Top-10 Reasons Why You Should

NOT Have a Job So You Don't

Ever Have to Not Work

No doubt you already know that I am the author of  How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free (over 125,000 copies sold) and  The Joy of Not Working(over 250,000 copies sold).

It occurred to me a few days after the last edition of the book was published that it would have been cool to have included a list about why people shouldn't have a job period.

So, instead of appearing in the book, here are the top 10
reasons why you shouldn't work: (Also see  Top-10 Reasons to Never Work at a Real Job).  

1. Although they will never admit it, your ex-boss and ex-coworkers will be green with envy.

2. You can get up at the "crack of noon" every day instead of the "crack of dawn."

3. Your creditors can't garnish your wages if you don't make any.

4. When someone new asks you what you do for a living, you can say that you are mentally and spiritually too prosperous to work.

5. You can have a business card made up that says: "Leisureologist: My Job is Having Fun".

6. Not having a job will really irk all you relatives (and your in-laws too if you have any).

7. Listening to the Retirement Plan of David Letterman on Late Night with David Letterman can be the first TV you watch in the evening instead of the last.

8. You won't waste time reading the Dilbert cartoon every day because you won't relate to it anymore.

9. You can wear your The Joy of Not Working T- Shirt with pride.

10. The wise don't work.

 

Quotations about Work and Jobs to Put

 Both in Proper Perspective

Here are my favorite quotes relating to why you shouldn't have a job:

My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh - anything but work.
- Abraham Lincoln

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years gotten enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
- Logan Pearsall Smith

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can't eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hours - all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.
- William Faulkner

The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
- Henry David Thoreau

There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm. Second, there are the hard-working
intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everyone. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.
-General von Manstein about the German Officer Corps

Always do one thing less than you think you can do.
- Bernard Baruch

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work - not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.
- Mark Twain

Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance?
- Phyllis Diller

I say to hell with the work you have to do to earn a living! That kind of work does us no honor; all it does is fill up the bellies of the pigs who exploit us. But the work you do because you like to do it, because you've heard the call, you've got a vocation - that's ennobling! We should all be able to work like that. Look at me, Saturno - I don't work. And I don't care if they hang me, I won't work! Yet I'm alive! I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it!
- Luis Buñuel

Some aspects of success seem rather silly as death approaches.
- Donald A. Miller

To the mad every day is a holiday.
- Turkish proverb

The rich don't work for money.
- Robert T. Kiyosaki

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
- Christopher Morley

One last note: I just love this article called  10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job.

COPYRIGHT © 2011 by Ernie J. Zelinski

Author of  The World's Best Retirement Book

All Rights Reserved