John Walt

We work to live, not live to work.

We have a dangerously flawed view of what work is and the role it has in our lives. There is no question that most of us have to work to make a living and provide for our families. Unfortunately, what we do for a living has become an integral part of most people's identities. It is how we measure success, it’s where most of our effort and thought is focused, and where we find our sense of purpose. We don’t question how entangled our work and our identities are because our culture tells us that is how it should be.

Who would we be if we didn’t do what we do for a living?

Our society glorifies entrepreneurs who work 100-hour weeks. New technology is constantly making it possible to increase efficiency and productivity. Our phones allow us to stay plugged in wherever we are, at all times. Many people give the best of themselves and their lives to work and never think twice about it. Our modern world has denied God and made success and productivity its idol. Where did we get this from, and why have we bought into it?

We have it all backwards

“Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” - Dalai Lama

How many broken homes and lives has the pursuit of success left in its wake? Everywhere you look, you can see nice houses, cars, restaurants, and office buildings filled with successful but empty people. We have traded everything we have for what our culture tells us we should want, but it's not worth the trade. I have never met a highly successful person who has found true meaning, joy, and identity from their career. If they have found those things, it came from pursuing personal growth, healing, and transformation. Our society teaches us to pursue success, and everything else will take care of itself. Unfortunately, that means we get almost no training in the things that matter most in life.

Where did this come from?

When we are about five years old, we start leaving home to attend school. That school’s job is to teach us everything we need to know to be a productive member of society. When we are about 18, we graduate and many people head off to college, where we learn more specific knowledge related to the career we want to go into. Then we graduate at 22 or continue on to a graduate degree for another 4-8 years. At the point in time that most people enter the workforce, they have spent most of their formative days on earth going to some sort of school. Almost all of the things that they learn have to do with how to be productive and successful. Very little, if any, attention is given to spirituality, well-being, mental hygiene, relationships, family, and calling.

By the time kids are in their 20s, they have essentially been taught to believe that the purpose of their life is to be productive and pursue happiness along the way. Many teachers undoubtedly display a healthier perspective on life. But the system they were a part of for so long is modeled around productivity and achievement. Is it any wonder that most people end up spending their lives focused on succeeding in work? That's what we taught them mattered most.

“I don’t want a nation of thinkers; I want a nation of workers.” - John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller was an American oil magnate and philanthropist who became one of the wealthiest men in history. He invested over $129 million (equivalent to about $4.89 billion in today’s dollars) to reshape American public schooling to better serve an industrialized society, emphasizing regimentation, conformity, job-readiness, and standardized testing. He saw schools as instruments for producing obedient, skilled labor rather than independent, critical thinkers. The groundwork that Rockefeller laid for modern education is still evident in our schools today.

I bring this up because by the time kids graduate high school, they have spent most of their formative years in an education system that is focused on productivity over personal development. We now treat critical thinking, values, spirituality, and relationships as peripheral concepts that are subservient to matters of productivity and occupation. As a parent, I am far more concerned with the spiritual and mental development of my kids than I am with increasing their future earning potential.

Retirement

Most people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are focused on saving for retirement. Much of modern career mapping is built around the idea that you need to make enough to save and invest so you can comfortably retire between 55 and 65. The concept of retirement is uniquely Western. Many people now spend their careers working to ensure they can afford a theoretical 25-year vacation called retirement. There is so much wrong with this picture. For starters, retirement is no longer an option for most people. Many of those who can retire find their golden years plagued by loneliness and health challenges. Many people do not live long after retirement because their sense of purpose and most of their relationships go away with their career ending.

In most cultures throughout history, elderly parents lived with and were cared for by family members. You didn’t need to save for retirement because your family was your retirement plan. This idea of retirement is a byproduct of the cultural breakdown of the family unit. We got our priorities out of whack, and it has an ongoing multi-generational impact.

One of the biggest problems I see with retirement thinking is that it leads us to give our child-rearing years to building wealth for retirement. What if, on the other hand, parents spent their child raising years primarily focused on their families and doing work that served the rhythms of their family life, and then focused on making money when their kids left their house. I know this doesn’t really work in our society, but it is interesting that this window of time that we consider “prime earning years” is also the time when we are raising kids. The tension between doing what it takes to advance your career and family is huge for most families because they are diametrically opposed. If our culture valued family more than production, then we would have a more family-centric culture instead of one that is constantly trying to pull parents away from their kids.

Renewing our minds about work

We are not made to be cogs in industrial machines of profit and progress. We are uniquely created people made to do meaningful work and live meaningful lives.

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.” - James A. Michener

A friend and mentor of mine has shared the above quote with me many times. It always captivates me. It invites me to think differently about work and how it relates to the rest of my life. I think more than anything, it reminds me that work can be a meaningful outflow of who God created me to be. I think part of the problem with our culture's view of work is that we separate it from the rest of our lives.

