Imagining a Post Work World

In order to consider a “post-work” world, I had to do some reading about minimalism, and explore the reasons why we get tied into expensive lifestyles. 

The default can be to commit to paying off the debt of expenses that end up controlling us. Each spending decision has unintended consequences. Minimalism doesn’t mean you don’t like the thing you don’t buy. It isn’t a case of “I don’t want it”... normally you do want it. The better question is, “in the broader context, is it worth it?”. 

At the time when I stopped working, I was single, and I had no dependents. I believed I could sustain paying for the things I valued if I held a broader context in mind. 

I get quite defensive of the younger version of me. The problem with being contrarian, and doing something that is different, is that almost everyone tells you that you are wrong before you do the thing that is different. Still, I took my shot. So, when I had to go back to work, there was an awareness of the obvious and plentiful, I-told-you-so retorts. 

The world is complicated. Plans change. I still believe it is possible to live off capital in a post-work world. There are consequences. I learnt a lot in my 6 years of attempting to step away from the world of money. So, I try and be compassionate to the younger version of Trevor that stopped working. 

I still think strategizing around how to release ourselves from the constraints of how to make money is something worth giving energy to. I still want to figure out a way to direct less of my time and energy to thinking about money. What I did realise about a year and a half in what just how fortunate my bubble of friends and colleagues were. 

There are obviously stresses, but decisions have consequences. There are tradeoffs. People make choices. Honestly reflecting on choices and constraints is a privilege.

Contrarian Choices

Survival Models

From 2014 to 2021, the main source of my income was no longer a salary. I stripped back my spending dramatically, and was attempting to live off my Engine. Aiming to spend less on average, than my Capital made. Straight out of the Financial Independence, Retire Early” F.I.R.E. playbook. 

It meant giving up certain things (e.g. I had a room at Wimbledon Art Studios for four years) and reducing others (e.g. cheaper rent, less take-out, cheaper holidays). When stripping back your spending, you learn more from those with less. It is eye-opening to see what people, without options, get by on. 

Still, I exceeded on the spending side and my Capital was far noisier than a salary. Imagine pay day coming, and your boss asking for a deposit! 

In theory, I could have run my Engine down to zero. In reality, my “internal Engine” wouldn’t go to zero. I wouldn’t be starting from scratch. The thought experiment of if every *thing* was taken from you, what would you have? Relationships, skills, knowledge, social capital, and the opportunities presented by being part of the community you are a part of. You can also build the capacity to start again with more ease, if you need to. Even if the situation is very different. 

Like rewriting an essay you lose when your computer crashes. Second time, you may be more effective. The first course I repeated at university, was ironically called “Survival Models” (previously called Mortality). The second time I did it, I had the big picture, and suddenly things made sense. Helping people one page behind, is also a great way to take your next step. 

When I decided to go back to work, it was partly because I no longer had confidence that my Engine was sustainable. I could repair and rebuild it better with the stability of a salary as support. I could also repeat something I had done before (working!), and help people one page behind.

Surviving

Wafer Thin

When I “stopped working” in 2014, I had ideas for projects I wanted to work on. What I meant by not working, was not working *for money*. 

I was just frustrated with what felt like a toxic environment. With answering the question “what do you do?” with what I do for work. With my default laid out, bar 20 odd days of leave a year. 

I still wanted to work on interesting problems, but with a different filter. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. There are a lot of things I wanted to do that I couldn’t justify. 

Another frustration was the amount of time I spent communicating what I was working on! Explaining myself. Communicating what needs to be done to people who aren’t doing it. When you get the sense that you are Sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill just to roll it up again. When you aren’t convinced of the incremental change. What the late David Graeber called “Bullsh1t Jobs”. Or fake deadlines where someone tells you to get something to them by the time your head hits the pillow... then they don’t look at it for two weeks. 

Much of my anxiety came from a sense of killing time. Time is the thing that is most valuable. That was what I wanted. Time free from price. I am also aware of path dependence. I did what I did because of the cumulative decisions that were presented to me, and that I made. Changing paths is hard when the path is relentlessly repeating. 

