Job Free
Day 02
Introduction (2)
About Me
That pivotal conversation with Peter was my first introduction to the idea of living a job-free life. I stopped thinking about how to find a good job and started thinking about how I could create the kind of life in which I didn’t need one. Peter gave me encouragement and guidance, and he lent me money when I wanted to start my own business. I found my path to job freedom through entrepreneurship, when I founded a startup in 2000 called Intelligent Space.
Intelligent Space was a pedestrian movement consultancy. We advised architects, engineers, and developers on how to create better environments for pedestrians. We developed computer simulations that mapped where people are likely to walk, which is often not the same as where architects or engineers think they should walk.
I found the experience of building a business deeply fulfilling, even when it was stressful. Being my own boss was awesome. I slowly grew the business, and (with many missteps along the way) eventually achieved a high level of profitability. I wrote about the founding and growth of my business in my book, Becoming an Entrepreneur.1
From talking with Peter, I learned another way to think about the purpose of money. Money can buy freedom rather than comforts. You can use money to change your life, rather than let it control your life. Money can be a tool of personal liberation.
I achieved financial independence at the age of 35. I was able to do so because I sold my business to a large engineering company. I stayed on, working as a director for the company for three years, helping to integrate my business into their operation. At the end of that earn-out period, in 2010, I retired early at the age of 38.
Since I sold my business, my priority in life has been freedom. I have arranged my consumption habits and financial life around the goal of giving myself the freedom to do whatever I want with my day. I treasure never having to work on anything that I don’t want to. I now live from passive investments as a private investor. I spend my time only on projects and activities that I feel enthusiastic about.
After I sold my business, I started a podcast called The Voluntary Life. In the podcast I share my experience of finding freedom through entrepreneurship, but I also interview others who have found freedom in different ways. Each person I』ve interviewed has their own story about how they are able to live every day as they choose.
The people I have interviewed have diverse lifestyles, but there is a common theme: they have all chosen different ways to live without a job. A jobfree lifestyle means no longer having to work for anyone else. We are all masters of our own lives.
Job FreeThere is nothing inherently exploitative about jobs. In fact, your job can serve to help build for a job-free future, as I will describe. I don’t believe jobs are evil. It is just far more fulfilling to be your own boss and work for your dream, rather than have a boss and work for someone else’s dream.
Many people would love to live a job-free life, but they have difficulty seeing how this could be a practical option for them. This difficulty is not surprising when you consider how we all learned about the working world.
Every teacher that I ever encountered in school or university was a lifelong employee. Those teachers conveyed their own assumptions about work to me over more than a decade of indoctrination. I bet your teachers gave you the same messages. It’s time to unlearn your many years of employee conditioning. A job-free life is a realistic option for everyone, including you.
The simplest way to describe the benefit of a job-free life is this: you don’t have to put up with any bullshit. If you’re not dependent on someone else for a salary, it’s easier to stand up for what you believe in. There are times when you might face moral challenges in a job. You may be asked to do something unethical by your boss, or to comply with (and tacitly condone) unprincipled practices by others. It is harder to stand up for your principles if you live paycheck to paycheck.
A reader captured this challenge in an email to me:
I like to think I’m a moral person, but many times in my career, I』ve been forced to choose between unethical behavior and possibly losing my job. I handled this on a case by case manner where I had to weight the importance of the unethical behavior, the likelihood of me being punished, the odds of me successfully elevating the issue to a superior, how much the unethical behavior would actually hurt the injured party, etc. In other words, my response was ambiguous and led to a lot of sleepless nights.
If you run your own business, you set your own standards. One customer might try to pressure you to do something dishonorable in return for their business. However, a healthy business is not dependent on any single customer to survive. It is much easier to refuse a customer than it is to refuse an employer.
Similarly, if you have multiple income streams as a freelancer, you will have more flexibility to decline work from any single source, if you believe that undertaking the work would violate your principles.
Even if you are still an employee, it is much easier to stand up for what you believe in if you are working towards job freedom. Employees who focus on saving for financial independence don’t live paycheck to paycheck. Financial security makes it easier to say no to unethical requests. One of the best reasons to pursue financial independence is that it makes it much easier to say no to bad people.