UNLOCK DEEP

ESSENTIAL WORK:
FIND REAL MEANING BY CHANGING
YOUR WORK MINDSET AND HABITS

REMMY HENNINGER
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ............................................................................................1

Chapter 1: All Work is Personal........................................................6

Chapter 2: How to Work the Right Way .......................................13

Chapter 3: Work Toward Something Bigger and Higher

Than Yourself .................................................................26

Chapter 4: Are You Building a Legacy? ........................................31

Chapter 5: How to Work in a World Soon to be Ruled by AI ...42

Chapter 6: The Future of Work in a World with Less People ...48

Chapter 7: How do You Activate a Transformation Mindset? ...61

Chapter 8: What are “Dead End Jobs” Anyway? ........................83

Chapter 9: The Art of Work: Labor with a Sense of Destiny .....97

The Final Word on Meaningful Work in an AI World .............. 106

 INTRODUCTION

I'm writing this book because of the Great Resignation from 2021
to 2023. There was a massive shift in US work culture. We went
from a primarily office-based or location-based work culture to a
mixed one. Now we have more options in terms of where to
work.

Many companies have implemented work-from-home systems.

Work that did not need to be done on premises has been
decentralized.

Immediately following that was a surge in hiring because of

American workers' more excellent choice of employers, work
arrangements, and other details. There was an unprecedented
number of people quitting their jobs. This also led to people
jumping from job to job and getting paid higher and higher wages
each time they hop.

The Great Resignation took the world by storm. Granted, it was

primarily a US phenomenon; other countries experienced this
differently. Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
and Singapore may have experienced this but at a much lower
level than the USA. The rest of the world did not have this luxury.

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What happened next is interesting. Many others are left behind
because of the serial job hopping done by highly skilled people
who are highly in demand. Their skills could have been more
portable. They had to work on-site because they felt stuck and
could not work from home.
This then triggered the next phenomenon of "quiet quitting."
When people feel they're not getting paid what they're worth,
they don't quit, at least not obviously. But they leave in terms of
output and, just as importantly, attitude.
As you know, a workplace is about more than just output,
productivity, and the amount of services and products delivered
to customers. It's also an environment where different personali-
ties complement and supplement each other.
This broke down in the age of quiet quitting. Before, people could
be counted on to do some extra or even work free overtime. At the
very least, their positive attitude was a welcome added element to
the workspace. Not anymore!
With quiet quitting, the message was loud and clear.
Make no mistake; the idea of doing barely enough not to get
fired is familiar. That has always been the majority attitude in
many workplaces worldwide.
This has always been the attitude, but this was front and center
in the phenomenon of quiet quitting. At that time, workplaces
became cold. Boundaries were drawn. Work became transact-
tional.
Fast forward a few quarters and wave after wave of company
layoffs and the rise of artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, the

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atmosphere has dramatically changed. From people complaining
on Reddit that they have quietly quit their work even though
they still physically show up for their jobs, the tone has taken a
different direction. Now people are complaining that they can't
find a job at all.
Artificial intelligence and inflation in many different parts of the
world have pushed people back to the workplace, but there's a
problem. Different from the most recent past, those jobs are not
available because the economy could be doing better than people
have been told or as people assumed.

Instead of complaining about their work, how little they get

paid, and the work conditions, Reddit has changed its direction
to people complaining about not getting a job. These similarly
different strands of workplace development add to the reality of
modern work.

Most People (Still) Hate Their Jobs.

I put "still" in parenthesis because people have always hated

their jobs. The distribution is straightforward if you survey 100
people in any workplace in any corner of the United States
throughout its history.

There will be people who love their jobs. They can't wait to get in
through the doors the following day. They talk about their jobs
almost all the time. They define their identity based on what they
do for a living.

The other third are pretty stoic about their jobs. They know how
important it is. They understand their role in their careers and
the benefits their work brings to them, but they don't define

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themselves by their work. They focus more on a balance between
their family lives, personal lives, and their work lives.

And then there's the other remaining group of people who flat-
out hate their jobs. Now, they're not all equally vocal about their
displeasure, but if they were given a chance, they would either
get another job or quit entirely. Many are tempted by the
prospect of striking out independently and setting up their shop.
Regardless, these people hate their careers, and they do the bare
minimum not to get fired.

The reality of modern work is partly timeless and partly new.

The timeless part is relatively easy to understand. Most people
hate their jobs. What is new is that we live in a culture where
we're supposed to draw deep meaning from our work. It's
supposed to help us in our quest for the need for transcendence
or something higher. It is our gateway to serving others and
becoming part of a larger group with a mission.

This brings up a lot of internal conflicts among people. Where do

you draw the line between your world — things that make you
tick, things that make you want to wake up in the morning,
things that explain what you look forward to and excite you
about tomorrow and the day after — and what you do for a
living?

Many people have made a happy compromise where they draw

much of their inspiration and sense of purpose from what pays
the bills. But many people need help to bridge that divide. They
think and assume there are hermetically sealed lines between
what they do to earn their daily bread and who they are.

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Those who hate their jobs see these two worlds in opposition.
They don't complement each other. They don't make each other
possible. Instead, they oppose each other like matter hitting
antimatter to produce a horrifying explosion.

This is the reality of modern work. It would be best to navigate

these different mindsets as you try to understand what you do
for a living. This book is entitled "The Joy of Work" because it is
possible. People must find deep meaning, purpose, and fulfill-
ment in their actions.

You may be thinking, "I only work 8 hours a day. I have the rest
of 16 hours to live my life and be who I want to be." Fair enough!
But half of those remaining 16 hours are spent sleeping. Well, at
least you should.

This leaves 8 hours. Some of those 8 hours are affected by the

carry-over or the emotional hangover of the work you did for 8
hours.

It's how important work is, and that's why it's crucial. If you
want to become a more effective person who lives up to their
fullest potential, start creating a healthier attitude and healthier
balance with work. The older models need to be put up to the
job.

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 CHAPTER 1

All WORK IS PERSONAL

Your conception of work comes to you just from your

experiences and upbringing. It is from the personal narrative of
who you are, what you can be, where you can go, and who you
can surround yourself with. These set limits as to what kind of
work you do, how deep you will work, and the impact you see
your output having on the people around you.

Deep Work

Deep work involves more than quality. It also implicates your

state of mind when you enter this level of work.

Deep work is more than qualitative. This kind of work would

significantly move the needle regarding the Pareto Principle.

But, it also implicates states of mind. Achieving a deep work

state means occupying an emotional and psychological state
where things start falling into place without conscious effort.

It seems magical that the right ideas come up at the right time
with the right solutions to produce the outcome that you're

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looking for. This is never an accident. It is the product of practice,
experience, and, most importantly, being open-minded to
welcome solutions often disguised as challenges and problems.

Deep work is not a destination but more of a process that

morphs over time that you eventually become comfortable with.

Deep Work Leads to Deep Personal Fulfillment

This is not a one-way relationship where being able to perform

deep work leads to a deep level of personal fulfillment. It also
works the other way.

When you feel fulfilled, you are more likely to go deeper. You're
more likely to explore connections between what you do to
produce better outcomes.

This is primarily driven by purpose. This purpose is similar to

the overarching purpose you begin work with. That kind of
purpose is too fuzzy, too far away, and often susceptible to
changes happening in different areas of your life.

Instead, this purpose that flows from deep work works with us
and produces deep personal fulfillment stems from your ability
to work correctly. It has a specific setting and context and flows
into a sense of momentum.

You know you are doing the right thing. You know that since
you can do things correctly, your actions are ultimately correct,
proper, and worthy. These feed into each other to push you
forward as well as deeper.

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The Source of Work Depression

Many people quickly blame overwork for their depression,

anxiety, and restlessness. They lose all will to do their work
because it seems disconnected from a larger purpose.

Maybe they can't see the connection at all. They may have
started with a clear purpose, but as they dove deep into work, it
became disconnected, disjointed, and alienating.

Depression flows from having too much time on your hands.

You have free time when you have set up your work so that it
takes less and less of your time to do the actual work.

You don't fill in the rest of the time you save with deep work,
exploration, and system building. Instead, you busy yourself
with empty rituals like checking email and going from one
meeting to the next, knowing full well that the work has already
been done.

Of course, underlying all of this is the fear of having more work

assigned to you without a matching increase in pay.

I get it. But when you free up so much of your time for
rumination, going around in circles, or feeling like you're trying
to chase your tail, this lack of engagement allows you to keep
ruminating.

Some studies on depression point to an excess amount of time

spent ruminating. This leads to a negative feedback loop. The
more holes and problems you see, the more you get depressed
and demotivated. And the more demotivated you get, the less
you get rewarded.

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The more time you spend ruminating and the more holes you
see, the worse it gets. On top of this, you're not engaging. It
would be best if you were pumped up to find problems to solve.
That's somebody else's job. You turn your job into rumination,
and you feel stuck.
The next step is to feel detached. This is the opposite of deep
work and a state of flow. This path does not lead to personal
fulfillment.

Work Done Properly Provides Meaning

There have been a lot of famous quotes regarding the connection

between meaning, purpose, and work. I will not bore you with a
long list of quips from history. Just know this.
When you do your work the right way, it in itself is a reward.
Turning this into a habit and making it part of your identity is
vital for a sense of personal meaning. You are useful. You bring
value to the table.
Your sense of value bearing concerning productivity and work
effectiveness has to be taken into account. This can also be
explained through the relations of the Pareto Principle. Research
shows that 20% of the working team will deliver 80% of the
output in any organization.
When you do your work and scale it up, you build systems that
continuously pack value into what you're doing so you can do
more at a higher level of quality. You blow everybody away.
You become that cornerstone that, when knocked out, brings the
whole building down.

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You must understand that when people encounter truly
productive and valuable team members, they are rarely
encouraged to level up. If anything, it works in the opposite
direction. Crab mentality kicks in. They see an eagle and think of
ways to bring it down to their level because they're pigeons or
turkeys.

Work Done Right Provides Meaning, Value, and Purpose

It reorients your picture of who you are, what you're capable of,
where you can go, and what you could be. It is your personal but
practical way of pushing against your limitations. I'm not just
talking about the limitations you have put on, but the limitations
others put on you.

Work done right enables you to focus on something bigger

than yourself.

The TV show of particular discussion, ‘The Office,’ revolves

around a paper company. Dismissing their work product as
simply involving easily replaceable merchandise is accessible.
Worried and obsessed over by easily replaceable people in an
easily replaceable and all-too-forgettable corner of the United
States.

But this misses the point entirely. People depend on the

company that you work for or the work that you do. Otherwise,
they would only do business with you, and you would have a
job.

When you understand this dependence and the matching

expectations and assumptions that go with it, you can see that

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you are part of something bigger than yourself. You miss the big
picture if you focus on how much you earn and focus on taking
from the company while barely putting anything back in return.

You could have been part of something worthwhile. Instead, it is

a prison sentence. Work is something you do for 8 hours every
given day so you can get on with the rest of your life. It is just a
means to an end.

When you do that, you reduce the power of your impact on this
planet. You refuse to be part of a more enormous enterprise with
a nobler purpose than yourself.

Learn to draw the connection between what you do for a living,

no matter how small or insignificant you think it is, and a larger
ecosystem of causation. You're part of a more extensive network
of cause and effect.

Your work is cumulative. Either it sets the chain reaction going,

or it combines with many other efforts of other hidden people
and organizations from all over the world working together in a
way that you can't quite understand or articulate but are sure
about.

Your focus on your sense of value and meaning should keep this
in mind because you are part of something bigger than yourself.
It doesn't matter whether you work for yourself or your virtual
assistant, you are a remote crew, or you're a direct employee.

