A friend asked me what I would do if crypto prices went very high and whether I would stop working. While not working is the dream of many, for me, it isn't really an issue to keep working at all and I actually intend to work until I can't work anymore. Which may sound sad, especially given the job that I have, but I don't quite see it that way.
At least in my experience (limited in this area) and observationally, the main reason most people dislike the work they do isn't because of the work itself, but because they have to do it. Yes, they could change jobs to something more interesting, or even something they "love", but it doesn't necessarily solve the problem of the "have to" in the work. Even when people like the work they do, if they have to do it for the money, then they feel trapped.
Being economically trapped, even if it isn't actually necessary to be the case, bitters the waters of work. However, for those who don't have to work for the money, they often find that they are actually more motivated to work, and more motivated to do less pleasant work. When we know we can put what we are doing down at anytime and work away without it impacting on us economically, we tend to stay.
I think part of the reason is that when we are working for the salary, we get a sense that we are working for others, even though we are also benefiting. However, working without need for money is an opt-in choice made without economic duress deciding for us. When we know we can opt-out again, we don't carry the same level of stress, which means that we have more resource availability to deal with the worse end of the task list.
More than this, not needing the money also means that a person can be bolder and take more risks, which increases the reward profile also. And, opting in can also improve the engagement level, which means that a person is also likely to improve their knowledge and skills.
Work gets a bad wrap.
Not because it is work, but because it is paid. That might seem like it makes no sense, but essentially we could work for ourselves do something we like, but that likely doesn't bring the tradeable value we would need to by what we can't do ourselves. And then, the paid jobs are generally jobs that we wouldn't do otherwise, which is why they are paid. The pay is to offer an incentive to do something, that we wouldn't normally do.
Trapped.
Because none of us can full be independent and outside of the economy, so we are all beholden to money in some regard. Yes, there are ways to be on some fringe where it is completely self-sustainable, but that really is an extreme most people will never be able to maintain. This means that we are all trapped in the economy and therefore, have to do at least some work that we wouldn't "naturally" do.
So much of the work these days isn't about our survival, with most of the tasks far-removed from what we would have done only a few thousand years ago. And in that timeframe, we haven't evolved to change our entire biology to support sitting behind a desk, looking at spreadsheets. We are made to satisfy immediate and near-immediate goals, with feedback from our behaviors also close to the action. Most business activities though don't work in the way we are designed, nor do they give us the immediate satisfaction of having done something to sustain our lives.
Even the arrival of our paycheck is not satisfying the immediate feedback need, as it can comes days, weeks or months after the action was performed. And in this way, we do not associate it with individual pieces of work we have done, but rather, our work as a whole. We can't attribute a specific action, to a piece of that paycheck.
On Hive, we can see that some people get very excited about making clicks and seeing something happen immediately. Imagine if work was the same where every action we did micro-paid us into our bank account, or we could see the salary balance increasing as we work.
Would we work a little longer and harder if it visibly affected that balance?
It doesn't solve the "need to work" problem, but it does a better job of gamifying the work that we do, which at least might make us a bit more interested in working, since we see it happen, cause and effect style. We are pretty simple when it comes to our incentives, and the more immediate they are, the more we like them.
But no, if "winning the lottery" I probably wouldn't stop working, and maybe not even change my job. What I would do is stress far less about the work, because I wouldn't need to do it, which means that I am probably more likely to actually get it done.
I'd perform better.
When are the crypto prices high enough?
Not yet.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
