I wanted to point out a great post by David H. at the 37Signals blog where he writes about the false dream of early retirement that seems to plague every would-be Internet entrepreneur. This is the notion that if you slave yourself over your latest, greatest idea –– often at the expense of health, family, friends, etc — that at some point down the road there will be this big payoff that will allow you to relax and somehow make up for all the damage you caused along the way. I love the way he ends the post:
If you come to the realization that work in itself isn’t evil, you can stop living your life as a waterfall-planned software project too. No need to divide your timeline on earth into the false dichotomies of Sucky Work Era and Blissful Retirement Era. Instead, you can just fill your life with a balanced mix of activities that you can sustain for decades.
I think that the false dream of an early retirement spent counting your dot-com buyout millions is usually not born from a desire for success, but rather it’s a fantasy concocted in the mind to distract oneself from their current state of unhappiness or lack of fulfillment; offering a sort of mental masturbation that prevents them from taking the bold action they need to make a positive change in their life. If you ever find yourself day dreaming about an early retirement, you might want to catch yourself and think about the actions you’re not taking towards a sustainable sense of fulfillment derived from work that allows you to maximize your full creative potential.
