News flash: fun is your life. Your job merely funds your real life, and in turn your fun. Fun is what happens on the weekends, when your “life” takes place. The rest–the thing we call work–is just what we now do in this wonderful modern age instead of milking cows, reaping barley, and contracting typhoid throughout the week. Life is still tedious today, but in a much gentler way: it’s merely boring and repetitive rather than brutal and short.

All this talk about personal branding and dressing for success is just B-school elective lecture and advice column fluff, nothing more. At the end of the day, nothing matters except results. Also, not being a total jerk helps, but in my experience people often get away with it if they produce.

Your job is most likely banal and uninteresting, unless perhaps you work in entertainment or do missionary work in some far-off place, in which cases you have no intellectual investment in a site like this. In sum, my advice is to watch the things you say and do that may reflect what’s valuable in life to you.

Jobs are just jobs. Nothing that 99% of us do can’t be done by thousands of other people, probably in the selfsame city. But jobs are important, so DO do them, well and ethically, and get out of there as soon as you can so you can live your life–on weekends and vacations. That’s what technology and strength-in-numbers have afforded us in the modern age: cushy work and leisure time. The very idea of criticizing oneself for valuing fun is symbolic of what’s wrong with the business world. Companies and organizations are mostly greedy, selfish and stupid as the people who run them, and they’ll put you out on the street as soon as their numbers tell them to. Basically, try to keep it all in perspective, hm?

I always had a working Mom and I admire her very much for it. It made me believe that multi-tasking to the max was totally normal and not something to be stressed out about (that explains a bit about why I do so many things after my day job). I also learned to roll with the punches. When she would have to work late or things wouldn’t go as planned, my Mom always made the uncertainty fun- “ok guys, today is backwards day and we are having breakfast for dinner!” We thought it was the coolest thing ever and we always thought too much routine was “boring.”

As we got older it was really cool to see my Mom get so excited about growing her company, increasing sales, using new technology, improving processes and improving her companies as a whole. The excitement and positive association with working was contagious for my sisters and I for sure.

Nicole

That whole working mom situation is so tough — I still have no idea how I’ll handle it — but I like that she reminds people not to let others make them feel guilty for whatever choice they make.