What I Changed My Mind Most on in 2023
I think you can and should enjoy your 9-5 job.
Is it wrong to enjoy a 9-5 job?
I was in the gym earlier this month, lost in my thoughts as I lifted away. A notification popped up on my phone about independent work. A hot topic in 2023 and something that definitely has some real estate in my head. I think a lot of people naturally want independence and desire to work on what they want, when they want, and how they want. I certainly want that but my mind around that has changed, at least for now. I have changed my mind on a lot of things this past year. Originally, I was going to start this post by doing a list of the things I have changed my mind about in 2023. Instead, I want to focus on just one.
A 9-5 job.
Shortly after I started my career, I became infatuated with the idea of eventually working for myself. I am in an interesting situation as I am surrounded by people who work for themselves. 2023 consisted of me feeling that I needed to make this happen down the line. I kept chugging away with the belief that each day I got closer to my goal of working for myself.
It is what led me to start this newsletter. I had many thoughts and I wanted to talk about them somewhere. I had no idea where it could take me but it was something outside my normal 9-5. It was partly influenced by me listening to many podcasts. I heard many, many stories about people working for themselves and building something outside of their normal job. Very few people go on podcasts for their typical 9-5 job because everyone wants to hear about the crazy success stories of people going off on their own. The Sam Altmans, the Oprah Winfreys, the Elon Musks. Being an entrepreneur is the sexy thing to do and being a key cog for a corporation is not. Social media almost looks down upon enjoying a typical 9-5 job. I find that wrong.
I work for a very large corporation and to put it frankly, I enjoy it. The people are great, I am getting invaluable experience, and I enjoy a healthy work-life balance. We are led to believe that it is wrong for people to say this. Why would someone admit that they are enjoying providing shareholder value? Why would someone want to be restricted by a corporation, shouldn’t they want more for themselves?
You see we are led to believe the options here are binary. It is either 0 or 1 and there is no in between. You either work for someone or you work for yourself. However, it is never that way.
The typical individual works for 40 hours a week. There are 168 hours in a week, 40 hours are spent working and 56 are spent sleeping. You have 72 hours to spend as you please. You mean to tell me you can’t work to create something in those 72 hours and just because you work 40 hours elsewhere you can’t make something else happen? Chase that passion, build that business, invest that money. The opportunities are endless. The time is there. Nowhere does it say since you have a 9-5 you are legally restricted from doing any work outside of your normal work. There is also something to be said about having a salary or income while chasing a passion.
“Maybe your purpose in life isn’t related to your job. Maybe your job is your job and the job is the thing that supports you and then the rest of your waking hours are devoted to your purpose whatever that is.”
“Don’t let following your dreams undermine your ability to support yourself.”
-Rick Rubin
Having a salary provides a security blanket and frees the mind of any worry about where your next paycheck may come from. There is a huge benefit to that. Following our dreams is hard and we place so much pressure on ourselves to realize them. Now imagine if your livelihood is dependent on those dreams. If you are trying to create or build something, it might be hard to move forward with a clear mind if you are constantly worried about your ability to support yourself. A 9-5 helps a lot of people rest peacefully at night, myself included, and I think there is tremendous value to that. If something outside of work was my main source of income, at this time in life, I think the quality of that work would suffer. The work would become my life. It would be my everything because it would be how I support myself.
Your work doesn’t have to be your life. Too often, we see some influencers get burned out because they took what was once an exciting passion and made it their livelihood. No longer could they do it without pure enjoyment because their ability to feed themselves is now reliant on their passion. I am all about life being fun and enjoyable. Our life’s work doesn’t have to relate to what supports us. Maybe our job supports our ability to do our life’s work outside of our normal 9-5.
There is also a degree of naiveness to think at such a young age and at the start of a career, we can work for ourselves. I think one day I would enjoy it and sure, I think it is something that I want to work towards but at the age of 24 to work for myself is unheard of. Impossible almost. It is better to not be all consumed in realizing that dream and instead, keep it in the back pocket. Working for a large corporation or a startup provides an invaluable experience to learn and build. Learn and build so when the time comes to go out on your own, you are ready. You will have so many different facets of knowledge to pull from thanks to your 9-5.
To continue to pound the table at such a young age that everyone should seek to be an entrepreneur and seek to work for themselves I think is wrong. That is undoubtedly one way to blow up your finances if you aren’t ready to go out on your own. Yes, you should take risks but it is important they are calculated.
The advice of going all in is misleading. It is romanticized on X to escape the corporate grind. Social media exposes us to so many individuals who have gone off the grid and turned a side hustle into a full-time income stream. What it doesn’t expose us to is the everyday life of those individuals. Social media is always the highlights and never the lowlights. Who knows how it could actually be? Or how it may be for that person?
9-5 jobs also offer things that working for yourself doesn’t.
Health insurance, car insurance, life insurance
401k matches and bonuses
7.65% FICA tax vs. 15% higher self-employment tax, these taxes fund Medicare and Social Security and your employer is nice enough to split it with you
Vacation, PTO
A guaranteed amount every X weeks in your bank account
Those are all things that can really move our lives forward. Take a few vacation days to maybe work on what you are passionate and curious about. A 9-5 job is really the best job to have to chase your dreams.
Alex Hormozi puts it well,
“Best job to have when going after your dreams:
One where you get 129 days a year off to pursue your dreams with full-time pay.
Oh yea, that’s every 9-5 job.
No excuses.”
9-5s are honestly underrated. They give you plenty of free time, peace of mind, experience, friends, and the ability to just live. I think most of us want to work to live and not live to work, a 9-5 provides that. It is the Christmas season and I am thankful for my job and people might be appalled when I say that, but it’s true. I don’t think I am alone either. To answer the question I started with, no, there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying your 9-5 job. In fact, I hope you do enjoy it.
Appreciate you reading.
-Scantron
Scantron’s Selections - A few things I loved this week.
Alexi Pappas went back on Rich Roll and she always has so many interesting things to talk about from running, directing, writing, and whatever other cool things she is doing.
I enjoyed listening to Jack Raines on Audience of One. They touch on 9-5 jobs in the podcast for a good bit. Great way to complement what I wrote here.
I wonder how much of it was programmed or conditioned and if it actually led to a better happier life on a societal level for most people.