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The Problem With Material Rewards

Unfortunately, we live in a world that is, of course, material. We

size each other up in dollars and cents. Not surprisingly, this
mentality is connected with how we think about our work. We
automatically equate the market value of our work with our
value as human beings.

While it's true that specific skills like neuro-surgery are in high
demand and are rewarded accordingly, more common work like
sales, administration, compliance, record keeping, and warehouse
work — all of these have value as well. The material price tag may
not be there, but when combined, these types of work account for
much more than the ones we visibly or instinctively reward with
higher wages and status.

There is a need to materially reward certain types of work

because of the experience, skill, and scarcity of that type of work,
which is a partial picture. It should be something other than the
main focus.

Want to quit your job? Want to get promoted at your current

job to a more ideal position? Want to get the most value out of
the work you do? If you answered YES to all of the above, the
key is DISCIPLINE. Learn how to quickly develop the
DISCIPLINE you need to UNLOCK success in ALL areas of
your life. Get your free discipline building book by visiting:
https://www.remmyhenninger.com/free-discipline-code-book
Also, join our mailing list to get free book announcements,
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12
 CHAPTER 2

HOW TO WORK
THE RIGHT WAY

Do any darn thing from morning to night. It’s not a matter of

your profession, no matter what kind of business you are in. It
could be that, for now, your position is not so enjoyable at work
or home; it does not matter. If you wish to gain total control in
work so that work pays you, gives you purpose, and ushers you
to a better life, then it is high time to look at the following
processes.

Step 1: Decide on Doing Great Work

This is the first step. It's crucial.

Unfortunately, most people fail this because they think that as

long as they're doing work 9-5, that is more than enough. To
them, their commitment begins and ends with their commitment
to work for a company or individual for 8 hours daily.

Fair enough! But if you refuse to commit to great work, you will
always be held back and dragged down by mediocrity. You're

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not doing anything different from the guy next to you. Brian
Tracy noted that most people do the bare minimum to avoid
getting fired. That is the bar you're working with, and it's very
tempting.

If you put in extra time, you level up your skills to produce

much higher quality, but you get paid as everybody else; you
can do that for a few months. But if you need to see a return for
your extra effort, attention to detail, dedication, and commit-
ment, you think twice. Soon, you start to soften, just like
everybody else — one step away from termination.

There is a better way because the reward in this system isn't tied
to a dollar figure. People outside of you don't control it. You
don't have to climb a treadmill and chase those dollar signs.

Instead, it's totally inside you. It's internal, and the process works
like this.

Step 2: Be Curious

After you have committed to excellent work, no matter who is

looking and how much you get paid, the next step is to unleash
that engine. Commitment is critical, but it just gets you to the
ignition stage.

At this point, you've put the key into the engine. It's a big step,
but it's still far from where you must be.

The next step is to allow yourself to be curious. Humans have

this habit of just learning enough about a task to do a halfway
decent job and then refusing further improvement.

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You have to overcome this habit. Allow yourself to be curious.

Say to yourself, "I do things this way. Is there any other way to
do this that can save me time, help me produce better output, or
both?"

The more you exercise this curiosity, the more you can speed up,
deepen the quality of your output, and, most importantly, learn
to think in terms of systems. You learn to economize your
decision-making, saving time and boosting your work's quality.

It all begins with allowing yourself to be curious. You can safely

assume there is always a better way to do whatever you do. So,
let yourself be curious.

Step 3: Commit to Seeing Opportunities

Being curious is crucial. But curiosity will not help you if you
don't discover new ways of doing things or connections. This is
where being open to opportunities and assuming they exist
comes in.

Discovering something new is hard when you allow yourself to

be curious. You also have to assume and expect that you will
find something. This pushes you to look at your problems and
challenges daily and see patterns.

Where are the opportunities? Who can I talk to who I know will
motivate me or inspire me to find an answer? Who among my
work crew is open-minded, adventurous, and curious?

In other words, you start looking at the people and the situations
you find yourself in, in a 9-5 environment, as opportunities.

15
Either they can teach you things that can help you level up, or
their problems can inspire you to find solutions that help them
and help you.

These are all opportunities, and you must find a way to morph
from permitting yourself to be curious to unpacking the
opportunities surrounding you. And the key here is to assume
that there will always be opportunities.

For many people who have given up, or suffering from workplace
depression, or just lost touch with any sense of meaning in what
they do on a day-to-day basis, this is almost impossible. They
don't assume that there are solutions surrounding them. The
solutions, if I am going to be charitable, lie long into the future.

They give themselves all sorts of conditions to see opportunities.

The right person has to show up. They have to feel good on a
particular day, and so on.

If you want to adopt a discovery attitude, your mindset is to

assume that the solutions are already surrounding you. You
expect them to take different forms. They can be problems. They
can be annoyances. They can be irritations that you deal with on
a day-to-day basis. They can be almost violent combinations of
personalities, egos, and workplace situations.

But the fact that you have chosen to see with eyes of discovery
increases the likelihood that you will be able to unpack these
opportunities and figure them out as you go to the next step.

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Step 4: Learn to Tinker

The next step is a mindset of experimentation. You don't assume

that the current solution, a seeming solution, or a likely fix is the
best. Instead, your mindset is to break things up, try to combine
all the pieces and keep reassembling until you figure out why
things are the way they are.

Once you figure that out, tweak the different situations you find
yourself in. Be mindful of the other personalities you have to
deal with daily and see if little changes can lead to better results.

This is experimentation. This is mindful and purpose-driven

variation. You're not just throwing spaghetti at the wall and
expecting, hope against hope, that things will be different.

You take a guess. You try to pin down certain variables and
specific elements. You tweak that item precisely and then look at
the results.

And you repeat this until you can come up with educated
guesses about the probability that things will turn out a certain
way if you take specific actions.

When you keep doing this, your sense of control over what you
do for a living increases tremendously. This is a reward rooted in
the firm foundation of experimentation. You're no longer
treading water, doing stuff you hate, putting up with people you
couldn't care less about, and being ensnared or trapped by all
sorts of rules.

Instead, work is a joy. It's a puzzle with many different moving

parts. It intrigues you. It gets your creative juices flowing. It

17
pushes the problem solver in you to keep moving forward and
to challenge yourself continuously to tap your limitless reserve
of imagination, intuition, and insight.
Based on my experience, this is the part of work where you feel
most alive. You're not just collecting a paycheck because you
park your butt in a concrete building somewhere for 8 hours at a
time.
Instead, your brain is working. Your emotions are engaged, and
you are part of something that leads you to control certain
variables where you can see the change right before you. This
change has an impact either directly or cumulatively.
You feel that peace. You think that you're not just wasting your
time. You feel that you've been put on this Earth for a reason.
This ability to experiment, tinker, and make modifications is a
big part.
The results must be accepted. You produce more within the
same period. You boost the quality of your output.
And pretty soon, you're able to do both. It's as if you're able to
call this magic into existence. That is power.
I used to play Dungeons & Dragons, which was the basic D&D
when I was still young.
One character class I needed help wrapping my head around
initially was the Magic User. In World of Warcraft, this class is
called the Mage. At first glance, it was a class that most people
would want to avoid. For hits points, it uses a 4 sided dice.
Imagine that! Your maximum hit points when you're starting is
4. At that point, even emotional damage is enough to kill you.

18
And it only gets a little better as the magic-user progresses in the
constitution. Their health is just pitiful.
However, the spells a magic user can access at a certain point can
mean the difference between life and death for their party. And
once you reach a certain level, you quickly realize you are the
most influential player in any team. You can make the skies
burn. You can create an earthquake with power.

It's just fascinating. And it all begins from a position of absolute

and depressingly total weakness.

I bring this up because the essence of experimentation scales up

over time. The moment you think that what you're doing
essentially is useless and will continue to be meaningless long into
the future is when you destroy the power of experimentation. You
cripple it. The more accurate term is you neutered it.

This is too bad because, just like a magic user in Dungeons &
Dragons, your power scales up, and often, your power far
outstrips your conception or even realization of how much energy
you have. And it all begins with your ability to experiment.

So focus on how many problems you solve daily, what solutions

you come up with, and remember them. At the very least,
remember the principles you worked with so you can replicate
the solution repeatedly despite the situations you apply them to
change almost every single time.

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Step 5: Unleash the Consistency of Systems

We all work at jobs that involve choices at some level or other.

There's always a judgment call. The standard idea is that the
lower the amount of judgment involved in your work, the lower
your pay. This is why there has been, for the longest time, a low
view of blue-collar work. Different from medicine, law, or
dentistry, it has less discretion and room for educated and
reasoned decision-making. Of course, this has changed quite a
bit in the past few decades. But old mental habits die hard.

When you experiment to remember your solutions and

remember the variations of the appropriateness of specific
solutions to situations that arise, you start seeing patterns. You
combine different solutions to create or produce a desired
outcome consistently. You have a system when you write this
down and clearly describe it.

This is not just a cute "Eureka moment." You're definitely on to

something because your experimentation can be formalized to a
certain extent where the results become consistent. You know
what you need to do before, what you need to do after, and what
to expect. And when you describe these and simplify them
enough to fit a predictable range of situations, you have a
system. At this point, you're spending less effort figuring out
how things work because you already know your narrow range
of options that would produce the most optimal results.

This is the power of systems. They enable you to remember the

best tools to use when dealing with situations as they arise.
These situations mutate daily, making systems so awesome that

20
despite all the variety and seeming diversity of the conditions
you face daily at work, your systems can knock them out while
maximizing your output and ensuring a certain high level of
quality.

Does this mean that systems will always produce the best work?
No! But it does deliver consistency for producing work whose
quality level you consciously choose.

Building a system at work runs from the same principle as

McDonald's. It doesn't matter which branch of McDonald's you
walk into. You can visit their Manila branch or their Madrid
branch. You might even be curious and check out their branch in
Malta.

What those three international locations have in common, no

matter how many miles separate them, is the base, minimum
quality of the Big Mac you get. That is consistency.

When you build a system based on your experimentations and

personal innovations at work, your output becomes consistent in
volume and quality. This alone puts you head and shoulders
above the people around you.

Many of us are often prisoners of how we're feeling on a

particular day or things that we think happen to us that hold us
back from dealing with things in the most effective way possible.
It's as if you are this eagle soaring at a certain height with a
particular fixed trajectory while everybody else is like a chicken
flying up one moment, pecking on the ground, going around in
circles. It's a mess! Everybody can see you up in the air. That's
what systems do.

21
Turn whatever experimentation or discoveries you have into a
system by first writing them down, boiling them into their most
basic, and then continuously experimenting to figure out the best
implementation of those experiments, and then you have a
system.
In any organization wracked by erratic mindsets, behaviors, and
attitudes, you shine like a bright light in the darkness because
you chose to have a system. However, systems are not enough
for deep work and a powerful sense of meaning that flows from
quality work.

