“Hi, my name is Michael Robson and I’m a
workaholic.”
How do guys like Bill Gates, Richard Branson and
Steve Jobs do it?
You think after the first couple million, you’d
be sick of it, right?
You get rich, and get out of the sleazy world of
business, right?
I mean, their great great grandchildren are set
for life by now, so what pushes them to dominate
the market or expand their respective businesses?
“Oh they’re just workaholics” is what most people
would say. I don’t know anyone else who is a
workaholic. I fact, I’d venture to say that if
someone developed a “workaholic serum”, it would
be flying of the shelves.
We want to be obsessed with work. If we were,
we’d do better, make more money and then we could
come home to our families and live in bliss.
Happy at home, happy at work. Yes, I think that
serum is a business plan in the making.
So we go through school, college, get a reliable
job and pretty much act like businessmen and
expect the same kind of workaholic results, right?
“Look at me, I’m wearing a $500 suit!”
“Look at this, it’s a PDA!”
“Nice briefcase, huh?”
But it’s not that simple. Look at the results.
“Thank god it’s Friday”
“Got big plans for the weekend?”
“Can’t wait for my holiday!”
In fact, hating our jobs has almost become part
of our culture! Look at American Beauty. Great
movie, right. I know the first time I saw that
movie, I thought, “how fictional was that?”
Besides the surprise ending, it really wasn’t
that farfetched. If it had been, I don’t think so
many millions of people would have related to it
the way they did.
At the time, I could really relate to quitting
school/work and doing drugs and just sitting back
and letting life pass me by. I wanted the scene.
I didn’t really know what it was, but that’s what
I wanted. I wanted to come home to a party every
night. Everyone would know you, and everyone
would love you. The scene. Its an idea that’s
been thrown around a lot. From the potsmoking
basement dwellers on That 70s show to gangster
fantasies on The Sopranos.
Escapism.
The average student is not an idiot. We know that
we can either escape for $5.00 a pop (ecstasy,
weed, acid etc.) or change our lives.
Unless of course, you love your life already. In
which case, I’m just preaching to the choir.
But change your life?
Isn’t it supposed to go: Birth, School, Work,
Marriage, Retirement?
Where does say anything there about changing your
life?
I remember when I decided to change the world
around me.
The day George Harrison passed away was empty. Of
course on TV all day was his music and music from
the Beatles etc. but it didn't really sink in
until the next morning.
The morning after George Harrison passed, I woke
up and was scribbling frantically some ideas
about how to "save rock and roll."
Frantic. Workaholic.
It turned into a survey about what kind of music
kids like etc. and it soon donned on me that I
was on the phone talking to Head Office at the
local shopping mall asking for rates on setting
up kiosks. I would catch kids in the mall and ask
them to fill out these surveys.
That's the spark. Although this had very little
to do with what my business ended up becoming, it
is the feeling of being comfortable with doing
what other kids would never do.
Being comfortable with being different.
I was frantically buzzing around, making lists of
people I had to meet, people I had to write to,
discus issues.
I never had obstacles, either. It was always
another empty box to check off on my To do list.
I recommend you write a todo list right now. How
about that girl in your philosophy class that
you’ve been flirting with for the past two
months. You know you want to ask her out. Write
that down. My big item was getting my drivers
license (in BC, we have a graduated licensing
program, so I had been driving for about 4 years
at the time, but getting my real license had been
hanging over my head for a while). Write down
everything that’s on your mind. EVERYTHING.
What you’ll have when your finished is a
breakdown of literally all the ideas and issues
that are floating around in your head. Your brain
is a powerful thing. It’s almost magic the
potential that is contained their in. But just
like anything else, it gets bogged down with
crap. It’s crap because its getting in the way of
everything you want to become; everything that
you are thinking about is question.
“Should I ask her out? She’s giving me that look
again!”
“No, she’s probably busy this weekend.”
“Should I drop in on my buddy James? I haven’t
seen him in a while”
“Nah, he’s probably not home.”
