The rat race

Why do we work? It’s a real question. Is it for the money? For self-fulfillment? For sense of purpose and achievement? The answer could be some or even all of the above.

Depending on the answer, the attitude towards work defines most of our life. For most people money is the obvious answer. You have to work to earn your living. And while many see this negatively, as modern day slavery to The Man, it really isn’t, at least for people in the developed world, considering how our distant ancestors lived. We don’t have to go hunting for food or toil away all day long in fields being one bad harvest away from starvation. We live in relative luxury in nice cities or even nicer villages and we only have to work for about half of our awake hours of about half our life. And in many cases what we do can be interesting and sometimes fun, and give us a sense of purpose and make us proud. And then we don’t call it a job anymore, but a career. Much nicer sounding and something to pursue, not suffer through.

And yet, even for people in good careers, the job’s primary function is income and the ultimate goal is retirement. There are exceptions, of course. Most CEOs of Megacorps for example have probably accumulated enough assets already that they don’t need to work any more, but they do purely for the satisfaction of winning their game. But for most people in the lower ranks the motivation is still a need, not a want. Hence the term the rat race.

So many people refer to the rat race, and acknowledge that they work for the income, and by extension if they had enough savings or a lottery windfall, they would stop working. Some actually go to extremes to pursue exactly that, and so we have the FIRE (Financial Independence – Retire Early) movement. But even outside this extreme group, people often talk about their work as a means to an end, which is successful retirement. Which then begs the question: is this really what it is all about?

A long time ago I remember reading as career advice that you should consider what you would do if you had enough money so that you didn’t need to work. And then try to pursue that as a career. The idea is that you would be very good at it because you like it and then it would also become a lucrative career.

I was and still am skeptical about this advice. As an example, I could have easily said that if I had enough money so that I didn’t need to work any more, I would just go out and party all day long. Try turning that into a career!

But this question, slightly altered, can serve as a guide about what you really want to do once you are at a stage where you don’t need to keep firing in all cylinders and you don’t want to retire either. When you have enough of a financial cushion to allow semi-retirement, are tired of the rat race because you don’t enjoy the game any more, and you feel productive and knowledgeable and experienced and active enough that you definitely don’t want to actually retire.

This is where I often find myself. And this attempt at blogging is to a large extent motivated by putting down some thoughts and doing some introspection. It is often surprisingly difficult to articulate what is in the back of your mind, and when you do, sometimes you get an insight yourself. Call it self-therapy. It kinda works.

So, back to the question above: why do I work? For a long time I didn’t question it. I am lucky enough to work in job that is both lucrative and something I mostly enjoy doing. I was also making enough progress every year that the job was quite rewarding, not only purely monetarily but also from a self satisfaction point of view. At some point in the last few years the rate of progress declined and then ground to a halt. But even if the pay didn’t increase any more, it remained high, so I couldn’t really be unhappy. But then as the focus was shifting more and more on the income, with that being the primary source of happiness from work, I started to see the job more as a rat race. And inevitably I was looking for the exit. So I started running the numbers similar to the FIRE guys, for how long until FI (Financial Independence), expecting not to RE (Retire Early), but to have the flexibility to do whatever else I wanted.

I’m not quite sure what that thing would be. On the one hand I like what I do and it pays well. On the other hand it is boring at times, and as in most lucrative jobs, stagnation is not viewed favorably. That means that even if I wanted to keep doing the same job forever, it may not be an option. And even if it is an option, it won’t provide any self fulfillment or sense of purpose or achievement, and assuming I have reached FI, then what’s the point?

The reality is that I am conflicted. There are times that I think that I should not waste any more time at work than the absolutely necessary. So when I hit my number, be it in 3, 5 or 7 years, quit, and enjoy life. Spend time with my family, do some gardening, reading, watch movies, write ramblings in a blog that noone will read. Part of me thinks that it’s too early for that (I’m only in my early forties), and I should really max out my professional potential. This gets triggered especially when I see people less knowledgeable or capable advance professionally faster, which seems unfair as I deserve it more. But then I think of the rat race again, and acknowledge that the game is there, and if I am unable or unwilling to play it, to put on the extra hours, the face time, the political effort, then I don’t deserve to progress any more than I already have.

And so this tug of war of thoughts continues, with no clear answer for what is the ultimate purpose of work and therefore whether to stay in the rat race.