What is Work?

If I inherited the right genes from my Italian grandparents and live to 86, I have around 19,200 days left.

I don't want to spend them doing nothing at the beach. Yes, I want to windsurf and live a multidimensional life, but I also want to work and spend those days doing something meaningful to me.

So I started asking myself: What is my definition of work? Why do I want to work? What do I want from work? What is my philosophy of work? What is work meant to give me?

Here are some of my notes:

Work is About Service

  • Work is an act of love and service

  • Work is about "I built this thing with all my love, that my small, valuable audience is using, and they love it, they need me, and it's improving their lives and work." Choose your customers and you will choose your future.

  • Work is not about you; it's about doing something meaningful and important to you that can make someone's life better.

  • Work is about crafting your version of Ferrari.

  • Work is care; it is caring about your product and your customers.

  • Work is about working on things that count and spreading ideas that you care about.

  • Work is about avoiding being average and making your own dent in the universe.

  • Work is about doing important work and doing great work, whatever that means to you.

  • Work is not about chasing money. Work is about making a difference. You will end up with the money anyway.

  • Work is a mission bigger than yourself that you believe in your core is important and that you deeply admire.

  • Work should not be reduced to what you only get paid for.

Work is About Meaning

  • Work is about going to bed thinking, "I have had an amazing day at work, I can't wait to do it again tomorrow."

  • Work is not about chasing success; it's about how peaceful you are when you go to sleep. Anxiety and fears may exist, but you know that it is all worth it because it is important to you.

  • Work is about having fun and a lot of smiley days.

  • Work is love and discipline.

  • Work is not about dressing up, getting into a ca,r and going to the office. Work is more than this.

  • Work is not about suffering.

  • Work is about pursuing your life's work or your life's task.

  • Work is about understanding that life is way too short and you need to build something that matters to you. Whether it's building a sailboat to travel the world with your family and recording videos to put a smile on other people's faces, making clothes to empower other people, or building rovers to go to Mars. Make something that goddamn matters to you. Don't listen to other people, it needs to matter to you.

Work is Who You Are

  • Work should be natural to you and an extension of who you are. You don't have to fake being you or put on a mask to be someone else when you go to work.

  • Work is about finding your uniqueness and externalizing it into the world.

  • Work should feel like play to you and work to other people.

  • Work is life. There is no distinction between the two. When I think about work, I don't want to say "this is what I do for work"—I want to say "this is my life." Work is life because work is not work, it's who I am.

  • Work should not be your only identity. You should become a multidisciplinary person. You work, run, windsurf, surf, climb, ski, lift, read, create.

  • Work is my soul and everything I've got.

  • Work is not about showing status.

Work is Community & Connection

  • Work is about spending time with people you admire and want to spend your time around.

  • Working in isolation is death; you should work with other people you admire and respect.

  • Work is about doing cool things with cool people.

  • Work is about building your own bubble where you want to spend eternity. You may go out of the bubble and meet new and different people, but you will always know that you are going back to the bubble you love. Your happy place.

  • Work is about connecting with other human beings and interacting with the world, not sitting all day in front of a computer.

Work is Challenge & Growth

  • Work should challenge you, and you should be excited to wake up every morning to go after it, accomplish what you need to do, and then get home at night to your family.

  • Work should make you a better person, a more intelligent and wiser person.

  • Work is about doing something that you can improve every single day.

  • Work should produce a level of happiness inside of you that you can't wait to go after it even if it's hard.

  • Work is about flow.

  • Work is about doing, not thinking.

  • Work is about showing up day in and day out even when you don't feel like it because you know that what you do matters to you and to a group of people you admire and want to serve.

Thank you for reading!

Marco

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