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: 这就是为自己工作的悖论，每个创业者或每个个体经营者都熟悉，那就是当你开始为自己工作时，你基本上牺牲了这种工作与生活的平衡。
Naval: 你牺牲了这种工作与生活的区别是：不再有朝九晚五的工作、没有办公室、没有人告诉你该怎么做、没有可遵循的剧本。同时，没有什么可以关闭的。你无法将其关闭，你就是企业、你就是产品、你就是工作、你就是实体，你关心它们。
如果你正在做一件真正属于你的事情，你会非常关心它，所以你无法关闭它。这就是企业家的诅咒。但企业家的好处是：如果你做对了，如果你是出于正确的理由或以正确的方式做正确的事的人，如果你能把没有达到目标的压力放在一边，这是真实的，很难搁置，那么它就不像工作了。
那是你最有效率的时候。基本上，您只根据您的输出进行衡量。而你只能遵守你为自己设定的标准。因此，它可以非常令人振奋和自由。这就是为什么我很久以前说过，尝到自由的滋味会让你失业（不就业）。
所以这正是自由的味道。它让你在传统意义上的朝九晚五、遵循剧本、有老板工作中失业。但是，一旦你摆脱了这种困境，一旦你在没有网络、没有老板、没有工作的情况下走钢丝——顺便说一句，这甚至可能发生在一个初创公司的小团队中，你非常能自我激励。对于普通人来说，你会得到一些看似巨大的负面影响：你没有周末，没有假期，没有休息时间，没有工作与生活的平衡。但是，与此同时，当你工作时，感觉不像是工作。这是你非常有动力去做的事情，这就是回报。
而网络，我确实认为这是一扇单向门。我认为，一旦人们体验到与他们真正喜欢的人一起做他们关心的事情，他们就会以一种自我激励的方式工作，他们就无法就业（传统意义上的）。他们无法回到有经理和老板的日常工作中，有签到，朝九晚五，“这一天、这周出现，坐在这张桌子上，在这个时间上下班”。
Nivi: 我认为这条推文中也隐藏着含义，我猜这是故意的。它以“当你真正为自己工作时”开头，我猜大多数人会认为这意味着“你是你自己的老板”。但我读到的另一种方式是，你是在为自己工作。
所以你的劳动是你是谁和你是什么（人生意义）的表达。这是自我表达。这不是一件容易弄清楚的事情。
统观纳瓦尔的这个观点，个人认为跟《高能要事》作业叶武滨老师课程中提到的人生赢家及三圈交集非常接近，就是找到自己人生在三个方面的事情：做让自己快乐的事情、做自己擅长的事情、做有意义（能带来价值）的事情，找到这些事情后，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，坚持去做，这样的事情做起来是自己擅长的，让自己快乐的、还能给社会他人带来价值。当然既开心又有成就感，就会忘我地去投入，不会理会是否需要去朝九晚五或跟谁汇报了。但找出这个三圈交集的事，需要假以时日，一件一件去尝试，用9-12个月的时间去计划、行动和反思，不断找出来。慢慢来，别着急，你值得更美好的人生。