Step 6: Push Back Against Limitations to Scale

When you have put together a system, you have something that
works. It's easy to see the output because of the consistency, the
quality, and the volume of your work.
At this point, most people would feel fortunate and call it a day.
They have devised a great way to do something far more than
expected so they can avoid getting fired. At this point, they feel
that they've reached the end of diminishing returns. There's no
use in pushing the needle even further.
This point truly separates excellent workers from simply
talented and skilled workers.
At the very least, you are committed to being excellent. You put
in the work. You put in the time, and you got noticed.
That is a victory. But you cannot stop there.
The game is incredibly competitive, meaning one is only as good
as their last win. And when you decide to focus on developing a

22
system and keeping that system intact with no changes later on
for as long as your career holds out, you are cheating yourself.
What you're doing is you're coasting. You're just hoping that
your industry will stay the same so that whatever ways of doing
things systematically that you have figured out along the way
will continue to work and produce the same results that you've
grown accustomed to.
You just died inside and refused to grow anymore. Let's call it
for what it is.
Systems, by definition, will break down. They can only handle a
specific range of situations. At some point, because we live in a
world where the only constant is change, that predictability will
give way. This is why you have to scale.
When you set up a system that produces quality work at a certain
level and a specific volume, you must commit to constantly
scaling up your expectations regarding volume and quality.
When you do this, you avoid coasting and trigger another round
of curiosity, discovery, experimentation, and system building.
This will deepen your skillset and, more importantly, cement
your value to any organization lucky enough to hire you or have
you as a partner. It's all about scaling at this point.
It requires dedication since neglecting the earlier tested strategies
and waiting and doing something takes work. As the cliche goes,
if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it; this is what many people at this
level feel.
They are all too eager to give themselves mental medals for
having gone through the process of permitting themselves to be

23
curious, making the proper discovery, and unpacking opportu-
nities that surround them coming up with experiments and
tinkering until they come up with something that works
profoundly, and then stringing these together to produce
consistent results.
Now, at this point, they're patting themselves from the back.
They imagine themselves already at the peak of Mt. Everest. But
you're fooling yourself if this is your mindset because that
mountain never ends. There is no summit. You can always scale
upwards and laterally because whatever system you have
created, solutions, or tools you've innovated can always move to
other areas. You can always move to and fix problems, which
should be part of your internal feedback loop.

So, constantly keep the flames of curiosity alive. Fan it with the
all too real assumption and expectation that there will always be
problems left to solve, that you could always scale things up,
and that you could always push it to the next level.

So when you commit to constantly scaling up, you unleash the

other parts of this cycle, and it renews again.

But you end up in different places. Instead, you level up. Think
of it as an upward spiral where you always return to other areas.
Ride this up.

Compare this with workplace depression and burnout. That

kind of pattern goes the other way. You feel more and more
demotivated because you see less and less results. You're less
likely to commit because you think that there is no point, and on
and on, it goes — downward.

24
It's your choice. It takes much effort to get the initial stage going.
You have to fight back against your mental habits regarding
work, but it's worth doing.

25
 CHAPTER 3

WORK TOWARD
SOMETHING BIGGER AND
HIGHER THAN YOURSELF

Looks are very deceiving. Abraham Maslow provided society

with a Hierarchy of Needs that is more pertinent today than at
any time in the past.

Minorities of the current American population can do more than

earlier generations could because of productivity increases from
AI and general automation. This means that the work is done
with fewer people than the traditional methods of operation.
This, of course, leads to a tremendous amount of spare time. The
following is a list of the top occupations for employees with too
much free time.

The degree of drug abuse overdoses and depression and

anxieties in America is a single sign of a much bigger problem.
Hence, it can be termed as a crisis of meaning.

If we look at Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ it is pretty

clear why the lower levels are crucial. Shelter and food are the

26
basics of life, and everyone on this planet requires them.
However, we discover that the closer we get to the top of
Maslow’s pyramid, the significant portions of the societal
structures society has created cannot adequately meet the focused
perceived deficiency-experienced need.
Interestingly enough, the more one is surrounded by various
technological assistants performing different routine activities,
the more time one has. And the more leisure we are allowed at
our disposal, the more devices we are provided with regarding
annihilating ourselves.
Things were supposed to be different from this. Automation,
software, computers, a generalized automated or systematized
society concept’s core principle is that it is expected to result in a
multiplication of human well-being. This inclusive term is
designed as a more open concept initially used to imply greater
freedom and fuller actualization of one’s creativity.
It's tempting to believe that once you get the basics taken care of,
you will use the tremendous time and opportunities available to
level up intellectually, creatively, artistically, emotionally,
culturally, and spiritually. But as we have discovered in the worst
way possible, when the basics are taken care of, and people finally
have the luxury of time on their hands that their forebears would
have killed for, they do something completely unexpected. It
turns out that people end up killing themselves. They end up in
negative behavioral patterns — that's just a polite way of saying
addictions — that lead to counter-productive results.
What went wrong? This is because our sense of meaning and
ways of mapping out purpose in our day-to-day lives cannot

27
keep up with the technical advances we can produce every ten
years.
If you don't believe me, pay close attention to how people
behave today compared to how they were doing around 2007.
That is the year the iPhone was launched. Now, we have armies
of people, seemingly sleepwalking through the day, glued to a
small screen in front of their faces. This is not just a physical
addiction to a device if it were only that simple and shallow!
Instead, how we connect socially and see ourselves in social
settings, especially at work, has morphed because of apps and
mobile devices.
When COVID hit, things took an even worse turn. If you
thought we were disjointed, alienated, and fragmented before,
wait until you see what's in store after a few years. It's as if all
our social technologies, coping mechanisms, infrastructures, or
what have you couldn't keep up with the rapid pace of social
changes technology brings.
If you were to ask somebody in the mid90s if a device could do
what a typical smartphone would do, they would think you
describe some witchcraft. It would be perfectly logical for them
to assume that our world today (and I'm talking about our social
world and how we look at each other and how we look at the
future as well as our capabilities and competence) has changed
dramatically.
People are more sensitive now because they're all caught up in
their little world. I'm raising all of this because it impacts how
we view work. It is a simple equation that different automation
pieces can solve.

28
This is precisely why so many of us struggle despite being able
to do so much more with much less time. Quite the paradox!

But it extends how mechanization, industrialization, and

globalism have led to more free time. We work in our work-
from-home, decentralized, day-to-day lives, thinking that what
we do is important enough for us to keep our jobs.

Many jobs, especially for tech companies, have been labeled

unnecessary. You can quibble with this all you want, but you
only need to look at what happened to Twitter when Elon Musk
took over. Twitter used to have thousands of employees, and he
just slashed it by more than 80% and gutted the whole stuff.

All these people in the mass media and industry observers

thought Elon Musk had gone crazy. Indeed, eliminating so many
people would lead to Twitter cratering in no time flat.

It turns out that the little blue bird logo is still flying high and
proud on the Internet. Big tech companies don't need such
substantial head counts.

This was a lesson that was noticed. After a relatively short

period, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and other large- and medium-
sized tech companies started laying off people.

This highlights the fact that our work is under challenge. It is

going through a tremendous sea change. The world of work —
what defines it, how it is supposed to be monitored and traced,
and the expectations of employers of their employees — is
undergoing a tremendous generational change triggered by one
digital industrial revolution after another.

29
Smack-dubbed in the middle of this is you. You are the only one
responsible for trying to gain a sense of meaning in terms of the
work you do, justify why you have to have a job and ensure that
what you do has an impact.

30
 CHAPTER 4

ARE YOU BUILDING A LEGACY?

In a previous chapter, I talked about building systems. It all

starts with curiosity and a sense of discovery. It leads to
experimentation, where you begin building systems and then
scale. You can produce more at a higher level of quality, and
then the process starts over again.

You never end up in the same place because you keep going
forward in an upward spiral. That's how you level up.

That's more than just a technical description. That's more than

just a recommended blueprint for leveling up the output and
quality of your work. It also leads to something significant
regarding your sense of personhood. Your curiosity, sense of
discovery, experimental skills, and understanding of intuition
and systems building must lead somewhere.

At first, you think you want to be efficient. You want to free up

your time, but that time has to go somewhere. It must be at the
service of something bigger and higher than yourself.

The sooner you think about working towards some sense of

legacy, the better off you will be because what you're doing is

31
setting up a north star for your work life, that no matter what
kind of day-to-day turbulence happens at work, you remain
connected to some sense of meaning.

Make no mistake. That turbulence will come. Artificial

intelligence is currently reshaping and, in many cases, destroying
specific job categories.

Back in the day, people were convinced that if they knew how to
draw a certain way or they had a particular knack for writing,
their sheer creativity and uniqueness alone ensured that they
would always have a job. The recent past has proven that all of
that is a lie. The worst part is that it is the most depressing type
of lie. It's a lie you tell yourself to justify that you don't want to
change. It's the kind of lie that smothers you in a false sense of
security so you don't feel the heat of upcoming changes enough
to want to level up.

That's the kind of turbulence facing the world of work, and it's
essential to come back to a sense of legacy, which ties to ideas of
meaning, existence, and impact. If you operate at that level, you
tie your systems building to adaptation, finding opportunities to
provide value.

Now is not the time to be stubborn. We're going through

tremendous technological, sociological, and cultural shifts. It's
anybody's guessing how the dust will settle and how everything
will look once all the jobs have vaporized, and things have
settled down. One thing is for sure. It would look completely
different than before.

32
To survive this, you must set up a way of gaining a sense of
personal legacy from your systems building. This helps you
survive the current changes.

You stand out when people see your work because you're driven
by a need to leave a legacy. Most people are just struggling to
keep their heads over water. That's the level of desperation
people operate with.

But you stand out when employers, potential clients, or

collaborators see that you're operating at a different level. They
can tell that it's not just about money with you. Sure, compensa-
tion is necessary, but you have higher values. You're thinking
long-term. You're thinking about leaving a legacy, and this legacy
is, of course, locked into the systems that you built. They're not
just hiring another cog in the machine. Instead, they're looking for
a new engineer to reshape the machine.

If you can operate at this level, you will never have to worry
about getting another job again. When people look for jobs,
they're simply trying to be an extra widget to fit into a machine
they didn't create and don't care much about.

On the other hand, if you are a systems builder, you bring

something else to the table. Your future employers look at you as
more of an equal. They see you more as a co-creator of the kind
of future they're trying to build.

They can't quite put their finger on it because, just like most
other companies, we're all working blind. All these changes are
happening. All these pressures are coming from different corners
of the globe.

33
And here you are, operating with a need to leave a legacy and
make an impact to stand out. You may not be in the market for a
new job, but if you operate at this level, it would be possible for
you to notice.

And guess what! Many teams, companies, or individual

employers are willing to pay top dollar for what you can offer
because you offer something different. You're not just there to
mark the time. You're not just there to occupy a space in 8-hour
blocks so you can do the bare minimum so you don't get fired. In
short, you're not doing what everybody else is doing. You stand
out.

It shouldn't be a shock to conclude that many would-be

employers would think you are the kind of person they would
need for their team, organization, firm, or outfit to level up.
You're not looking at an interchangeable cog. You're not looking
at yet another face in the crowd. Instead, they're seeing a co-
creator.

While some employers may get threatened by this, especially

those at the startup stage, real entrepreneurs who genuinely
want their company's vision to live up to its fullest potential
would have enough sense to see beyond their egos and
recognize what you can do for them in the long term.

On both a personal and professional level, working toward a

sense of meaning and building systems for maximum impact
will reward you in many ways. The question is, are you willing
to operate at this level?

34
The good news is that the more you fine-tune the systems you
come up with, the more you challenge yourself by trying to get
to the next level or picking things apart until they break apart.
You reassemble things to develop better variations, and the more
you see meaning in what you're doing, the more you will see
meaning in what you're doing.

It is no longer just a job. Instead, it's part of how you express

yourself to the Universe. Believe it or not, the more you follow
that path and value flows from it, the more the world will
reward you.

Work Is Under Tremendous Stress Lately

Perhaps you have not noticed, but there have been many trends
in the sphere of work. The latest one, of course, creating a lot of
commotion or disturbance at the business and real estate levels,
is the transition from the conventional office-style work to the
work-from-home model.

Make no mistake. The location may change, but work is still being
done. But within this context, the nature of work's definitions,
assumptions, and expectations are beginning to morph quite a bit.
If you are looking for a deeper, more meaningful relationship
with what you do for a living, it's essential to understand the
present tension in the world of work.

There has been much scaremongering regarding the nature of

work. One common way of phrasing is that human workers
"will be replaced by robots at some point." I can't say I blame
people who frame things this way. After all, the release of

35
ChatGPT in the fourth quarter of 2023 shook the world. It may
not be a literal shaking, but many graphics designers, writers,
creative types, and even lower-level management personnel
soon started quaking in their boots.

