The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

April 17The Work of Play

What 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.

Mark Twain—“A Humorist's Confession,” New York Times Magazine (1905)

It would be easy to read this passage as a call to abandon all but the thing you've created with your own hands. And, though there is much truth in the idea of controlling your destiny by controlling the means by which you make a living, the deeper meaning here is the focus on play.

An entrepreneur can be just as miserable in the thing they have created as the poor soul locked away in a cubicle a great distance from any source of meaning in their labor.

So, no matter your current circumstances this is a call for more play.

This may not mean skiing through a field of fresh powder or lounging on a boat at sunset—you know, the things you do when you're not working. It means play like conducting a piece of music you've never heard before, or solving a complex puzzle for which only you have the answer.

We alone create the boundary between work and play, and many of the tasks we call ...