Working Less Enjoying More

"in Time Enough for Love, Heinlein's character Lazarus Long is seen burning money at the bank he is running on a small planet. A friend is aghast that someone could be so foolish as to burn something as valuable as money. Long explains that whenever his bank has to issue money, he just prints more. Rather than leave money laying about (and tempting robbers) he just burns the "deposits" until someone asks to withdraw money - at which point he prints more.

And it is a story-within-the-story that really tells a significant truth. The underlying value of money is not in the paper and ink, but in the idea of its worth. And like the disbelieving character in the story, most people simply don't get it. After all, money is valuable, right? You can't simply burn it. (And the story pretty much mirrors what our government does on a daily basis - shredded old obsolete bills and printing millions more to replace them)...

the idea of money really is represented by work. Each dollar in your pocket represents a measured amount of your labor.

So while a shiny fancy luxury car is a nice thing to have, in order to own it, you have to labor more. Own less, labor less. It is a very simple concept. And when you are spending all of your working hours making money to own things you never have time to use (because you are laboring to pay for them) then something is very, very wrong...

There is no point in owning something if you never really get to enjoy it. You are better off working less and enjoying more...

Making time for yourself is more important than all that - and probably the most costly thing you can really "own" in your life is your own free time. Yet so many of us are all-too-willing to enslave ourselves for the sake of a dream job or a fancy house or fancy car. It needn't be that way.

Looking back, my only regrets were that I didn't have more courage to be more like Heinlein's Lazy Man. It was difficult to buck the norms of society and see things in a different light. The compulsion to conform is strong on all of us, and very few succeed in varying from this in even the smallest way.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try..."

- ROBERT PLATT