11. Work Crowds Out the Time to Think About the Future

I once watched a documentary where a business owner spent a week living as a poor person so he could explain why poor people stay poor.

After selling his labor for a life that was not so dignified, the owner reached this conclusion:

The main problem with working for a living is that you run out of time and energy to think about the future.

I do not know whether you agree with that. I have felt it. If you read the piece about my own history, you know I spent years working while studying.

A lot of success books tell you to use the hours after work to think and plan for tomorrow. My eyes were fixed on the present, and planning the future is far less concrete than the task in front of me, so things got pushed back again and again.

I was doing physical labor every day back then. After a full day of it, I only wanted to rest, and I was too tired to think.

Why? Because thinking about the future is heavy enough that the brain protects itself from it, turns lazy, and settles for the way things are. Even on a rare day off, the brain picks the familiar route again as a reward for how hard you worked.

For me that meant playing games all through my days off until I was tired enough to sleep, and only then washing up. A daily habit like that pulls like gravity. However hard you work during the day, you stay on the same track.