There can be wafer thin boundaries between what we do, and what we could be doing... but we simply don’t have the time to breathe and notice.

Full Time

I stopped working in the Corporate World in August 2014 (Spoiler alert – I returned in February 2021). The first thing I wanted to do was to travel. 

I had a close family friend’s wedding coming up on the opposite side of the rock (Australia), and I now had time available to accept the invitation. 

In the UK, standard leave entitlement is 28 days, with it being frowned upon to take more than two weeks in a single chunk. Australia is a long way to go for that kind of break, both from the expense and the jet-lag perspective. Leave becomes preciously allocated. 

Work becomes the default. What you do every morning. The way we structure work is typically “full time”. Work will be found. It is not a case of whether there is work to do. You never get to the bottom of the work container. Work is a deeply engrained habit. So much so that it is hard to do work when there is no structure. You can say to someone, “Yeah, sure, we must do coffee” but you don’t arrange a time, and so it doesn’t happen. 

So rules that remind us to do things are helpful, but the “full time” rule seems a little excessive. It can mean that you don’t end up doing a lot of the things that are important to you because work takes priority. “Sorry I don’t have time, I have to work” becomes a one-stop-shop wall that cannot be legitimately questioned.

Taking Time Down Under

The Great Wave

There will be many lessons learnt when we reflect on 2020, and unfortunately probably most of 2021 too. When the dust settles. One of those will be the danger of predicting things we pretend to understand, but have not experienced. Another will be the peril of basing society on hand-to-mouth existence, because of (amongst other things) a belief in “work ethic”. Asking children as they grow up what they will be, and meaning how will they earn a living. Existence based on a willingness to work, requires the existence of work. The ability to create real value requires reinvestment and a long-time frame. It requires breaking the cycle of feast and famine. It requires being able to pause. Sometimes for longer than we like. It requires a safe place to retreat to. We have to snap our earning addiction by creating capital. Capital is not hoarding. Capital works. Capital can create space for when we realise how much of what we thought we knew is not true. Capital allows you to be wrong without it being the end. If you have the ability to work from home. Be grateful you have work. Be grateful you have a home. Then let us build back better.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Wanting It

I didn’t plan to retire at 34. I had failed to get the job I wanted at one company, and moved to another. It again looked like I wouldn’t be able to take my fate in my own hands. I was frustrated. The South African mentality of not blaming or relying on anyone was in me. Make a plan. Do the work. Except that didn’t seem to be how the world worked in reality. There was too much noise for plans. Too much politics for agency. I did plan for the risk of getting disabled and not being able to work. By 34, I had built enough Capital to live a simple life if some bad fortune prevented my hands from feeding my mouth. Particularly frustrated by my lack of control, the realisation dawned that it was available if I wanted it. I didn’t have to be disabled to stop working for an income. If I refocused on the things that really mattered to me. That meant letting go of traditional measures of status and success. I would be time rich, but seemingly lost to many. But time, space and relationships are what I valued. So I took the step.

First Day Post Work - August 2014

Post Work World

There are two big problems with the idea of a “Post Work” world I have discovered since I stopped being an employee five years ago. We build everything around work. The first question people often ask you is “what work do you do?”, and we ask children, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. In a way that embeds the idea that you are defined by the label of work. A regular question artist or writer friends of mine get asked is, “do you make enough money out of that?”. The two problems are Conspicuous Leisure and Conspicuous Wealth. If you can’t visibly demonstrate what progress you are making, you look lazy or lost. If you aren’t working for money, you look greedy. Money is the most conspicuous demonstration of progress. You don’t have to understand what someone is doing if someone else is willing to pay them. The easiest way to free yourself from financial pressures is to control your expenses. But if you have an Engine, you have to explain why firing bits of it is so painful. You “have” money, but not really. It is working. I have discovered that it is very hard to create a “Post Work” life in a Work focused World.

But what are you doing? 

Pic Credit: Matt Hussey