All these questions are like signals from your
brain. I like to call them impulses— things that
we would do if we didn’t restrict ourselves so
rigidly. You’re going to keep hearing them until
you finally say yes. YES! How beautiful does that
sound. It sounds like a slap in face! A breath of
fresh air! YES!
There is absolutely no reason to say no. None. I
did this all the time. I tried to remember the
last time I made a big mistake (like putting in a
dent in the car) and thought “Do I really want to
feel that regret again?”
But asking a girl out and getiing in your car are
two totally different kinds of risk.
In the first instance, there is a huge payoff and
tiny downside.
In the second instance, things either stay the
same, or there is a scary downside.
And you get in the car everyday.
So now, the first thing to do is get all that
crap out of your head and down on paper!
Now go out and start crossing those tasks off the
list!
Go out there and start saying yes!
I got my real drivers license and I was ecstatic!
I started looking for a better job, and I got it!
The most satisfying thing in the world became
crossing items off the list. Not only that, I
wanted to add more things to the list, to see
what I else I could do. I figured, “Look at all
the stuff I don’t have to worry about now. I’m
free to explore other things!”. “Look into
Scholarships”, I wrote. “Find a way to sell your
textbooks for about 40$ each”, I wrote. It
finally got to the point where I would wake up in
the morning and instead of asking myself “What do
I have to do today?” I thought “What do I want to
do today?”...I had gotten out of psychological
and emotional debt!
Was I becoming a workaholic? If you’d asked me, I
probably would have told you to get out of my
way. When you’re in this frantically productive
state, the last thing you want are other people
who will try to bring to down. Not only that, you
don’t want to explain yourself to people. I found
myself translating what I was doing. Translating
so that they could relate. Sometimes I would
change it a bit “Well, I’m trying to make some
money, so I’m setting up a textbook exchange
service.” or maybe I would just lie “I’m writing
a letter to my friend in Taiwan” when I was
really writing a letter to Richard Branson!
So get out of all that emotional debt that you’ve
accumulated from High School.
Eventually, you’ll find that people are basically
exactly like you!
Everyone wants to love their life, and everyone
has amazing ideas!
Everyone is beautiful and everyone is funny.
As soon as you get out of debt, you find that you
don’t have that “Me, myself and I” attitude and
you can genuinely listen to those around you. You
can genuinely be yourself 24 hours a day. Not
just yourself, but the best yourself that has
ever been. An ever accelerating version of
yourself!!
So how do Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Donald
Trump do it?
They’ve already taken care of their emotional and
psychological debt. They’re not trying to help
themselves anymore. In fact, they would tell you
that that selfish person inside them is gone.
They haven’t seen in him in decades. What keeps
them going is their own personal todo lists that
give them satisfaction just like it did when they
first started using them. Only now, they have
them on PDA’s. And they carry their stuff around
in briefcases instead of backpacks. And they wear
$500 suits.
Why am I writing this?
I am getting paid? No.
I am trying to endorse Microsoft, Virgin, or
Apple? Nope.
I’m writing this because I am so ecstatic about
life that I want to give it away to everyone who
reads this!
What kind of freak am I?
The crazy thing about cleaning out all your
emotional/psychological debt is that you are no
longer afraid of the future. So you stop hoarding
knowledge, wisdom and contacts. You start
introducing people to each other and you start
talking to your friends just to get them excited
about their own lives. People begin to look to
you as a glowing mass of positive energy. And
ironically, the selfish you is put to rest. You
start meeting people that share your dreams and
soon, you’ll find yourself in a meeting saying
things such as:
“How can we get the word out?”
“How can we spread the love?”
“How does this help our customers?”
“What do we have to do to get soandso in on
this?”
So get out there and start saying yes to your
inner voice. It the most empowering act you can
do for yourself and the people in your life!
I love getting feedback from fellow students.
Please feel free to email me your
thoughts/ideas/reactions at
Studentvalue@earthlink.net. Stop by my website if
you have time and snoop around. I’m developing a
network for young entrepreneurs on the page
called Drive.
You are a beautiful individual with new ideas and
you owe it to yourself to start saying YES!