It seemed like black magic. You enter a sentence into ChatGPT

and have what seems like well-thought-out texts. It can be an
essay or a short story, or as publicized widely in the media, even
a poem written in a particular style. There are all sorts of made-
up Bible verses or short stories in the style of a famous novelist.
As long as it involves some semblance of human creativity,
ChatGPT seemed to crank something close enough to reality.

This shook the world of work to its core because, for the longest
time, we have all these cubicles all over the world populated by
people who don't want to be there. They feel like sheep being
fleeced or, worse yet, cows being milked. They come home dry
and hollow at the end of that 8-hour day. And suddenly, this
new technology promises to make their lives much more
accessible.

Not surprisingly, workplaces have responded. The mass layoffs

you keep hearing for what seems like month after month are
part of a general pattern. Those tech companies slashing payrolls
dramatically know what's going on.

For the longest time, most of those sheep in a typical office do

not contribute to the bottom line. As I have mentioned earlier in
this book, in any organization, for every 10 people, only 2 people
produce 80% of the output of those 10 people combined.

36
What if you eliminate the other 8 and keep the 2? Not only is that
possible, but it has become highly probable with AI. So many
companies hang on to bloated management bureaucracies and
workforces because they are insecure about the Pareto Principle.
At the same time, at the back of their minds, they know that a
tiny fraction of their total staff consistently delivers 80% of their
results or more.

But they need help to pull the trigger. They're thinking about
redundancy. They're thinking about something getting knocked
loose and the whole thing crashing down, plus modern work has
become bureaucratized.

If your position exists solely because people think it should exist

or is part of a proper corporate hierarchy, you know something
is wrong. You know they're not looking at your productivity.
They need to consider how well you move the needle. Your
position might even be engineered to look good or to fill in the
gaps of an org chart. But when it comes to actual productivity,
you know fully that you don't contribute much.

If that is the type of position you have, it is in your interests to

keep the bloat going. You will fight tooth and nail to keep the
hierarchy intact as much as possible. The more fat there is in
middle management, the better because there is strength in
numbers.

Well, thanks to AI, that is going away. Work is under tremendous

stress lately because it is being reinvented. But it needs to be
reinvented if you think about it hard enough. It's just going back
to equilibrium.

37
For a long time, the idea for American corporations has been to
load up on people, especially if a company has gone public.
There's something proper and "expected" about a company with
a commanding industry presence and a matching workforce.

Well, the quiet part that many people would rather keep to
themselves is being spoken out loud nowadays, thanks to AI.

AI Provides Cover for Hard Decisions

Let me get down to the essence of the message above. The recent
artificial intelligence revolution, at least in its generative form, is
giving cover for decision-makers in almost all companies in a
wide range of industries to start making hard decisions. The
hard decision is that if you want a company to maintain a steady
profit growth rate, you must cut costs and generate more
revenue. However, cost-cutting can boost profits if the economy
shows signs of slowing down and the revenue is not growing as
robustly as expected.

This type of reorganization and the needs of Wall Street fuel the
use of AI as a convenient cover. Hard decisions are being made,
and the definition of work is, interestingly enough, going back to
one of its earlier versions. Which version is that? Productivity.

Previously, organizations measured results in a wide range of

ways in addition to productivity. This reminds me of when the
online advertising industry first gained commercial traction in
the late 1990s. Executives were encouraged by influential media
voices in the so-called new economy of the Internet to "be more

38
open-minded." They are to redefine the return on investment in
terms other than cold, hard cash.

Branding was big. Audience reach was enormous. Even ideas

such as mindshare have also spent some time in the limelight of
the marketing world.

But it all came crashing down with the dot-com bust when the
easy Internet money plowed into all these dubious Internet
companies, which seemed to spring up like wild mushrooms
after a cold, hard spring rain, stopped flowing, and people
returned to reality. They started asking critical questions that
they should have been asking all along. Otherwise, these
companies would have been valued less than they were. These
companies would not have been formed if people were asking
these questions.

These questions include the following:

• Does it make money?

• If it does make money, does the amount go up over time?
• By how much?
• Is it making enough money?
• Or do its costs scale up as well?

What I'm getting at is that when complex market realities

confront companies, they go back to basics. And this is precisely
what's happening with most tech and nontech jobs in the United
States and elsewhere.

It cannot be denied that there was quite a bit of overhiring during

the pandemic. However, the fallout also affected industries that

39
did not overhire. This is why hard questions are now being asked
because, for the longest time, sectors that are not even tech-related
have been playing around with bloated bureaucracies, vague
roles, and poorly defined conceptions of work.

If you work at a typical mid-sized American firm and you're

somewhere in the middle of the food chain in that organization,
switch from meeting to meeting in the span of a week. You have
attended at least one meeting in a given week. Indeed, for many
tech companies (and I'm talking about the extreme hand here),
many people's roles revolve around how many meetings they go
through.

This has a very negative effect on the definition of work and

people's relationship with work because now you have a strange
case where people who are supposed to be in charge of selling
get the impression in their heads that they're fulfilling a crucial
part of their role when they go from meeting to meeting. I'm not
talking about sales calls here or any meeting that leads to actual
sales with customers. We're talking just administrative meetings.

This changing nature of work in the light of AI, as disturbing as

it is for people who are either close to retirement or starting to
plan for it, actually offers several opportunities.

Want to quit your job? Want to get promoted at your current

job to a more ideal position? Want to get the most value out of
the work you do? If you answered YES to all of the above, the
key is DISCIPLINE. Learn how to quickly develop the
DISCIPLINE you need to UNLOCK success in ALL areas of
your life. Get your free discipline building book by visiting:

40
https://www.remmyhenninger.com/free-discipline-code-book
Also, join our mailing list to get free book announcements,
book previews, and other FREE premium content from Remmy
Henninger

41
 CHAPTER 5

HOW TO WORK IN A WORLD

SOON TO BE RULED BY AI

First, you must understand that your ability to develop systems

after experimenting with your daily work should be recalibrated
or tweaked in light of AI. It would be best if you did this, not
because you're reacting or fearing you will lose something.
Instead, it would be best if you did this gladly.

AI in this context (and I'm talking about the context of building

systems to be more efficient so you can close yourself at work) is
heaven-sent. It is.

For many people who come up with all sorts of graphics for
clients or if they're making videos or mockups, you used to have
to deal with either in-house graphics staff and their matching
management or supervisorial layers, or you would have to
navigate the often tricky terrain of global outsourcing.

Both of these options could have been more optimal. They sure
weren't quick. They could be more efficient in many cases
because there are many opportunities for dropped signals,

42
misunderstandings, or flat-out miscommunication. Every delay
leads to money loss if you believe that time is money.

Enter AI. With tools like Ideogram.ai, you can quickly develop
mockups complete with texts on the side or the bottom. And I'm
not talking about randomly generated texts that are mangled
beyond recognition like you would with other AI image-
generation platforms. This platform gets it right, and you save a
tremendous amount of time.

But, more importantly, you can be in that state of deep work or

flow that I've mentioned in a previous chapter. This is a state of
mind where your ideas fall into place and feed off each other.
You can answer more questions and develop better solutions, all
in a short period.

With AI, you can see graphical representations of that. You don't
have to write it down, hoping you can communicate it enough
for your graphics people to develop a decent rendition. Instead,
with a few keystrokes on a chat screen, you can see mockups —
not just one, not just two, but even four or even ten. It's amazing!

It's taking place right before you, so you can fine-tune your idea
or ditch it altogether. One of the critical fundamentals of success
is the willingness and the ability to fail quickly. This is the raw
fuel of experimentation.

You're less likely to benefit from experiments if it takes long to

see the results. After adjusting, you must wait a long time to see
if your changes led to better outcomes.

With artificial intelligence, you get an almost instant feedback

loop going for you, and this is good news because the heart of

43
this book is your ability to turn curiosity into discoveries that
you can experiment on and from which you can craft together a
working system that would enable you to produce more at a
higher level of quality.

With AI, you can turbocharge this. Not only can you map your
ideas better, but you can also turn them into different formats.
You can also battle-test them by asking questions regarding facts
or statistics that would support your hypotheses. You can cook
up images very quickly.

These combined enable you to work in AI, not as someone

scared of being replaced. Instead, AI can enhance your creativity.
It can empower your sense of intuition.

There is no conflict between your imagination and artificial

intelligence. Instead, AI works for you in this redefinition of
work (which you buy into and direct personally).

Not only does it learn from you so you can clone yourself, but it
works for you on a deeper level. It enhances your ability to gain a
sense of meaning from what you do for a living. Your definition
of what it means to live in, in which work plays a significant role,
can genuinely be enriched by the fact that you save a tremendous
amount of time and can scale your capabilities with artificial
intelligence.

This, of course, leads to a broader practical impact. It's as if

you're turning yourself into a productive army.

I used that image of an army instead of "turning yourself into a

productivity machine." A machine is singular. An army involves
many autonomous bodies going in possibly different directions

44
but operating with one goal. They can operate as a team, although
they can proceed in many different directions at various
individual levels.

It's a different level! That is what AI promises, and based on

what AI platforms like Invideo, Ideogram, Midjourney, Claude,
Perplexity, and ChatGPT have demonstrated, AI already
delivers.

This is the tip of the iceberg because we're talking only about
generative AI. There are other forms of artificial intelligence. In
particular, machine learning is very promising.

Imagine if you were working with somebody who learns from

you and at the same time is connected with the rest of your
organization and learns from them as well. The more you talk to
this person, the brighter that person gets because they not only
remember what you said before when you were asking a
question. They also remember the answer. The more you ask
that question in its many forms, the more the person recognizes
variations, subtleties, and the need to reframe the answer to fit
various contexts and situations.

The result is that even though the staff members of your

organization may come and go, the core of that organization —
the big data it generates — grows and grows in value over time.
Its data and the artificial intelligence trained on that data is an
asset that grows more valuable every single time it's used and as
it ages because of constant input.

I just described a system that not only retains its value but grows
no matter how many faces change, how many people are hired

45
and are let go, how many ups and downs the business goes
through, or how many times its leadership changes.

The changing nature of work is rooted in this fast-growing

infrastructure of intelligence. You have to make peace with that
new infrastructure. You have to be comfortable with it.

But, judging from what I have described above, it is nothing to

fear. It is something to be welcomed because it enables you to do
much more with an increasingly smaller amount of input.

Remember that when ChatGPT first rolled out, it was prolonged

and clunky because of the tremendous computing power it ate
up. As of this writing, the most recent version of ChatGPT is so
much faster because of the built-in efficiency in its code and
computing structure.

There is no reason for one to suspect that this rate of speed

increase will continue to grow over time. Just as when the Internet
first became commercially popular in the mid90s, connection
times were prolonged. DSL was then a future technology. Now,
we live in the world of home fiber connections.

I'm not talking about a T1 1 Mbps data connection. We're talking

several gigabytes. That's where we are. And I expect the same
kind of rapid improvement in compute times and AI processing
tokens in the future.

The changing nature of work is increasingly becoming

cybernetic. Not only do you have your physical brain, but it is
now forced to interact with, feed into, and collaborate closely
with a digital brain.

46
And this is not just a brain that you monopolize to yourself or is
customized to you. At a certain thin level, that is true. Still, the
more significant chunk of that digital brain you're interacting
with on an increasing level gets signals from other people in
your organization, people in your location, and ultimately,
people in your industry or even the country or the world.

Rest assured that AI-powered search platforms of the future may

be voice-driven or — if we think in terms of extremes — even
thought-driven AI by a technology similar to Elon Musk's
Neuralink. These stand to revolutionize how we think about
work.

