72 Reasons You Should Never Get A Job

Before you get all bent out of shape from the headline, let me point out that I do not deny the validity of reasons to getting a job. Heavens no, so relax. There are good reasons to working for an establishment and earning a paycheck. I have had plenty of jobs and at least one really cushy job and one day, I may write about The Worst and Best Jobs I Ever Had, and we can swap fun stories over comments and coffee.

But that’s not the agenda for today. Today is about inspiring you by exploring the hidden side of getting a job so much that you begin to believe in the power of your own dreams. What if there is another way to live life, and what if getting a job hinders us from living that way? And what if this other way is not a dreamy, pie-in-the-sky, reserved-for-lucky-few, kinda thing, and what if you – yes, YOU – had a real shot at it?

If this were true, would you do it?
And if others can do it every single day, then why exactly can’t you do it?

72 Reasons Not to Ever Get a Job

Here we go with my 72 reasons you should never ever get a job. There are likely more reasons; I just ran out of steam and wanted you to shout out a few. Let’s get this show on the road:

1. You lose your genius. Slowly but surely, you stop feeding your own genius at the expense of someone else’s agenda.

2. You stop dreaming, and you think of everyone else that dreams as childish and immature. They don’t understand the real world, you say.

3. You call people that actually realize their dreams lucky, sometimes followed by an expletive.

4. You think you are gaining experience but you only get experience at that job. You get real experience by living life.

5. You give up your freedom, unless your freedom is to be at someone else’s bidding, and to fulfill someone else’s agenda.

6. You limit your financial security by putting all your eggs in one basket, unless you have several jobs, in which case, you severely limit your health while slightly diversifying your basket.

7. Speaking of your health, the number one thing you get from getting any job is not money, it’s stress. Stress is the number one reason for countless health issues.

8. You stop thinking for yourself because you become conditioned to do things a certain way.

9. You give up the power of decision, because no matter what, you have a boss who, even at his best and most agreeable, has a boss of his own to please.

10. You forget that you can do what you love with pride, even if it’s doing landscaping in the hot summer sun or repairing home appliance for people, and your happiness comes from doing what you love, not a fancy job title.

11. You get complacent, because having a job removes the urgency to constantly perform better than the previous day. Unless you work in a Japanese culture or something.

12. You compromise your values. Sooner or later, you have to decide between job safety and one of your values. That’s not a good day and it comes at every job.

13. You have to put up with a lot of rubbish. This one does not require explanation.

14. You lose your creativity juices, either because it becomes exhausting to prove your talents or it goes unappreciated.

15. You will have to work with people you can’t stand at some point and no, this is not a mandatory condition to life so stop telling yourself that.

16. You wake up without excitement. If this hasn’t happened to you, stay in your job and stop reading.

17. You hate Mondays, the poor thing has done nothing to you, it is the job that is at fault. Yet, you resent the Mondays of your life.

18. You begin to distract yourself with stuff that helps you escape your stress at work. This is not a bad thing, but it is just a distraction.

19. You give up control of your financial growth to your boss or the powers that be. It certainly isn’t you. Your negotiation powers at the job interview and your salary conversations are the most power you can exercise. The final say comes from them.

20. You lose confidence in your own potential, and this is a very sad thing.

21. You put your dreams aside and accept that life consists of having a job and being a part of the rat race.

22. You get obsessed with counting your blessings and consider yourself lucky to “just have a job”, when you could be busy creating new blessings.

23. The daily grind starts to drain your spirit. This one takes a while to admit.

24. You become more interested in what you can do with your money than what you do to make money.

25. Your life becomes a dichotomy: the times when you are at your job and the times when you are not.

26. Good enough will become your new standard especially if your excellent work is not rewarded.

27. Your idea of work becomes tainted and jaded. You no longer believe work to be sacred. That’s for the dreamers we mentioned earlier, not for everyday life.

28. You stop believing in yourself.

29. You stop being a leader in your life. What’s the point if you cannot be a leader at your work?

30. You are no longer a leader in your own work.

31. You know you were not meant to have a boss and yet you keep lying to yourself.

32. You defend the practicality of having a job while deep down, you resent the idea of working for someone else.

33. You resent the idea of working for someone else. Yes, this one bears repeating.

34. You waste your time with distractions because it gets you “even” with working hard or doing things you don’t want to do. You lose on both ends.

