Tag / work

by Nathan Coumbe

Your time or your money?

40 hours is a lot of time, and this doesn’t even include the time spent getting to and from work; on a good day, it takes me 30 minutes one way to get there – on a bad day, more than an hour.

How much of that 40-hour block is spent actually producing work or making a profit for your company? How much of it is spent staring at a clock?

At what point does making more money become less valuable than having more time?

Can you be satisfied, temporarily, by only making enough to get by while you create and ship something that truly matters to the world?

by Nathan Coumbe

You can’t always do what you want.

Sometimes all of your available time is taken up by getting things done that have nothing to do with your passion, your dream job, or anything else you are pursuing

The laundry has to be done; the home can’t be left unclean and disheveled; dinner must be cooked. Every artist, writer, musician, every genius in every field…they still have to eat, sleep, and live.

Do what must be done so that you can later do what you want done.

by Nathan Coumbe

Leave a legacy

What calls you? What pull do you feel in the pit of your stomach when you think about it? What is that something that fires you up, fills you with passion, excites you at the thought of contributing?

“You vocation will leave a legacy.”

– Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love

Vocation, career, and job are three different things, and vocation is the one on which you must focus first. Your vocation, your calling – that is what will leave its impact on the world.

I have been gifted with an insatiable curiosity all my life which has made me the consummate student, and the best teachers are always lifelong students. My calling, the pull I feel in my stomach, is to leave the world a better, more informed, more educated, and more beautiful place because of the knowledge and wisdom I hope to impart to others. Whenever someone talks about educational reform, or better ways of learning and teaching, or how to truly prepare others for the real world outside of an outdated, industrialized classroom, I feel called to contribute.

You see now that this calling can cover a variety of different careers: teacher, coach, politician, entrepreneur, musician, artist, writer. So many different titles could fulfill this calling as long as I use that career to leave the legacy for which I am striving.

So today, sit for a few minutes and listen to what your life has to say to you and about you. Recognize those moments when you feel truly inspired and truly tuned in to something going on around you or something to which you are listening. Ask yourself what you want to be remembered for when you are gone from the world.

What legacy do you wish to leave?

by Nathan Coumbe

Take the pressure off

Seth Godin said something in his podcast “Pizza & Sushi, Joy and Mediocrity” that really resonated with me today. One of the listeners asked him a question about whether he should find a job while he pursues his art or just dive straight into creating. I’m paraphrasing his answer here, but in essence his response was that sometimes less-than-ideal work allows you to create your art unhindered.

Let’s think about this for a moment: what if the only source of income, of survival that you had was your reliance on producing your art, of developing your craft? How much pressure would that put on your shoulders? How stressful would your art, that thing you love to do so much, become if it was the only difference between feeding your family and going to bed hungry? How generous and authentic would your art be if it was the only thing keeping you from losing your home?

There are plenty of creatives that I know who would be just fine eating beans and rice and living in a van. For some of them, that is the life. But for me, with debt to pay off, a roof to keep overhead, and a wife who leans on me (and I on her) for financial support, it is too much stress.

So get a job.

Do something, anything, to keep the wolf away from the door. Drive for Uber or Lyft; deliver pizzas; wait tables; work in retail. It will not be glamorous, and it might be boring and tedious to the creative mind. But it isn’t forever, especially if you start down a path to your dream job.

If you can take the financial burden off of your art, whether it is visual art, speaking, music, theater, or writing, it will be that much easier for you to produce meaningful work. You’ll also learn a lot of useful skills you might not otherwise gain working on your art, such as leadership, communication, planning, business skills, and countless others. You also will make a lot of contacts with other people who might someday benefit from your art.

More than anything else, you’ll worry less about survival and focus more on creating and making the world a better place for us all to live.

Again, I am not advocating working in something you don’t want to do forever; I certainly don’t plan on doing that. So get to work, make some money, and make your art without worrying about where your next meal will come from.

If you would like to start down the path to your dream job or start your own business, I recommend going through the 48 Days to the Work You Love Seminar and joining the 48 Days Eagles group, a community of creative, like-minded individuals supporting each other in finding and creating work that is meaningful, purposeful, and profitable.

by Nathan Coumbe

You can’t expect crops if you didn’t plant seeds

It seems rather absurd to imagine a farmer standing out in his field, scanning the horizon, scratching his head, and wondering why his crop of corn didn’t come in. It’s rather obvious why…

He didn’t plant any corn in the spring.

Why do we think the same rules of farming don’t apply in our personal and professional lives? We expect a raise or a promotion without putting in any extra work or without doing anything extraordinary to earn it. We ask for a big gig or a huge project but don’t have a portfolio of work backing us up to show that we can handle it.

This is very similar to a message in one of my previous posts about preparation for the unknown opportunities that come our way. However, this is about the things that we know we want and are actively seeking out.

If you are a part time freelancer, you may have to create some work on your own time outside of your day job in order to back up what you say you can do. If you want to move up into management, you’ll have to start leading and developing other people before you get a leadership or management position. They don’t give you the role and then have you show that you can do the work; you have to start showing and doing in order to get the role.

We cannot ask for benefits, rewards, and extra responsibilities if we have not put work that shows we deserve them and/or can handle them. Employers and clients just don’t work that way. You still have to earn it.