If we look back, previously white-collar work involved many

records. It consists of much institutional memory that one has to
check archives to recover and process when it comes to present-
day problem sets.

That's all gone because such retrieval, as well as record creation

in the first place, take place instantly and are centralized digitally
but fed into a more significant and more extensive network of
data centers. This is the world of work in the context of AI.

It has been happening for several years, and ChatGPT is just a

public face. ChatGPT is just the straw that broke the camel's back
regarding public perception of what this technology is capable
of.

But make no mistake. The infrastructure is already there, so

work has to change. It has to give way. Doing so taps into AI's
power and emerges more powerful, productive, and efficient.

47
 CHAPTER 6

THE FUTURE OF WORK IN

A WORLD WITH LESS PEOPLE

As I have mentioned in an earlier part of this book, the population

of the most advanced economies on the planet is on a clear and
unmistakable downward trend. Setting aside the extreme
example of South Korea even places with otherwise large
populations, like the United States, have declining population
trends.

Refrain from letting the topline numbers fool you. The population
of the United States, Canada, Australia, and other similar
countries is growing on the surface because of immigration. If you
account for immigration and take it off the table, the established
population in those countries is declining.

At first, many employees might think this is a good thing. As

more people retire and live on social security or some social
benefit or retirement program, the supply of workers decreases,
which means the demand for workers and wages should increase.

Not so fast! Fewer workers are paying taxes and social security
payments into the system to fund the retirement of people who

48
have retired earlier. This is a challenge faced by countries like
Japan. For a long time, Japan had a reasonably strict immigration
policy. They wanted to keep Japan Japanese. Fair enough!

However, as the population ages and is getting closer to an

average age of lower 50s, Japan has recently decided to relax its
immigration controls. It will now join Canada, the United States,
and other similar countries for their share of the global migration
population.

The idea is that workers in highly developed economies like

Japan will be supplemented by technical, highly educated, and
upwardly mobile new immigrants from places like India, the
Philippines, and other developing countries.

There's a lot to support this vision. You see a bell curve when
you look at any population regarding achievement, education
level, overall potential, and productivity. The idea behind merit-
based and investment immigration is to attract as much of the far
right end of that bell curve distribution to go to your country.
These people have the drive and ambition to not only be unique
and highly productive employees, but they may also have the
passion to start their businesses.

Being an entrepreneur takes work. For a society to flourish, it

needs to produce enough successful businesses. The numbers
have to be there.

For the numbers to appear, though, the system has to encourage

and make it easy for people to keep trying repeatedly to succeed
in business. Many business people go through several
enterprises until they get something that works. In this context,

49
the population of many developing countries is adjusting their
immigration policies.

Of course, there's much pushback to this. You don't need to look

far. You only need to look at the rise of Donald Trump and
similar-minded political movements in Western Europe. There is
a high price for migration, but much of this boils down to the
segment of any developing country's workforce an economy
attracts.

The United States attracts people from a broad spectrum in

terms of class, but it's weighted primarily towards working-class
people. The same goes for other developed economies. Japan is
quite different because it's looking specifically to encourage
people on the far right end of the Bell curve to migrate to Japan.
It's anybody's guess if it will be successful.

With that context out of the way, work will go through quite a
bit of a transition because high-value work would be the focus of
most economies as more and more automation fills in for people.
Many factory jobs and lower-level work in places like Japan and
the United States have been automated. The significant decline
in manufacturing workforce numbers in the United States can be
traced more toward automation than global competition. Still,
the future of work and finding meaning in it has to be kept in
mind that there is a declining population, and this shift to
higher-value work requires more training.

Another driving factor is the context of globalism. Previously,

countries could expect a diverse workforce that heavily
emphasized manufacturing. As seen by the rise and development

50
of previously poor economies like Singapore, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and South Korea, it's clear that manufacturing is just a
phase that the economy goes through. As it lifts itself out of
poverty, a lot of the population is sucked into low-paying
manufacturing jobs.

But as the economy picks up steam, the manufacturing sector

transitions to higher-value goods. This played out in Japan when
it started producing cheap trinkets for the US market until it
began to specialize in higher-value goods like cameras,
calculators, and increasingly advanced electronics. The same is
happening in China. Once the manufacturing base has shifted to
higher-value products, a more diverse economy focusing on
services starts to develop.

The idea is that once people are making enough money to take
care of their basic needs, they become more savvy consumers
and want the finer things in life. This is where the service and
luxury markets open up, broaden, and deepen.

It's essential to look at the nature of work from such a global

perspective because, as AI transforms the impact of automation,
we will be so far removed from worrying about our basic needs.
Our economy has evolved, so we're not worried about where
our food will come from. The focus is more on what we will
spend our time on and how much time we will have when
everything is automated, including lower-level and mid-level
thinking.

If you have checked out how ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft

Copilot, or Google Gemini work, your mind will be blown by

51
how seemingly "intelligent" such platforms have become over a
short period. Indeed, ChatGPT 2.5 is entirely different from
ChatGPT 4.0. The rate of evolution is nothing short of scary.
So, how do we make sense of work in the context of the external
pressures of a declining population, globalism, and the rise of
AI? It all boils down to attitude, both on a societal and individual
level.
Let me be clear. You won't be able to change societal attitudes
about work. This is one factor that you have no control over. But
you have a tremendous amount of control over your mindset
regarding work. You have much to say about your attitude
about what you do daily to make a living.
This is the main focus of this book: How your attitude can help
you overcome the tremendous systematic and global changes in
the world of work. Not only can this help you stay employed,
but you can earn more money and grow in value to whatever
company is lucky enough to hire you because your attitude has
become future-proof.

Attitude Beats Aptitude Any Day

As I have outlined in this book, You're up against massive forces

— inside your company, outside your company, and in the
greater society you're a part of. If that isn't bad enough, global
competitive pressures strain how work is defined and where
social goods go in the world of work.
Where should your focus be? On yourself! It would be best to
focus on becoming a powerful, unstoppable learning machine.

52
Your Attitude Is the Key to Future-Proof Work

For a long time, many companies have looked at their workers

primarily as cogs in the machine or necessary expenditures to
produce a result. The main result they're looking for, of course, is
profit. This has been the mindset for a long time, and this has
gone through several changes as enterprises learn the value of
employees in the decision-making and production processes,
regardless of whether the company produces services or
manufactured goods.

However, companies should invest more deeply in the mindset

and attitudes of their workers. This is too bad because such
companies would gain a tremendous competitive advantage if
they did. But this doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to
do precisely that.

If you are in a company with a lingering faint or vague threat of

layoffs, you can invest in one thing you can control that can go a
long way in guaranteeing that you won't be let go. I'm talking
about your attitude. If you have the right attitude, you're open to
new challenges, and you're open to doing everything you can to
survive changes and be an essential part or a key agent in the
company overcoming challenges. In other words, you become an
asset.

As mentioned above, most organizations historically have

looked at their employees as simply expenses. You are on the
cost side of the ledger. You are just a necessary expense. What
they're after is the profit.

53
But if you become an asset, you no longer act and sound like an
employee. Of course, you don't own the company, so you're not
the entrepreneur, neither are you a shareholder, but your value
has changed because your participation level, as well as your
positioning within the company and its decision-making and
production process, has shifted. This is called being an
"employeepreneur."

How to Be an Employeepreneur

An employeepreneur is somebody who plays a role in a

company and is an employee. You are on the payroll as part of
the rank and file. You are not management.

What makes you different is that you look at the company from
an ownership perspective. Most people who work for the typical
corporation in the United States focus on only doing enough not
to get fired.

None of that matters to them. They don't care if the company

grows in productivity, output, and value per unit produced. All
that stuff is Greek to them. All they see is the time card staring at
them when they come through the door, punching in and out.
They do their 8 hours, nothing more, nothing less, and move on.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this. After all, this is how
most people think. However, an employeepreneur has a
markedly different perspective. As mentioned earlier, your
attitude is more important than your aptitude. Suppose you
consider the company an extension of your personality and ego.
In that case, you are more likely to contribute to processes in a

54
way that will benefit the company. For example, if you work on
the factory floor and figure out how to assemble things much
faster, you must keep it to yourself.
The typical employee would do precisely that because they're
afraid that if the word goes out, management will force them to
adopt such a system, and their workload will increase. Worse
yet, when other team members find out that they came up with
something that saves much time, they will look bad because the
team members would think that the management would have
higher output expectations because of the tweaks or hacks you
have discovered. That's why people keep it to themselves.
An employee needs to do that. They understand that the
company's output increases when they can do things faster. They
also understand that not everybody will be on board. Even
though they can understand how the improved process can lead
to more products being produced in the same block of time or
more services being provided, only some are competent to make
that leap.
However, management is willing to adopt such hacks, tweaks,
or improvements because an improvement of 1% is much better
than zero. Then, the employees will fall into a spectrum
regarding how these new processes pioneered by one of them
help their overall output. Even if on the lower end, one team
member can only improve their output by 1% when the tweak is
supposed to double production, that's still a 1% that the
company needs to be more enjoying.
Let's be honest. From observation, most of the employees in the
production line of a factory or the frontline services organiza-

55
tions naturally resist change and prefer to remain idle most of
the time or persist in traditionally doing things to save energy.
Fair enough!
However, if the improvements the employeepreneur has
discovered can lead to a 1% upgrade on the low end of the team,
this translates to a practical benefit of several percentage improve-
ments.
This is the kind of change that moves the business forward.
You have to let your attitude lead you to the point where you
feel invested in the success of the company you work for. You
may not be a shareholder. You might not earn a bonus from any
improvements in profits, but it would be fine if you have an
employee mindset. You see yourself as an essential part of the
evolution of the business. Suppose you can document and
communicate how you transformed your production and get
others to level up their output because of what you've
discovered. In that case, you become a solid asset to whichever
team is lucky enough to employ you.
It may not seem like it, but your supervisors and managers are
not stupid. They did not get promoted to those positions for no
reason. They can see through your attitude that you are an asset.
Who do you think they're more likely to promote? Who do you
believe they are more likely to share the company's resources
with regarding overtime or paid time off? You will stand out. It's
just a question of when.
Don't think that just because the idea you came up with for a
process improvement seems to have fallen on deaf ears, you
shouldn't bother. Don't let that get to you.

56
The reality is that people like you with the right attitude are few
and far between. Eventually, somebody in the management
chain will sit up and pay attention to the positive impact of your
work.

Organic Leadership Is Crucial as Well

It may not seem like it, but most organizations seek to promote
from within. People retire all the time, people get fired for
whatever reason, and people just plain leave.

Again, there are many reasons for this, many of which are
personal. All of this leaves holes in the organization. It may be
obscure, but companies need leaders.

The problem with many employees is that they insist on being

formally asked or notified that a role is available. They are
looking for a vacant slot in the organizational chart. If that is
how you look at things, let me tell you. You'll be waiting to get
promoted for a very long time. Depending on the organization's
size and industry, those slots may open up slower than you'd
hoped.

But this doesn't mean you should sit on your hands and be
another face in the crowd. It would be best if you still polished
your attitude to be an asset regardless of how much you're being
paid or your position in the organization. You should look for
and work for transformation wherever you are.

You may be the person in charge of cleaning toilets. Fair enough!

Transform that. Hand the supplies better so the company spends

57
less money. Much of this can be done by simply using the
supplies according to their directions.

As you might think it is uneventful, you’d be shocked at how

many firms fail to get value for their money because employees
do not work as the companies want. The interpreter takes the
role of a janitor in a big company and believes that no one is
observing them. Indeed, if the cleaning supplies do not heavily
impact that outfit’s operations budget, then the outfit's bean
counters will note this fact.

Work is just a little small. There is no utterly anonymous work.

Every part of any organization has to serve a purpose and is
important enough to spend money on.

