats the people who don’t even believe something better is possible. At least our chances are greater than zero percent compared to the person who has resigned himself to the belief that your work is what you do purely for money, even if you hate it.
And, in some cases, some of us have succeeded partially or fully in our pursuit of a sustainable job we enjoy that pays the bills or even makes more money than we’ll ever need.
But also, it’s not about just always enjoying everything. There’s something serious and legitimate to the willpower muscle. There’s various books and scientific studies showing how this is a legit area of our brains. The more we train this muscle, the better it gets. And longitudinal studies over the course of peoples’ lives found that those with higher willpower get better results in various areas of life, from wealth to better relationships to a better quality of life.
It makes sense because if you give one person everything they want from birth and you give one person a tougher life that builds willpower, the former is going to be a lazy, entitled, spoiled brat compared to the latter who has developed the discipline needed to thrive during tough times. Similarly, if your life has been easy and you stumbled into a job and life where everything is something you enjoy, you may not have the opportunities to stretch that willpower muscle as much as someone else unless you deliberately go out of your way to do it for passion or purpose.
And usually, everyone in life runs into something they don’t want to do at some point in their life that’s good for them, whether that’s eating healthier, sleeping earlier, working out more often, grunt work to run a business, firing people, or whatever it is. If you have built the willpower to do it despite your feelings, you succeed.
So, I believe the optimal approach is someone who has worked to create a career or business that gives the joy they need most of the time but also generates financial abundance. And there is likely a portion of this time, even in this dream career, where you have to do things you don’t enjoy. But you flex your willpower muscle to do what needs to be done even if you don’t want to. Finally, this person should have some healthy habits and recurring discipline-strengthening practices outside of work in their personal life to continue to build and maintain that muscle for when they need it. If you’re one of the lucky ones with a business/career/life that is super easy and enjoyable but without any opportunities to do things you don’t enjoy, I could see that willpower muscle softening and turning you soft. And that can be tough for when times get tough in the future.
