Step 13 - The Amish Vacation, Tap Dancing To Work & Avoiding What You Love

This lesson teaches the importance of avoiding the dichotomy in life, which evolves into the false mentality that vacation is good. Because needing a vacation implies that there is something in your life you need vacation from, which you should avoid.

Working 10 months for having 2 months vacations is pathetic, because happiness is not found with people who have a vacation mentality.

A day lost is not like a dollar lost. You can't get a day back.

The progress is on how to set up your life so that your work becomes your vacation. And we do not live for vacation.

Picasso once said, that we should never permit a dichotomy to ruin our life, a dichotomy where we don't like what we do, so that we can have pleasure in our spare time. We should look for a situation, in which our work gives us as much happiness as our spare time.

If we have a job, were we need vacation from, we should never come back, because a life build around vacation is no life at all.

We may need downtime, like every Sunday, because downtime as part of a cycle is OK. The problem arises when vacation becomes a non integral part of your life.

The question then arises: Should you then only do what you love? NO!

Because love as a lusty impulse has the evolutionary purpose to be that intense, that it helps us overcome fears and explore new areas. But love wasn't build to last. Therefore we shouldn't marry a woman we "love", like lust. Because once we are married, the love goes away and all that is left is just another person you have to get along with. And it is a ton easier if we like this person on a compatibility level.

The same applies to our career. We should run from oversimplified and generalized advice that says "do what you love". We got to find something where vacation becomes only a down-part.

Bill Gates asked, when was the last time he had taken vacation and he responded that it was 25 years ago, because if you live the good life, vacation is not important.

Warren Buffet tap dances to work. Genuinely. He wakes up and loves that he wakes up, to do what he does everyday.

When we are not tap dancing to work anymore, we need to change something.

So, don't choose something you love, because the opportunistic mentality is almost as dangerous as the vacation mentality. Focus only on building on strength.

So in short this lesson is about three parts.

  1. Avoid Vacation Mentality – An integrated daily flow with some ritual to it, but no anticipation or no life build around anticipation of spare time. Read "Learned Optimism", what makes you happy is the opposite of vacation time, the gleam in the eye. You need downtime, not necessarily vacation. Vacation mindset is flawed on every level.
  2. Tap Dance To Work – Robin Williams had all the Money in the world, but he stopped Tap Dancing to work. You need the gleam in your eye. The endgame is a gleam in the eye, an upturn to the face, an emotional drive. Judge it by the way you wake up.
  3. Decide your Long-Term Destiny on Strength, not on Love - Don't do what you lust after, lust goes away. Lust exist to drive you past fear and explore. But at the end of the day, they don't last, because they are not supposed to last. Michael Jordan just liked Basketball, he didn't love it. We have to be level-headed in our long-term destiny.

Questions

  1. Have you been vacation minded?

    Yes and No. I haven't been on vacation the last 3 years, even though I got offered vacation for free, because I preferred getting things done. But I still think, that a good vacation to see old friends, cousins and family is worth it a couple of times a year, regardless if you got things done, because things will never be really done.

  2. When you wake up, do you feel like tap dancing to work?

    There was a phase, when I tap-danced to work when I was building a business. I was let down by a business partner and discontinued the business. Since then I haven’t been tap-dancing to work anymore. I probably should start again on this business idea, with another partner, or alone??

  1. Are you in danger of pursuing something you lust after instead of something you like?

    I don't think so. I don’t lust for anything, except success. I liked videogames, and I don’t try to build a carrer on them... But seriously, I decided my long-term-destiny a year ago. It is something I believe I like doing, because it is a continous challenge, it’s new, it helps people make more money and I get ultimately a part of it. Now I only have to go through those 10 dark years, of which I hope that I already passed a couple.