35. You generally have to beg and plead for any adjustments in income. It’s not an empowering position to find oneself in.

36. You cannot honor your life’s true work by having a job. You need freedom to create and to build.

37. You focus on perks and bonuses that a good job gives you when your interest wanes, and you convince yourself you have it good.

38. You talk yourself into “not complaining” because your job is a “good job” compared to the worst jobs on the planet. This self-talk is usually 30% effective on a good day.

39. You stop believing that a constant state of happiness is even possible from working. You therefore miss out on the greatest joy of one’s life.

40. You participate in the sub-culture corporate mentality that exists at every job and you view possibilities through a very narrow lens.

41. You let the company management, human resources, your peers and your industry colleagues to influence – and even decide – your career possibilities.

42. You define your career in even a more narrow lens and you feel terrified about making a change – any change – thanks to those influencers.

43. Your decision making abilities suffer greatly. You slow down to the turtle speed of how things move in corporate or government.

44. You have to watch others kill your brilliant ideas and bury your darlings because they don’t do things that way at your job.

45. If you speak up, you become the loud mouth and sometimes it works in your favor, but it general, it kills your chances of advancement.

46. You have to support people you don’t like. You may have to do this more than once.

47. You have to kiss up to someone or get left behind. And the funny thing, you end up doing it. You just live with the self-resentment that is sure to follow.

48. You say yes when your whole being wants to scream no. Never had one of those days yet? You haven’t worked enough. This blog post isn’t for you!

49. You forget all about your free will as a result of the conditioning that starts with just a few tasks a day and ends up taking over your whole life.

50. You become less prone to take risks – good, healthy, necessary risks – in your life.

51. You become more prone to what the media and the economy is doing, and you live in a state of fear combined with a false sense of security.

52. You hang out with – or in fact, spend quite a bit of time – with the same people and sometimes, people that you are not exactly crazy about.

53. You tend to limit your social circles because you spend so much time with the aforementioned people.

54. You waste precious time that you cannot get back with all the money in the world, especially at MEETINGS!

55. You gain skills you are not necessarily interested in, only to please a boss or do a task.

56. Your motivation will come from the wrong place – you do things to please your boss instead of creating value.

57. You stop learning – in most job – unless you move around all the time and your boss or team controls the level of learning.

58. You forget just how much you are capable of doing, because sometimes you don’t need to do much to get the job done.

59. You become automated like a robot and that is the death of all creativity and genius.

60. You stop to hustle and when you stop hustling, you age quicker. My own observation. Go ahead and argue!

61. You feel that you are comfortable or safe even though your whole future can change in 3 words: “You’re fired!”

62. You spend time and energy pleasing other people in your life by holding down a job so that they can tell everyone else how “proud” they are!

63. You trade your time for money, and that’s the worst model for building real wealth.

64. You get comfortable with just talking about an escape plan, but never doing it. You get really good at saying “someday”.

65. You start living only for the weekend, the vacation or the retirement that is hopefully on the horizon.

66. The longer you work for someone else, the further you get from exercising the freedom of working for yourself.

67. You start showing characteristics of a gopher, as Steven Covey would say, a person who runs errands and waits to be asked for the next task.

68. You lose the fire in your belly and the butterflies in your stomach. You get comfortable and bored.

69. You miss out on the greatest opportunity for growth: creating something that is entirely unique to you.

70. You deprive the world of your gift if you were to create that unique something.

71. You believe that you are not cut out for this job and so you go get another job because that’s what social conditioning has taught you to do.

72. You compromise who you were meant to become and there is nothing that can make you feel better later in life for not having taken a chance today.

Your Thoughts on Not Getting a Job

This post was originally inspired by a great old post from Steve Pavlina on why you shouldn’t get a job, infused with my own motivation to help you leave your job and create your dream life. I waited a long time to take action. How long are you waiting? Share your thoughts and feel free to disagree, and let’s take the conversation down to the comments!