How to Work Hard

“Every spring, as they have for more than a decade, Gates spends a long weekend with Winblad at her beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where they ride dune buggies, hang-glide and walk on the beach.”

Yachts? How about this:

https://moneyinc.com/a-closer-look-at-serene-the-330-million...

He also does play golf, is a member of Augusta National, and, apparently, has been living at a golf resort for months.

I'm sure there will be knee jerk reactions to downvote this just because of how programmed it is into society that hard work is a noble endeavor, and perhaps it is, for a certain class of problems that humanity occasionally faces where there is no easy way to solve them except by working hard. But making money and living a good life should not be one of those problems.

You really don't know how pointless it is to work hard until you make easy money. It's not uncommon for my investment portfolio to have a gain or loss of $20-30k in a day, I've made over $200k in the past two months, not really doing anything. My job itself pays close to $200k a year, but I justify working it by the fact that it's fairly easy and really I only put in about 4 hours of solid work per day.

I feel fairly secure in not being a very ambitious person anymore. I used to be, back when I was young and hopeful and immersed in the whole startup scene with hopes of making it big and changing the world for the better. But no startup I was ever part of ever made it big. Worse, as I got to know the world I didn't see the point in trying to change it. It is what it is and that's all it will ever be.

So yea, I've accepted I'm not one of those people destined to save the world through hard work. Instead I'm here to savor the fruits of their hard labor, and my goal now is to live as richly as possible with the least amount of effort. There is so much to enjoy in life and not enough time to enjoy it if you spend all your time working hard.

Nothing makes me feel as good as working smart, or even not working at all, and yet still producing the same amount of results as someone who has worked very hard. It is intoxicating, and knowing that others would be doing the same if I was working hard right now makes it very unappealing to work hard myself. I am cursed in that I will never be able to work hard again.

If anyone’s seriously read this article end to end and didn’t conclude: “Wow, Paul is really struggling to back this up.” You might be in junior high.

The reality is that inflation and monetary policy combined with degradation of schools means you have to play a completely different life game to succeed now. And “working hard” while being a waiter or bartender isn’t going to get you there.

Paul is really trying to avoid the fact that unless you are gaining extremely highly valued skills in the exact right industry at the exact right schools at the exact right time, working hard is a complete waste of time. And everyone can feel it at a gut level.

People know when their work isn’t going to be rewarded. And in this era, you won’t be rewarded 90% of the time for Most skills or most efforts.

I don't think menial work leads to "mortgaging your body". Some jobs sure, but those very physically demanding jobs pay well because the alternative would be a job that pays equally as poorly and is not physically demanding. You can always default to working at a grocer or fast food job.

Those factory jobs at Amazon that are fairly grueling pay a lot better than similar jobs in those areas w/ that skill set. People don't really work them very long either due to the demands. So you can do that for a few years, make more money and hopefully invest it in building out a more valuable skill-set or give better opportunities to your children.