What’s Wrong With Work?

When I want to play, I play. When I go to Alaska, I don’t work; I go there to kill stuff, and I make darn-sure before the day is over that something dies out there– every single day. I’ve never been on a trip to the resort in all these years where I didn’t fish every single day I was there. I enjoy that. I go fishing every chance I get. When I’m out there, I might be thinking a little bit about work, but I’m thinking more about fishing. When I dive, I dive, and that’s the way entrepreneurs are. Nobody is going to take that away from you, nor should they try, nor should you let them. We’re constantly on the job, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I go on cruises, too. Yes, when I go on cruises, I’m working. Every once in a while, Beverly, my wife, talks me into going on a cruise where we don’t work, and I must confess it’s the most boring cruise I take.

Even then, I take something to write. I could not possibly stand to put in the time it takes to go on a cruise without getting something productive done. I’d rather have a root canal on both sides, simultaneously, with no anesthetic, than to go on a cruise and spend all that time just killing time. Entrepreneurs can’t stand to just kill time. At least smart entrepreneurs. I was raised on the beach, but I can’t fathom somebody coming down and throwing a blanket on the beach and laying there all day, with no clothes on, in the sun, getting fried, without absolutely nothing going on but sweat. I don’t get this. I never could get this. It just seems like a waste of time! They call that relaxation, but not to me. I gotta work!

I work on plane rides. In fact, that’s why I don’t mind taking plane rides; I get a lot of work done. I don’t just sit there like a zombie. What are you supposed to do on planes? Sleep? I don’t sleep on planes; I work on planes. There’s always something to do instead of watching the in-flight movie.

And truly, I work from 8AM to 9PM every single day –every day that I can. “Ugh, that’s a long time!” Well, look, isn’t it true that from 8AM to 9PM every single day we have to be doing something? There’s only three things you can do: work, play or sleep.

Fortunately, they invented DVRs, so my television time is down to two-hours a night, maybe three if I want to stay up a little late. I can’t stand the thought of missing 24, for example. No way! I’ve got a list of shows I record so I don’t have to worry about missing them. I can go plug them in, blast through them and blast through the commercials. “But Ron,” you might be saying, “I don’t want to watch anything on television.” That’s a load of crap! You do, too! You just want to watch what you want to watch on television. I mean how could you not watch 24 for crying out loud? So tape what you want to tape.

Let no one shame you because you choose to work while they choose to waste their life.

You have nothing to apologize for. Besides, if you’re not working, what are you going to do? People ask me all the time, “What do you do for fun?” I’m doing it! Some just might call it work.

Some may want to get in an RV and take a trip around the country. Well, that’s good, but what happens when you get back? What are you going to do, take another trip? What are you accomplishing? When your whole life is revolving around play, boredom soon follows. We’re designed to work! We’re born and bred to work.

Here’s a big tip about work: You’re not going to get rich without it.

For some reason, work in our society has gotten a bad name. We’ve been trained to spend more time getting out of work than we have getting the work done. Guess where that attitude comes from? Broke people. Broke people who hate what they do at work. If you hate what you do at work, you’re always going to try to get out of work. If you love your work, you’re always trying to work more and more.

I speak to a lot of different groups, and I was in a room full of dentists a while ago. The very first thing I asked these dentists when I talked to them about real estate was, “How many of you, if you had more money coming in doing real estate than you have in your practice, would absolutely not spend the rest of your life in somebody else’s mouth?” Ninety percent of the room shot their hand straight into the air. What does that tell you? It tells you that they’re doing what they do because they’re trapped into it. They’ve got all this money and time invested in their education, so they’re afraid to do anything else. Most will spend the rest of their lives, and it’s not just dentists, of course, swapping hours for dollars.

They’ll go through their entire lives and never clearly understand what you do day-in and day-out will determine how you get to spend the rest of your life.

You can think or labor for those who think. Which would you rather do?