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Work Hard, Play Harder

Work hard, play harder. Really? I’ve heard this since I was back in college, and now that I’ve climbed my way up the ladder of success I’m convinced this bumper sticker is misunderstood. For me, the concept always meant to encourage a work ethic of merit. When I first heard, “work hard, play harder” I was out on a boat water skiing back in college. The boat belonged to an alumni who had started a chain of restaurants after graduating. The rest of us “undergrads” looked at this guy with envy. A young, successful, entrepreneur with several homes, a place on the lake with jet skis and all the toys you would expect from a rich self-made business owner. When we shared with him how much we admired the boat and the toys he’d always tell us that if we wanted the same, that we should work hard & play harder. What he didn’t mean was invest more time with play than we invest with work and school. No, what he meant was something closer to, “work 12 hour days, 6-days a week like me, then you can afford to do literally anything you want to relax or play on the 7th day.” His real message to us was to study unbelievably hard and put in tons of hours learning how to be valuable working, then you can afford to do anything you want when it’s finally play time. So that’s what I did. Upon graduating I was hired into the financial services industry and worked unbelievable hours in an effort to earn the play time I envisioned. For me, play time meant an Ideal Life and structure work to support it, and not the other way around. Often obsessed by big goals like this, the ones that are life-changing, I was known for putting in 70-80 hour work weeks. My feeling was that I will play hard for the rest of my life, if only I’ll work harder than everyone else right now. I figured I’d treasure my Ideal Life because I earned it. By working harder than most, I vowed to never feel guilty after achieving the Ideal Life everyone dreams about. Many years later, Tim Ferris wrote the book The 4-Hour Work week. I read the book, and then met Tim Ferris a couple of times through friends. When I asked him how he felt about “work hard & play harder, but only after you’ve made the effort to support your life,” he smiled. Turns out even Tim Ferris works more than 4-hours a week. The 4-hour Work Week is more of a concept, even though many people mistakenly think they can build the machine to support your Ideal Life while only working 4-hours a week. I don’t know anyone successful who has done that. I was listening to a recent Elon Musk interview where he was advising a group of young entrepreneurs to “work every waking hour” until you succeed. He went further by advising that if you work 80-hours a week while everyone else is working 40-hours a week, you’ll accomplish twice as much as them, every week. Interesting. Does success leave clues? For me, “work hard & play harder” means doing meaningful things in the world then resting 1 day a week.

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