Jul 26 2025

When you truly work for yourself

Nivi:?From?April 2nd:? “When you truly work for yourself, you won’t have hobbies, you won’t have weekends, and you won’t have vacations, but you won’t have work either.”

Naval:?This is the paradox of working for yourself, which every entrepreneur or every self-employed person is familiar with, which is that when you start working for yourself, you basically sacrifice this work-life balance thing.

You sacrifice this work-life distinction. There’s no more nine-to-five. There’s no more office. There’s no one who’s telling you what to do. There’s no playbook to follow. At the same time, there’s nothing to turn off. You can’t turn it off. You are the business. You are the product. You are the work. You are the entity, and you care.

If you’re doing something that’s truly yours, you care very deeply so you can’t turn it off. And that’s the curse of the entrepreneur. But the benefit of the entrepreneur is that if you’re doing it right, if you’re doing it for the right reasons or the right people in the right way, and if you can set aside the stress of not hitting your goals, which is real and hard to set aside, then it doesn’t feel like work.

And that’s when you’re most productive. You are basically only measured on your output. And you’re only held up to the bar that you raised for yourself. So it can be extremely exhilarating and freeing. And this is why?I said a long time ago?that a taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

And so this is exactly that taste of freedom. It makes you unemployable in the classic sense of nine-to-five and following the playbook and having a boss. But once you have broken out of that, once you’ve walked the tight rope without a net, without a boss, without a job—and by the way, this can even happen in startups in a small team where you’re just very self-motivated. You get what look like huge negatives to the average person that you don’t have weekends, you don’t have vacations, and you don’t have time off, you don’t have work-life balance. But, at the same time, when you are working, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s something that you’re highly motivated to do and that’s the reward.

And net-net, I do think this is a one-way door. I think once people experience working on something that they care about with people that they really like in a way they’re self-motivated, they’re unemployable. They can’t go back to a normal job with a manager and a boss and check-ins and nine-to-five and “Show up this day, this week, sit in this desk, commute at this time.”

Nivi:?I think there’s a hidden meaning in the tweet too, which I’m guessing is intentional. It starts off with “When you truly work for yourself,” which I’m guessing most people are going to take that to mean “You’re your own boss.” But the other way that I read it is that you are working for your self.

So your labor is an expression of who and what you are. It’s self-expression. And that’s not an easy thing to figure out.

Nivi:?這就是為自己工作的悖論，每個創(chuàng)業(yè)者或每個個體經(jīng)營者都熟悉，那就是當(dāng)你開始為自己工作時，你基本上犧牲了這種工作與生活的平衡。

Naval:?你犧牲了這種工作與生活的區(qū)別是：不再有朝九晚五的工作、沒有辦公室、沒有人告訴你該怎么做、沒有可遵循的劇本。同時，沒有什么可以關(guān)閉的。你無法將其關(guān)閉，你就是企業(yè)、你就是產(chǎn)品、你就是工作、你就是實(shí)體，你關(guān)心它們。

如果你正在做一件真正屬于你的事情，你會非常關(guān)心它，所以你無法關(guān)閉它。這就是企業(yè)家的詛咒。但企業(yè)家的好處是：如果你做對了，如果你是出于正確的理由或以正確的方式做正確的事的人，如果你能把沒有達(dá)到目標(biāo)的壓力放在一邊，這是真實(shí)的，很難擱置，那么它就不像工作了。

那是你最有效率的時候。基本上，您只根據(jù)您的輸出進(jìn)行衡量。而你只能遵守你為自己設(shè)定的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。因此，它可以非常令人振奮和自由。這就是為什么我很久以前說過，嘗到自由的滋味會讓你失業(yè)（不就業(yè)）。

所以這正是自由的味道。它讓你在傳統(tǒng)意義上的朝九晚五、遵循劇本、有老板工作中失業(yè)。但是，一旦你擺脫了這種困境，一旦你在沒有網(wǎng)絡(luò)、沒有老板、沒有工作的情況下走鋼絲——順便說一句，這甚至可能發(fā)生在一個初創(chuàng)公司的小團(tuán)隊(duì)中，你非常能自我激勵。對于普通人來說，你會得到一些看似巨大的負(fù)面影響：你沒有周末，沒有假期，沒有休息時間，沒有工作與生活的平衡。但是，與此同時，當(dāng)你工作時，感覺不像是工作。這是你非常有動力去做的事情，這就是回報(bào)。

而網(wǎng)絡(luò)，我確實(shí)認(rèn)為這是一扇單向門。我認(rèn)為，一旦人們體驗(yàn)到與他們真正喜歡的人一起做他們關(guān)心的事情，他們就會以一種自我激勵的方式工作，他們就無法就業(yè)（傳統(tǒng)意義上的）。他們無法回到有經(jīng)理和老板的日常工作中，有簽到，朝九晚五，“這一天、這周出現(xiàn)，坐在這張桌子上，在這個時間上下班”。

Nivi:?我認(rèn)為這條推文中也隱藏著含義，我猜這是故意的。它以“當(dāng)你真正為自己工作時”開頭，我猜大多數(shù)人會認(rèn)為這意味著“你是你自己的老板”。但我讀到的另一種方式是，你是在為自己工作。

所以你的勞動是你是誰和你是什么（人生意義）的表達(dá)。這是自我表達(dá)。這不是一件容易弄清楚的事情。

統(tǒng)觀納瓦爾的這個觀點(diǎn)，個人認(rèn)為跟《高能要事》作業(yè)葉武濱老師課程中提到的人生贏家及三圈交集非常接近，就是找到自己人生在三個方面的事情：做讓自己快樂的事情、做自己擅長的事情、做有意義（能帶來價(jià)值）的事情，找到這些事情后，找出能在上面三方面中2方面重合的事情，甚至3方面都重合的事情，堅(jiān)持去做，這樣的事情做起來是自己擅長的，讓自己快樂的、還能給社會他人帶來價(jià)值。當(dāng)然既開心又有成就感，就會忘我地去投入，不會理會是否需要去朝九晚五或跟誰匯報(bào)了。但找出這個三圈交集的事，需要假以時日，一件一件去嘗試，用9-12個月的時間去計(jì)劃、行動和反思，不斷找出來。慢慢來，別著急，你值得更美好的人生。