The freedom of having a job
The feedback I get from people I have conversation with is that I come across as disapproving about being an employee and working a 9 to 5 job. Not true. I’m not against the working. I’m against defining working for somebody else as a long term goal.
I work because working means freedom to develop my ideas. Either I work for a company or I drive for Uber, I find it liberating for my personal projects. There is no pressure. I allocate 8 or 9 hours for work, but I have at least another 6 to work for myself.
The archetype of the all sacrificing entrepreneur, working relentlessly day and night for his idea has no appeal for me. It’s not efficient. It might be appropriate for others, but nor for me.
Be honest with yourself. Make a list of activities you do in a day and the number of allocated hours. That is easy. For evaluation purpose I use three values:
- A monetary component. Benchmark against your hourly rate as a freelancer or how much you make per hour as a full-time employee.
- A love component. Yes, there are moments that have love value: family, working on your book or your start-up. You aren’t much a human being without it.
- The third component is sunk costs: love and money you don’t make.
Be honest with yourself. You might discover that you have the life of a machine without nobody to support and keep you company when all the work is done.
Short disclaimer: The Journal of an Uber Driver is a work of fiction.
Long disclaimer: The literary exercise to define a nowadays character for a novel led me to create these 25 blog posts. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Any opinion expressed about Uber should not be interpreted as having a negative connotation. I admire the company as an incumbent of the platform economy and I am a registered Uber driver for research purposes.