People will notice when you seek to transform what you do, no
matter where you are in the organization chart. And most
importantly, you transform yourself. You shift from thinking this
company doesn't care about you — "This company is simply a
paycheck to me" — to being part of something you can change,
improve, level up, and upgrade.

Please don't do it for the reward. Chances are, if you are

consistent, you will be rewarded later. But what's more
important is that you invest in your mindset. As I have repeated
several times, attitude comes before aptitude.

When you have the right attitude, you will learn just by sheer
repetition, day after day, week after week, month after month,
how to be more efficient and do more with fewer resources. This
enables you to become a better and more effective person
overall. We're not even talking about your paycheck or your

58
benefits. I'm talking about how you manage your time and
squeeze as much use from your daily purchases.

You start transforming yourself in many areas of your life based

on the changes in your perspective at work. So start where you
are. You may be the person who is assigned to clean toilets. Not
only will a transformative mindset ensure that the toilets smell
tremendous and are sparkling clean, but it costs less to do that.

Do you know what will make you stand out? Let's say you are
sick for whatever reason, and somebody steps in temporarily to
replace you, or you're transferred to a different company section
temporarily. When you leave the scene, no matter what your job
is, people will notice that you have a transformative mindset and
that your attitude predominates regardless of your aptitude.
People will see that you took things to such a high level
regarding cleanliness, efficiency, and low costs. The difference
can be day and night.

The person filling in for you may not be the worst janitor in your
company, but it wouldn't matter. They're replacing the superstar.
They're replacing somebody who cares. They're replacing
somebody who has leveled up so much that the differences are
screaming out.

That's how they know you are a rock star.

But here's the secret: When you adopt a transformation mindset,

you shouldn't focus on being the rock star. If that is your initial
goal, it will be easy for you to feel demotivated because, a lot of
the time, as you work with incremental changes, people need to

59
pay more attention. People can even seem blind to what you're
doing.

When you focus instead on transforming how you look at your

work, being the most influential person you can be, and doing
more with less, this personal challenge becomes part of you.
Your job is just the catalyst, and this has transformed you.

How you deal with your time, resources, energy, and willpower
can apply to many areas of your life. Some of your life may be
where you're just spinning your wheels. You're spending much
time, effort, and emotional energy, and nothing seems to
happen. But by transforming your level of effectiveness at work,
your changed attitude may lead to a breakthrough in other parts
of your life that previously frustrated you.

60
 CHAPTER 7

HOW DO YOU ACTIVATE A

TRANSFORMATION MINDSET?

To have a transformation mindset, you have to start with your

identity. Being an employeepreneur is very different from being
a rank-and-file employee.

As I have mentioned earlier, rank-and-file employees punch a

clock. They do just enough in 8 hours that they don't get fired.
This doesn't mean that they are essential. This doesn't mean that
they are exceptional. They're doing what everybody else is
doing. They're trying to get by with the least energy and
emotional expenditure possible.

In some workplaces, this is more pronounced than in others.

Many people are discouraged from standing out regarding
output, productivity, and even attitude if they work for local
government. The idea is that a nail that sticks out will get
hammered down.

The hammer comes in many different forms. People might look

at you differently. People can talk behind your back. But you're

61
going to feel it. You will be made to think that you are doing
something wrong.

If you're like most people, you will go along to get along, and
your output, productivity, and, most importantly, your attitude
fall into line. You're no longer transforming the company.
Instead, you become part of the faceless mass of people who
blend in the background, are just another face in the crowd, and
do the bare minimum to get from paycheck to paycheck.

An employee flips this on its head. An employee does not

consider the paycheck the ultimate reward of working for an
organization. The paycheck is just a way of keeping score.

Their primary focus is transforming their surroundings as their

internal world transforms. They have an ownership attitude.

This is game-changing because if you look at every word that

comes out of your mouth or every idea that comes out of your
brain and every action you take to reflect your character and
quality, you'll be more intentional. You're going to be more
specific. You're also going to experiment and try many things
until you find something that works.

If you save much time and meet a high-quality standard, you

don't stop. You don't feel slighted that since you have made
these tweaks, hacks, and improvements, you've made your boss
or the company you work for all that much richer. Why? You
didn't get a pay raise. You should have gotten the recognition
you think you should get for coming up with that improvement.

That will be something other than your attitude if you have a

transformation mindset, and one manifestation of such a

62
mindset is the employeepreneur. You're looking at transforma-
tion as part of your life. It's part of who you are. It's part of your
sense of legacy that you leave. It changes whatever you go
through, whether it's a job, a relationship, a social organization,
or a community group.

This doesn't mean that you're some primadonna. This doesn't

mean that you're some narcissist who insists that everything be
about you. Instead, you believe in making an impact, and this
impact doesn't have to have your name on it. Instead, you take
ownership of yourself to the point that you sign everything you
produce with quality. You have made it clear to yourself that
whatever you do will leave an impact.

Let's be honest. In business, impact is often measured by the

value you produce for the buyer of whatever service or product
you're making. Are they better off? Do they have a great
experience? They may have gotten what they came for, but are
their lives improved?

This is a transformative mindset, and it all comes from character.

This cannot be faked. This is not artificial, nor is it some
programming that your boss can turn on or off at any time.
Instead, it comes from you.

Because you operate with a sense of legacy, you assume that we

will all die sooner rather than later. But what's important is what
we do with our time while on this planet. That's how you look at
things and what motivates you to be transformative internally
and externally. You want to live out your life to the fullest.

63
Living Life to the Full Through Transformation at Work

Many people think that to live their best life; they must hop on a
plane and go to the other side of the planet on an extended
vacation. That's their definition of living their best life. It's about
leisure. It's about pleasure.
As you can imagine, it takes many resources. People with a
transformative mindset focus on where they are right here. They
don't imagine themselves living their best when the conditions
are right.
They may be making the right amount of money. Maybe they're
surrounded by the right people. Or the time is just right. They
don't care about that because they know they can't control
others. Think about it. It's hard enough trying to change yourself.
Can you imagine trying to change another person that you
cannot control? Talk about frustrating!
The same goes for situations and circumstances beyond your
control. People with a transformative mindset (and again, one
manifestation of this is the employeepreneur) focus on their
closest circle of control, which is their attitude and how they
perceive their situation at work and work with that.
The more we focus on what we can control, the more effective
we become. The more competent we are in terms of what we can
do on a day-to-day basis, that small circle of control, which can
be very narrow and even tiny when we first start, starts getting
broader.
This is how organic leadership kicks in. You may think you are
just another face in the crowd and nobody knows your name, or

64
worse yet, people have it in for you. They don't want you to rise.
They want you to stay stuck on the bottom.
People are looking for competent individuals. We naturally
gravitate towards these. This is why when you attend a dinner
party, the first question people ask is what kind of a job you
have; it does not matter if it is as a lawyer or as a doctor. They
don't care whether you are a lawyer or a doctor. Most of them
don't care about the intricacies of what you do. Instead, they use
that question as a shorthand for the more profound question
they want to ask: "How competent are you?" If I am connected
with you socially at some level or other, how much benefit can
you give me regarding it?

A lawyer has a higher earning capacity and, most importantly,

knows the law. Suppose something involving your property,
freedom, or the authorities happens to you. In that case, that
lawyer or another lawyer they know can help you more than
somebody who plays video games daily and earns minimum
wage. This has less to do with earning capacity and more with
that person's ability to assist you. The same goes with a doctor.
In fact, with a physician, the benefits of competence are more
transparent.

But this applies to any job. We're always looking for competence.
If you have a transformative mindset and can do more with
fewer resources and less time, you are competent, and people are
drawn to you.

Now, the question is, how will you play it off so that you
transform them without turning them off? Remember, most

65
people are afraid of change. They'd instead do what they were
doing yesterday and continue to do so long into the future. They
also would want to keep things as they are even though they're
unproductive. Even though they're just doing the bare
minimum, they want to keep things as they are.

The mark of a genuine organic leader is to get people excited

about the hacks, tweaks, and improvements that you have
developed, but in such a way that it's not threatening. You have
to sell it to them in such a way that they feel that they would
benefit. If somebody you know in your work crew is very lazy,
position whatever it is that you found out in terms of processes,
methods, and techniques in such a way that it appeals to their
laziness. Tell them that they're going to save more time. Tell
them they have a lot more time to fool around because of the
tweak you have created.

This form of competence is very appealing because you need a

formal title. You don't even have a formal slot in the organiza-
tion hierarchy. But people couldn't care less. They can see that if
they come to you, they will benefit because you know stuff that
they don't, and the only reason why you know these things is
because you've allowed yourself to know them in the first place.

You have a transformation mindset. You're not the typical

employee who feels exploited or alienated from the entity that
makes their living possible through a paycheck. You're not
playing that. You're not operating at that level. Instead, you feel
emotional ownership over your job because it gives you these
opportunities to learn, dig deep, and grow, and you earn a
paycheck.

66
You're not looking to get a raise. You're looking for something
other than some organizational recognition. You're just content
that you are in such an environment where you can grow. And
the more you allow yourself to look at the transformation as the
reward, the more valuable you become to the company.
This is why the difference will be like day and night when you
are on vacation, and somebody has to fill in. Believe it or not, no
matter how seemingly dumb or apathetic the management in
your company may appear to you, they will notice because they
notice profit and loss. They are aware of their bottom line, and if
they see a big difference when you are gone because of the
organic leadership that you provided and the transformative
work that you have set in motion, not only will you be noticed,
but you will be missed.
Remember this because the transformation mindset is not about
lifting yourself and positioning yourself as this indispensable
rock star. It may seem like it, but ultimately, the goal is to
transform everybody else into a mini-version of you.
Ultimately, if you're completely honest with yourself, you realize
you're not necessarily the smartest. You could be more
resourceful. You're not necessarily the most equipped or best
trained. But you do have the right attitude. And if you can
succeed, what's stopping everybody else?
That is the kind of impact you're looking for. A transformative
mindset is not something that you should hold in, nor is it
something that you should privatize. It reflects your impact on
your world, and the more you see it in other people's lives, the
more you are rewarded.

67
Again, this has little to do with money and more with the sense
that before you find yourself on your deathbed, you can
convincingly answer the question, "Did my life make a
difference?" By operating at this level, no matter what your
specific job is, your work not only deepens in value but also
stands to transform people around you and eventually transform
the whole company, and it takes just one.
There is an old theory out of Japan about the so-called "
hundredth monkey effect." A researcher went to Japan and
noticed a female monkey washing fruit in water before eating it.
It was only one monkey out of 100. Everybody else was eating
fruit with dirty hands or off the ground. However, when the
researcher returned many years later, the monkeys washed fruit
before eating. That's the power of transformation.
Somebody has to start. Let that person be you. Don't think that
you should gatekeep. Don't hold your transformation hostage
regarding what kind of rewards you should get.
You're ultimately the beneficiary when you freely and smoothly
share your ideas. You're the ultimate winner because it makes
your job easier when everybody levels up. It frees you up to
refocus your energies on the next challenge. And pretty soon,
you might even develop your clone.
Thanks to your natural organic leadership, you can "clone
yourself" because attitudes, believe it or not, are infectious. Have
you noticed that specific word crews at your job are notoriously
unproductive? You best believe that only some of those people,
when they first got hired, are that unproductive. Many of them
probably did extra. Many of them were eager.

68
What happened? Well, somebody in their crew demotivated
them. Somebody made them feel that they're wasting their time,
or might have even convinced them that they are somehow
suckers for going the extra mile when it's evident that the
company doesn't care about their extra effort, that they are just
wasting their time.

Pretty soon, one team member's attitude becomes everybody

else's default attitude. You can take comfort from knowing that
at least one of those team members knows this is wrong. They
know that this attitude is not helping them.

