The Purpose of Your Life Is to Retire — and Go Straight Back to Work
“To retire is to die” says I-am-not-your-self-help-guru, Tony Robbins.
I’ve been riffing with this idea in my own life and I disagree (but would still like to spit shine Tony’s shoes if the opportunity ever came about).
Retirement used to be — get old, finish up at your pain in the ass job, get a campervan, do nothing, travel on cruise ships, then die. It was a glorious vision for humans. It was considered “living the dream.”
The new version of retirement is radically different. It’s not what you think. You only have to wait until you’re old and crusty to retire if you are a debt slave or a slave to buying possessions. If you can get the debt needle out of your arm and go cold turkey on Nike shoes for a year, you can retire sooner.
I call it humble and achievable retirement. The point is to quit your job as fast as you can.
Here Comes the Blockbuster Twist
As soon as you retire, you are going to go right back to work.
I know. I’m bat shit crazy, ask my gf. I want you to retire as fast as you can so you can go right back to work again as soon as possible. Here’s why:
The right type of work is good for you.
The goal isn’t to retire so you can do nothing.
You will be as bored as the multi-millionaire guy who trolled me on LinkedIn for six months because he had nothing to do and thought it would be funny (spoiler: he made a lot of enemies and he got banned from LinkedIn for life — now he has a Youtube channel, so check it…or not). Sitting in a jacuzzi in your jocks is fun for like a week. After that, your skin gets even more wrinkly from the boiling ass water.
The beauty of work is it gives you fulfillment. The problem with work is when you have to care how much it pays.
My goal isn’t to retire and then die like old mate Tony describes. My goal is to retire as soon as possible so I can do work and never think about how much it pays ever again.
The amount of money you get paid for your work is a huge distraction.
What if you could have fifty jobs in your lifetime and change every six months for the hell of it? Well, you can. When my former boss asked me what my dream job was I told him there were lots.
I’d like to work for the government on below minimum wage for a while. I’d like to spend a year working for free every day at a homeless shelter. I’d like to work at a telecommunications company to find out what it’s like to be abused by customers every day, so I can increase my resilience. There are so many weird jobs I want to try.
I want to be able to roll up to a job interview and not give a fuck about what it pays or whether I get it — and have the freedom to politely quit whenever, or as an experiment to see what would happen. Okay, I’m talking crazy. But you get my drift.
This Is the Part That Will Blow Your Mind That You Wouldn’t Expect
This whole thing isn’t a fantasy dream I have every night after watching James Bond. I know people who have retired early and done exactly this. What happened to them?
They found that when they retired, went back to work, and didn’t think about the money anymore (because they didn’t need to), they actually made a tonne of money. What the hell?
What destroys the work you do are incentives.
When the incentives are gone and all that is left is joy or no joy from your work, the work you do morphs into something different.
What changes is that the people you work with are attracted to you like a magnet. They are drawn to why you do your work. The why changes your attitude towards your work, and it’s infectious to others. Customers, prospects, LinkedIn connections, friends all want your secret work sauce.
Final Thought
The concept of retirement can change the way you work for the rest of your life. When you retire from work you need to pay debt and expenses, and choose work that has nothing to do with money, you find more opportunities and you will make more money.
So what do you do with the extra money you didn’t intend on making?
You invest the money in underdogs. You create a legacy with the money you earn to compound the levels of fulfillment you get out of life, and perhaps change the world in some tiny way in the process.
Retire and then go right back to work. Version 2.0 of work will be incredible.