Do You Need to Sacrifice Something to Achieve Success?

Most people think they must work forty hours per week to gain more success and earn more money. For some, that's true. For others, it's sixty hours per week. For still others, eighty. (Ask any spouse whose "job" it is to care for the house, or creative person working on a project, or monk in a monastery, or social activist working for change). For some others, it might be five or ten.

Just as "the work expands to fill the time available," so, too, the "needs" expand to consume the money available. If we are bringing home forty-hours' worth of money, we will spend it. The rich live hand-to-mouth, too - just on a higher level. If that forty-hours' worth of work amounts to $150 or $1,500 or $15,000 or $150,000, or $1,500,000 - it will be spent.

Many people are trapped in the myth of a 40-hour work week.

If we define "job" as what we do (that we don't really want to do) to get money, then the number of hours we work depends upon (A) what it cost us to do what we want to do, and (B) how much per hour we get. What about our basic needs? Good question! Basic needs are often dictated by what we want to do. For example, someone who wants to pray all day and serve God might be able to combine that with life in a monastery and not have to work for even one hour per week at the local fast-food emporium. Someone wanting to make global changes could find the same all-expenses-paid fulfillment of a goal in the Peace Corps, or, if they wanted to do it domestically. The examples go on and on.

The meeting of our basic needs should be based on the fulfillment of our heart's desire, not on the latest style, or how to intensely fill the few "leisure" hours we have when not working at a job we hate.

To significantly raise your standard of living sometimes requires significantly lowering it for a while. Say you want to write a book, and you have a $25,000 car and a $2,000 per month apartment. You don't need those to write a book. A $5,000 car (or even a $500 moped) and a $500 per month apartment is all you need.

People who plan to "make it" had better plan to sacrifice - and that starts with creature comforts. It might mean a smaller living space, bringing in a roommate, or turning the current living space into an office. It may mean less dinners out with friends, less trips, fewer new clothes, not as many CD's, domestic wines, domestic sparkling water (aka club soda), domestic pasta, domestic vinegar - and no domestics.