But, again, nails that stick out tend to get hammered down.
They're stuck in a negative feedback loop. Nobody wants to rock
the boat. Nobody wants to speak up. So, the crew sinks deeper
and deeper into unproductivity. Pretty soon, they may start
spreading that toxic mindset to other units.

Do you see how this works? Be part of the group that reverses
that. Instead of a negative feedback loop that gets deeper into
unproductivity, negativity, and toxicity, work the other way
around. Let your curiosity and the need for impact, achievement,
or legacy drive you forward.

Don't let the fact that you're not getting paid extra or you're not
walking away with some trophy or medal for your improve-
ments get you down. Don't let that demotivate you because your
reward is more critical and ever-present than some formal
recognition, whether a certificate, a trophy, or some other token.
None of that matters as much as the conviction that you are not
wasting your time on Earth.

69
Every second, you use your sense of curiosity and possibility to
make an impact because you must answer yourself at the end of
the day. You're going to have to convincingly supply an answer
to the question, "What did I do with my time on Earth?"

The answer is transformation. It doesn't have to be significant. It

just has to be a fruit of your decision and commitment.

You Are More Adaptable Than You Give Yourself Credit

For

Before continuing to this book section, I encourage you to look at

yourself in the mirror. People out there, all that you can see
when standing in front of the mirror is an outcome of decisions
you make in front of the mirror; thereby, those decisions are, in
fact, a mirror image of what you are inside.

Everything from your haircut, your choice of clothes, the shoes

you're wearing, and even the smile, frown, or smirk on your face
comes from your internal programming. Your external world is
just the final phase of the manifestation of decisions and choices
that you've made inside.

How much do you weigh? How do people look at you? What

status do you have? What kind of car you drive? How big your
home is? Everything down is a reflection of your inner world.

Most people are cowards. They're scared of taking a chance.

They fear the long, complicated, grueling ordeal they must
undergo to transform themselves.

70
So they make excuse after excuse, and guess what! They're more
than happy to kill the messenger. They know that the message is
valid because they've lived it before.

You may think: "I'm reading this book because I want to

transform myself. How can you say that I've lived this
transformation before?"

Life is suffering. It has always been challenging. It's complex and

will continue to be a pain long into the future. That's right! Life
will still be rough, difficult, and unfair long after you're gone.

When you look at your track record and see some bright spots,
focus on what you must do to achieve those things. You'd be
surprised.

If you're reading this because you feel that you are caught in a
grind where your life doesn't seem to change, and the rewards in
life are few and far between, please take some measure of hope
from the fact that you were able to achieve things in the past. It
all boils down to adaptability.

What you see in the mirror is the final phase of manifesting your
inner world. What you see outside of you and in that mirror are
simply the signatures or final touches of the evolution that has
been happening inside you.

Understand that you are a work in progress. If you are unhappy

or dissatisfied with what you see, please understand you have
control over that process.

The same goes for your relationships. At first, there may have
been many disagreements. You can't see eye to eye in them.

71
Pretty soon, the dust settles, and you can make some happy
memories, either with your family or your significant other.

We all have this built-in ability to adapt. Unfortunately, when

we're stuck in a challenging relationship, a job that doesn't seem
to reward us, or we're just tired of the grind where we do the
same thing repeatedly every day. We need to get rewarded or
grow; I want you to step back. Draw a deep breath, and think
back to how you were able to adapt before.

If you could do it before, what's stopping you from doing it

again today? You have it in you. I believe in you. Why? Human
beings are fantastic learning machines. Seriously! We are bio-
organic learning machines that, regardless of what the world
throws our way, we figure it out and adapt. We may not end up
in an optimal place, but we can still overcome it. We're still able
to survive because that's the name of the game, which is to get to
the next day.

In that case, you must learn what you must learn to make it
through. That's what you're dealing with. That's what's
hardwired into your DNA. Everybody has this.

This is why people allow themselves to be completely honest

and look at the past with unvarnished eyes — eyes untainted by
their disappointment with the present. They're bound to see
some bright spots.

I want to remind you of this because adaptability is all in your

head. It is programming and code that is hardwired into your
DNA.

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Now, as you probably already know, there are many things that
we are hardwired for, but we have to trigger them. We have to
work with them so that they can work for us instead of against
us. The same goes for adaptability.

How Adaptability Harms People

People use adaptability primarily to get shortcuts to happy or

pleasurable stuff as quickly as possible. Very few people would
run to pain. Most people look forward to pleasure.
Again, it is not rocket science! We love pleasure. We want more
of it. And we want no inconvenience, pain, or hardship, so we
live our lives based on creating paths of least resistance.
But here's the problem. The world rewards delayed gratification.
You have probably heard of the famous study where kids were
given the choice between eating one cookie now and refusing to
eat a cookie in exchange for the reward of two cookies later. It
turns out that the kids who had the willpower to wait and delay
their gratification were more successful in life. Regardless of
their field and how much money they made, they were more
successful. That's how vital delayed gratification is.
But our adaptive mechanism is all about maximizing the results
immediately at the cost of greater rewards in the future. That's
how our minds are wired. Again, we prefer sweet, salty, and
fatty foods to stuff that is sour or maybe even bitter, but this can
lead to more food in the future.
When you look at how you adapt, it's no surprise that the
choices you made that were completely voluntary and the

73
product of clear-minded decision-making start to blur. It seems
you have no choice because it's almost instinctual.
You need to pick up on a cue, like a particular time of the day or
a person walking by who has a specific look at you or even a
memory from the past, and you can't help it. You seem to go on
autopilot. You do what you usually do, and you end up
frustrated.

You may be feeling slightly down, so what do you do? You raid
the fridge. You look for that German chocolate cake and sink
your teeth into it. You don't even bother to cut a nice little slice
and manage your calories. Nope! All that goes out the window.

This is automatic thinking. Believe it or not, this is adaptive

thinking because this is learned behavior. In absolute terms, you
don't have to do this because so many other choices are available
to you.

Why do you prefer to do things this way instead of the other? This
is adaptation. Unfortunately, in this context, adaptation harms
you. You have to take control of your ability to adapt. That is the
first step. For that to happen, you must first acknowledge that you
can adapt in the first place.

This in itself is a big enough breakthrough for many people. For

the longest time, I thought I was just hardwired for an inevitable
reality of life. That's how I felt. I spoke a specific language since I
was born a certain way in a particular country. I believed in
certain things in terms of religion, which was passed on to me by
my parents, that my life has to play out a certain way, and

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usually, this lines up with the kind of lives the people around me
are living.

Again, this is common. This is very common. This is how people

are programmed to think. But it turns out I have many more
choices than I had cared to realize, that my life did not have to
proceed on some fixed track. I didn't have to believe I could only
be a small set of identities.

If I reclaim my power of choice, I will have many more options.

Sure, I won't be the next president of the United States because

of the requirement to be a natural-born American citizen. But
there are a lot of other options available to me.

The ability to make that mental switch from a fixed conception of

reality and potential to one of almost unlimited choices was a
breakthrough for me because it opened up the whole world to
me. I started seeing opportunities when I previously thought
they were invisible or few and far between. This is how a change
in your internal adaptability can trigger positive changes. But
first, you must accept that you have much more power to adapt
than you thought.

This is something other than what you bump into. You are not
back into this because there's no other choice. You have to
choose this consciously. Otherwise, you'll run on autopilot
where the whole world is shut off because you're constantly
telling yourself what you can and cannot do, who you can and
cannot be, who can and cannot be your friends, and so on.

It's a world of limitations. It's as if you are walking around with

this invisible prison surrounding your mind, and it's not just a

75
mental thing because it affects the choices that you make. It
involves the opportunities that you choose to see.

If you think adaptation is about getting to the good stuff as

quickly as possible, you shut out many things because you need
more power to delay gratification. You don't have the power to
turn a dollar that you would otherwise have freely spent into
something different.

Every dollar that you save can become capital. Capital grows.
Capital funds businesses. Capital makes new realities. That's
how powerful capital is.

Unfortunately, most people are blind to this because they have

used their adaptive mechanism to adopt habits that keep them
small, powerless, weak, voiceless, and impotent. And the weird
thing about all of this is that it's pleasurable to do that.

That's precisely how many people choose to practice their

adaptive mechanism. It's all about the here and now. It's all
about immediate payoffs and pleasure.

But when you believe that there is another way of thinking, that
you are not bound by some pre-ordered and pre-coded way of
life, you can take the next step. The next step is quite painful. The
next step is to admit that however unhappy or dissatisfied you
may be with your life because of your missed opportunities,
missed chances, or mistreatment from other people, you chose
this. People may say, "See, I told you. It's going to be hard."

This is where many people throw their hands up, pound their
tables in disgust, or shake their heads in disbelief. I can hear it
now. You could be saying: "Well, many unhappy things

76
happened to me in the past, and I'm going through quite an
ordeal right now. How can you say with a straight face that I
chose all this? Nobody chooses to be miserable."

Fair enough! But please understand that your present reality is a

consequence of your decisions. Those decisions were pleasurable,
offered instant relief, or, more commonly, allowed you to duck
responsibility. You get to enjoy a quick escape or dodge having to
do complex stuff, and you kick the can down the road.

And here you are, living with the consequences. If you choose
not to attend school, you are dealing with subpar wages here. If
you decided to screw around early on without protection, here
you are, paying child support or trapped in an unhappy
marriage. I could go on and on. Your present misery is just a
consequence of past decisions that you have made.

It would be best if you reclaimed your power to adapt and

overcome any challenge.

You Have to Take Responsibility

It would be best to tell yourself with full conviction and honesty

that you ultimately chose your place. You may not have selected
the misery, the prison record, the addiction, the bad health, the
emotional issues, the drama, and so on, but you chose to make the
decisions early on that led to where you are now. This is crucial.
This is a game changer, and you have to do it wholeheartedly.

You have to buy into this 100%. Otherwise, the rest of what I will
tell you will not help you become a more effective worker,

77
employee, and producer. Whether you work for yourself or
others, whatever I will say to you for the rest of this book will
not help you because you have chosen to keep things the way
they are.

You have to take ownership. You chose your life, and you have
to embrace that statement with all of your being with complete
and sincere honesty. If you can do that, you can tap into your
unlimited ability to adapt.

At this point, nobody else is to blame. You can't blame your

parents. You can't blame your upbringing. You can't blame
bullies of the past. You can't blame people who hurt you or
broke your heart in the past. You can't blame friends who may
have betrayed or disappointed you. You can't blame any of that.

At this point, you take full responsibility. When you do that, you
reclaim power over your life because what happens when you
have a long laundry list of people you blame for your setbacks,
failures, and shortcomings? That's right!

You take the focus away from you. Logically speaking, they
broke you and are responsible for fixing you. At the very least,
since they failed you, they have the solution or at least part of the
solution. You can find an answer by talking to and resolving
issues with them.

Well, that's a fantasy. Seriously! You're just wasting your time if

you think along those lines. Why? Those people have probably
forgotten what they did to you and are living their lives as best
as possible. Some have probably passed away.

78
You can't control those people. Do you think they will feel the
same way just because you feel the way you do, or would they
want to reach out and help you? Fat chance!

You have to take responsibility for your life right now, and the
worst that you can do is to constantly look at the past as some
ready source of excuses to justify your not taking action and
responsibility today. So accept it. You chose your life. And when
you can say that with full conviction and honesty, you reclaim
your life.

Now, the solution doesn't lie in the hands of people who may
not care, are far away, or have passed on. It doesn't matter where
they are. It doesn't matter who they are. It doesn't matter what
they think. They're gone. What matters is that you have chosen
to take responsibility. If you have decided to do this, then it
means that you now have no excuse.

