I've been enjoying Tony Hsieh's memoir Delivering Happiness about how he grew and sold LinkExchange and then grew and sold Zappos. In the book, he describes the deal that he made with Microsoft as part of the LinkExchange sale. His portion of the sale would be $40 million. He received 80% at closing, but to help with the transition, he was required to stay with the company for one year to receive the remaining 20%. At first, he dutifully went to work and sat around checking email and taking long lunch breaks as he put in his time. After a short period of time he realized how bored he was, and realized how
much money he had. He had more money than he could ever spend. Why did he need to spend his time doing work that didn't make him happy just to add to an already full bank account?
After making that realization, he emailed his resignation and walked away from the $8 million that he would have received if he had stuck around for just the rest of the year.
This concept of chasing a fun project instead of chasing more dollars agrees with comments that I have heard from other incredibly successful business people. Bill Gates, George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg, have all made comments about having enough money and focusing instead on interesting projects or improving the world. In his book, Mr. Hsieh decides that his focus after leaving LinkExchange will be on experiences and on connections with people. I think that's a great way to live a life. The question for me is if a person needs to wait for a $32 million paycheck before that can be the focus. I'm sure that the answer is "no".
Are we happy with the work that we do? While spending eight hours a day (or more) earning a pay check, are we being challenged? Are we connecting with stimulating people? Five years from now will we be bigger, stronger people than we are today?
What kind of projects would you pursue if you had more money than you could ever spend? What's stopping you from pursuing that project now?
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