“Calling is not what you do, but how you do what you do.” - Dan Allender

I don’t believe we can find the perfect career where everything we do is exactly what we want to do. That would actually be hell because it would steal from us a necessary battleground of our transformation journey. But I do believe that we can and should change our view of work and how we do it to be more aligned with what actually matters in life, our calling, our faith, and our families. Part of a modern transformation journey has to be a renewed understanding of work and how we integrate it into everything else we do. Work financially serves our families but it also provides a perfect place to grow in our connection with God and practice walking with Him. The challenges and the successes become garden beds for our personal and spiritual growth.

I believe that our work can be an act of worship to God. We are called to do all things as unto God, so work should be no exception. Viewing it as worship gives us a new way of viewing the challenges we face every day. When I remind myself that work is worship, it changes how I approach problems. Instead of getting frustrated and anxious, I start to pray, I find myself expecting God to guide me. This posture makes me more aware of his presence in every part of my life.

Instead of work being a drain on our families and spirits, it should be a place of growth. We cannot afford to exchange our families for our careers. We can’t afford to spend our lives valuing productivity and success above all else. The challenge we face is how do we avoid getting sucked into the worlds way of working and instead renew our minds to how God views work and how He wants to meet us in it.

Meaningful work over money

Alongside the personal growth that can happen throughout our careers, there is the gift of meaningful work. How we do what we do every day allows us to impact the people around us. Research shows time and again that people want to see meaning and purpose in their work. Often, this is more important than money. We all want to positively impact others, whether that‘s by providing important services or how we treat them. I believe that one of the biggest blessings in life is the gift of meaningful work, and it's attainable to all of us.

Most people retire and, within a couple of years, find themselves wanting to do something meaningful and impactful with their time. We are created to create. Work in and of itself is not bad. Almost all of the financially independent people I know spend significant amounts of their time mentoring young leaders and working on impact projects. The idea that what we all really want is to play golf and watch TV all day is just wrong. We all want to see meaningful fruit from our lives. The cool thing is that we don’t have to retire to figure that one out. Regardless of what we do for a living, we can change our perspective and see more meaning and fruit in our daily work lives. I don’t care who you are, it will change you forever. We just weren’t designed to primarily work for money and things. I believe we were created to work with God each and every day. God created Adam and then put him to work in the garden. What changed after the garden was that people had to work just to live. Work isn’t the problem; how we view it and how we do it is the problem.

I pray that we can find true success, that we live our lives centered around what truly matters. As I have gone through this journey myself, I have let go of the desire to make a fortune and instead found a deep desire to grow in my relationships with my kids and wife. I am convinced now that the most important work I will do in my life is shaping my kids. That takes time, energy, and focus, it will not happen on its own. I have found a deeper love of nature and a longing to be in it. I have found that I say no, more and more to things that sound amazing but are contrary to the way of life we want to live and are now living.

I am often invited to be a part of impact projects and business deals that sound really exciting. I consider these seriously, but at the end of the day, almost all of them are a distraction that will take time and resources from what matters most in my life, my journey with God and my family. The moderate success mental model, from note 14, acts like a funnel, helping me decide where my energy and focus should go.

Application

When I met Scott Dohner, he had just stepped down from being the CEO and Chairman of the board of a very successful company. At the time, he lived in an apartment above his barn and had lost interest in building the house they had planned to build. In any group, you would never have imagined he was a successful businessman. That is, until you talked to him. Then you would quickly realize that he was not like the people around him. I was struck with his deep peace and contentment. His mind was clear, and he was full of wisdom. Once I saw that, I decided I wanted to be like this man. He had achieved the world's definition of success, but that wasn’t the type of success he was chasing. In fact, he was constantly fighting against it. He talked to me often in the first couple of years about how I needed to change the way I thought about work. What he shared with me and how he lived it out left a lasting impression on me and ultimately has shaped how Heather and I live our lives.

I will write more about this in future notes, but I will hit on it briefly here. If you want to change how you think about work, then I highly recommend you find a mentor. Changing deeply rooted paradigms requires repetition and modeling. I think mentors are essential in this because we can learn from them how they think and live, both in words and actions. Scott modeled for me a better way of living and working that showed me how to put my journey as a disciple of Jesus at the center of my life.

I have heard many people say that they don’t know how to find a mentor. I know it can seem daunting, and it will take time, but there are some incredible people out there who we can learn from. Great mentors don't advertise themselves, they don’t need anybody to know who they are or what they have accomplished. Mentors must be sought out.

In my experience, it is very hard to unbake our minds from our cultural view of work. I find that reminding myself of a few things helps me to align my view of work with God's calling on my life.

Work is a form of worship - Therefore, I want to handle everything I face today as if I am doing it unto God.
Never trade family for work - I am not willing to trade critical time with my wife and kids to make more money.
I work to live, I don’t live to work - My identity is not connected to what I do for a living.
I am born to do meaningful work - Even when I don’t have to work anymore, I will still want to do meaningful work. I can do meaningful work now, I don’t have to wait until I retire.

- John Walt

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