Why I’ve Stopped “Working”

I’m an entrepreneur building a new startup[0] that excites me. Most of my time working on it is creative and fun, at least during this early stage.

However, I’ve noticed that when I’ve given up other things to work on the startup, my next hour or so is unproductive and less happy. The word “work” has been hardwired into my brain as a sacrifice, a character building necessity that no one likes. Just look at any show on TV “I can’t wait till I leave work and get on with life”.

Each time I denied a friend’s invitation to work on my startup I would feel less like an entrepreneur trying to build something awesome and more like the work-obsessed Dad in Christmas movies that puts his job over family every day until eventually on Christmas eve realizes family is everything and runs home to see his children.

Then one day I read a psychology experiment[1] where employees were grouped randomly into either setting their computer passwords to “ilovemyjob” or “ihatemyjob”. Perhaps not surprisingly, the second group had far lower job satisfaction rates.

As an experiment I started using the phrase “I’m going to do [startup]” instead of “I’m going to work” for one month. It still gets the point across unambiguously, but also conveys the more subtle point that it’s not a sacrifice. Since then the Christmas-Dad feeling has pretty much gone away.

Just a quick tip that helped boost my productivity and happiness. If you decide to try it please let me know how it goes!

[0] I’d rather keep quiet until we’re more ready. I’ll edit when we launch.
[1] I can’t seem to find the study anywhere but I will edit if I find it. There’s this Medium story on a similar topic though.