Should You Work For Free Or For The Money?

Both ways — We learn about ourselves. Big Time.

Many folks aren’t too eager to work for free. I get it. We want a fair exchange for our labor in terms of effort, commitment, and time invested. The pendulum swing at one point of the extreme suggests sweatshop exploitation when we aren’t compensated.

AND IF we evaluate this solely at the argument’s extreme pointy-end — Of course. I concur.

But also, I think it is worthy of further exploration. Are there merits to working for free? And the flip side has to be explored. Are there cons in working for the money?

Throwing these 2 questions out in the open makes this topic discussion more robust, more complete, and hopefully less emotional (ahem, I mean more objective).

When It Comes To Working For Free…

No one in their right minds would like this idea. It feels terrible enough when we are forced to work for free. It would be ludicrous if someone else expects us to want to work for free with the Joker’s glee.

However, do we actually not do work for free? I doubt it. How about your homework? How about the housework? How about the physical work that we do in the gym? Those are work too, as defined by Physics.

Well, we might say it does not work. We do it because we either enjoy it or we have to do it. And that is precisely my point.

When it comes to working for free, we find out what we enjoy doing and what we hate doing without money muddying our thoughts and emotions. Since we are not compensated anyways, we can afford to straightforward.

So, I would say that working for free has 2 merits. It helps us find out what we enjoy doing (otherwise we won’t do it at all) and what has to be done. When we stay alone, it is up to us to do housework. With mum around, an all-penalty no-incentive structure simply means our peace and quiet is at stake.

That choice is yours.

When It Comes To Working For The Money.

When money comes into the picture, confusion becomes commonplace.

It is like a free market economy being distorted by government intervention. Let me explain this further.

Imagine that we have been drummed by our parents and our education system to be engineers or project managers of sorts. We slog through a decade worth of studying disciplines that do not speak to our hearts and we seek those jobs upon graduation.

Maybe we want to tender our resignation 5 years into the industry and job simply because life in itself has become a grind. We aren’t excited to get out of bed in the morning, hate to mingle with peers who are happy with their work and cannot wait to scoot off once the clock hit 6 pm.

Under normal circumstances — I guarantee, we will tender. So what is holding us back? Money. And the lack of it.

If we are working in an industry that is known to pay well, then the barriers to leaving that profession and industry will be very high. We reconcile our emotional disdain with a need for financial narcotics.

“We need the money.”

And with money, it exposes one issue. That is confidence. When we are confident, we do as we decide based on well-informed decisions. When we are not, we hang on until we are. Money prolongs the hang.

That probably explains why many people are suffering from mental health issues. They are trapped in a box where they cannot afford to leave work they hate for good, and they believe — rightly or wrongly — that they can only leave when they earn enough.

This is the issue when it comes to working for money.

My Parting Thoughts.

I don’t think we should dismiss the idea of working for free without giving it some thought.

That idea at its essence is about finding ourselves in terms of what we want to do, what we enjoy doing, and what we cannot stand doing even for a second.

Although people with kind-intentions always chime that if we can work without getting paid proves that we really enjoy what we do, I offer an alternative view.

How about this?

Working for free allows us to be absolutely clear about what we hate doing?

And maybe, just maybe, we get to save a decade of our life.

Let’s be honest with ourselves,

Aldric

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