You must deal with your situation in the moment without

waiting. You don’t have to think about how it should be or what
you feel is supposed to be. Think of it as it is when you are
working and not how you wish it would be. Instead, you look at
your reality straight in the eye. Please take it as it is, roll up your
sleeves, and commit to making the much-needed changes. This
is how you unlock the power of adaptability that you have.

If you're sincere, every single human being has this ability. So

unleash your ability to adapt to become a more effective person
at work and in many different areas of your life.

Remember, what you see in the mirror, how much money you
make, the dollar figures in your bank account, and all that are

79
simply reflections of who you are inside. You can change
yourself tremendously when you reconnect with your inner
ability to adapt. All of us have this.

Easily Build Value

Most people look at their jobs primarily as a source of income. In

their minds, the value and importance of their jobs begin and
end with sustenance. You do it for 8 hours, or how many hours
do you work in a day to get by?

If you truly understand the principles of deep, fulfilling work

I've shared in this book, you will know your work has
tremendous value. This is true not only to your employer but
also to you financially. Instead, work itself is valuable. You're not
just spending your time here on Earth mindlessly chasing after
things you think make sense. You are not here to look for things
that make you feel good or otherwise give you some satisfaction.

Instead, work is a structured value. You do something that

engages all aspects of your total persona. You learn to solve
problems. You learn to do new things, improve on what you
already know, and face challenges as you adapt what you think
you do to meet different circumstances.

Looking at work from this perspective, you realize that it gets all
the pistons of your persona firing simultaneously. You also
know how to adjust what you know based on who is looking,
who is expecting, and what specific outcome you're looking for
that given day.

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You learn how to be adaptable. You learn persistence. You also
learn how to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat as you meet
with one setback after another.

You can also learn to look at your life from a bigger perspective.
The smallness many people feel daily is traced to how they view
their work.

If they see it as just this narrow tunnel that somehow leads

someway into money, they need to include many of the beauty
and blessings it can bring into their lives.

This is precisely why work is such a blessing in itself. It doesn't

matter whether you're dealing with trash. It doesn't matter if
people ignore or dismiss what you do for a living. What people
may say or think about you should not concern you anymore, or
if someone close to you or you think you're doing a low-class,
menial job. It doesn't matter what they believe. What matters is
how you fit into the overall value system that work brings to
your table.

It delivers more than just a paycheck. It delivers so much more.

When you are engaged mentally, spiritually, and emotionally,
work pushes you to become more prominent, rise higher, and
become stronger than you imagined yourself to be. This is not a
pep talk. Instead, this describes the work's actual inner core
reality.

This makes it so challenging because it's too easy for most people
to dwell on the shallow level of work. It's just a paycheck. It's a
means to other ends or a stepping stone to something more
worthy.

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But the truth is, work in itself is valuable. When you are mindful
of your work and how you're engaged on a mental, emotional,
and spiritual level, your life grows in value. And this is why
there is no such thing as a dead job, a dead-end skill, or a
worthless occupation.

Easily Build on Value

When you look at your job and feel depressed about how
seemingly repetitive, boring, and meaningless it is, it's too
tempting to conclude that it is a dead job. It doesn't lead
anywhere. It doesn't set you up for promotions. Even if it did,
the money that comes isn't enough to change your life for the
better.
A lot of this is perception. When we look at our jobs as
seemingly ending somewhere with no promotions, raises, or
advancement beyond a certain point, we're killing that job. The
job you feel is dead or leads to a dead end only looks that way
because you choose to look at things that way.
Want to quit your job? Want to get promoted at your current
job to a more ideal position? Want to get the most value out of
the work you do? If you answered YES to all of the above, the
key is DISCIPLINE. Learn how to quickly develop the
DISCIPLINE you need to UNLOCK success in ALL areas of
your life. Get your free discipline building book by visiting:
https://www.remmyhenninger.com/free-discipline-code-book
Also, join our mailing list to get free book announcements,
book previews, and other FREE premium content from Remmy
Henninger

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 CHAPTER 8

WHAT ARE “DEAD

END JOBS” ANYWAY?

Whether you work for a fast food store, are in retail or have a
warehousing position, please understand that your work's
seeming meaninglessness and pointlessness are just simple
opinions. These are your judgments of that work. If you
understood the real value created by that job, you wouldn't say
it's a dead end.

Instead, you can look at it as an invitation to explore different

parts of yourself to offer more of yourself to solve problems, give
your customers the experience they came for and then some, and
produce more for others. In other words, looking at value from
an outward, expanding perspective starts to look and feel like it's
worth doing. It leads to something substantive, useful, valuable,
and worthwhile.

Sometimes, you tend to focus on what you're not getting; if you

feel deprived, it shouldn't be a shock that you feel trapped. The
more you look at your situation, You start looking at how much
work you have to do and how seemingly hopeless it may be.

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This also brings you down and makes you feel hopeless the
more helpless you feel. You get trapped in this negative feedback
loop between hopelessness and helplessness. You feel smaller
and smaller as you continue doing the same thing. And soon,
your job description as a dead-end position becomes a self-
fulfilling prophecy.

Regardless of how others define your work or the overall social

status of what you do for a living, these still involve skills.

As mentioned above, these skills engage with your emotional,

psychological, and spiritual sides.

If you look at your job as an opportunity to build the values of

these skills, you bring blessing, a renewed positive attitude, and
greater motivation to your role and start inspiring others. Even if
your position is restricted to you and there's only one person
with that job in your organization, you can't help but positively
impact the rest of the organizational chart.

These skills cannot be denied. These skills involve working with

other people, working with products, and working with the
bottom line. All of these eventually will be noticed.

This is where building value comes in, and the only way you can
create value is to prioritize it. Understand that it is the end
product of how you engage on so many different levels with
what you do daily. This will wake you to the reality that your
skills are not dead. Far from it! The more engaged you are on a
wide range of levels with your skills, the more valuable they
become. The stronger their impact becomes. At the very least,
you're producing more units per block of time.

84
That is a victory in and of itself. People will eventually sit up and
pay attention once you shift from output production or volume
to quality.

But you shouldn't be doing this just to get noticed. It would be

best if you weren't doing this to get a pat on the back, get
promoted, or get paid more. All of that validation is extra gravy.
What matters is that you can develop an internal system of
enriching yourself while enriching others through your work.

I know that "enriching" is a strong word because you may be

making minimum wage. You may be feeling that you're stuck
doing the same thing or feeling hopeless and at the bottom of the
barrel. Even if that is true, the amount of dollars and cents you
get does not put a price tag on the value of your work. It is the
opposite of how you feel and does not show your value and,
most importantly, the value you get from your work.

These are different things. People might see a minimum wage

job, but you see a skill set growing over time. You know a
skillset that enables you to remain engaged psychologically,
emotionally, and spiritually. This is the power of meaningful
work.

What makes this all challenging is that your boss needs help to
do this for you. They cannot plug you into some organizational
structure where you somehow get this meaning through day-to-
day operations. Nobody can do it for you. That's the hard part.
You have to do it yourself.

What makes this so hard to pull off is that you must deprogram
yourself from how you've always viewed work. It doesn't have

85
to suck. It doesn't have to lead to nowhere. It doesn't have to be
some exploitation where your time is squeezed of value so you
can make more dollars for a faceless corporation headquartered
somewhere far away and led by people who don't care about
you.

You must let all that go and understand that you must have a
healthy relationship with the concept of work value. It's
something that you have to give yourself, and you have to buy
into it. It all comes from within.

There Are Other People You Can Be Inspired By

One of my earlier jobs involved working at an office far from our

main office. Many people in the main headquarters had a
dismissive attitude about the location of my satellite office. The
term "satellite office" pretty much gives it all away.

It was the kind of assignment most people looking to move up in

the greater organizational chart fear. They feel that they would
be sent there and waste all their time while all the hustle and
bustle that gets people noticed when it comes to promotions and
crucial training happens in the center.

I got assigned to this satellite office, and my attitude was the

same as everybody else's. I'd look at it as some ordeal. In my
mind, it was at least a form of punishment. And it reflected in
how I dealt with customers.

Of course, I would give them the service they expect but nothing
more. I would have this plastic smile on my face. I would go

86
through their paperwork, and it all came together in this slow-
moving grind when it came time for me to process all the
paperwork at the end of the day. The bottom line is that I just
dragged my feet because I felt like a small cog in this machine.
And worse yet, I was in the part of the machine that everybody
dismissed. In the back of my mind, I thought, "Why try? Why
shoot for something higher? Why aim for something excellent
when mediocrity is more than enough?"

It all changed when the management of the satellite office was

rotated, and a veteran manager came in. The rotations were
good for 3–6 months. My supervisor — let's call him William —
was pleasant enough indeed. When he entered the door, he
greeted everybody and didn't breathe down anybody's back. He
just ensured that we knew what the deadlines were and what
was expected in terms of deliverables at the end of the day.

That's it! Everything else, it turned out, was all about observation.
He led by example; the lesson was there for everybody to see and
profit from.

William would come in at the same time everybody came in,

which was at 8 am. But we had a rule in our company that if all
your paperwork is done, all your assigned customers have been
taken care of, and there are no appointments left that day, you
can go home early. William was motivated by these rules. He
wanted to be free as much of his time as possible, so he devised a
system that made all his work efficient.

Straight out of college, I was wet behind the ears and grinding
daily from 8 am to 7 pm. It's bad enough that I thought my

87
assignment was some ordeal. My inefficiency didn't help things
because I thought that was what you should do. You're supposed
to go through the paperwork ploddingly and constantly repeat
the work you've done before, double-check, and then turn in
everything through intercorporate mail by 7 pm.

That was until I saw William show me the light. He would come
in at 8 am, just like everybody else, but I noticed he would go
home by 1. Let me tell you. If you can save time at work from 1
to 5 every single day, you can turn that 4 hours into whatever
you want.

Do you want extra money? You can take a part-time job where
you work 2–7 pm every day. That's guaranteed extra income. Do
you want to make more money in the long term? You can go to
night school. You can take online classes. Do you want to be
healthier? You can take that time to pick up running or head to
the gym. The possibilities are endless.

That's how important time is. We all have access to this precious
commodity, but its value varies radically from person to person,
depending on their value system and priorities.

William showed me the importance of my time by example. He

didn't lecture me. He didn't pull me aside and whip out some
slide show like he was some productivity expert sent from the
central office. He didn't do any of that.

Instead, I only needed to look at when he left; he never left any

work. He ensured that every single time he would leave at 1 pm,
everything assigned to him or expected from him was done at
the highest quality level.

88
After a couple of weeks of seeing this play out and my curiosity
and, let's face it, my frustrations got the better of me, I
approached him and asked, "How can you get home at 1 pm like
clockwork every single day?"

To my surprise, he showed me. Company policies regarding

form filling can be complied with in various ways. He showed
me a very efficient way of filling out forms that met a higher
quality standard than what I was doing before.

Form-filling is a dead skill if you are a pessimistic person. It's

something that all of us who are literate could do. But William
unlocked tremendous value in this "dead skill" by enabling me
to develop a system that works for me. Knowing the rules and
what's expected, he devised a system that would work for me.

He did the same for setting appointments, drafting reports, and

doing everything else that was expected. He showed it all, and I
did it on my own. The first few times, I was clumsy, and it didn't
work perfectly. But pretty soon, I was able to go home at 1 pm.

This is the essence of building on value. You bring value to your

"dead job" by focusing on the rules, meeting the regulations,
saving time, and increasing quality. Does this mean that you're
able to do everything overnight? Of course not! But it requires
patience, persistence, and, most importantly, an open mind.

I had the great advantage of seeing a person pull this off because
if he were just a productivity expert sent from the central office
to teach us "a better way to do things," I probably would be
dismissive. My dismissive attitude would seep into how I

89
execute the so-called "productivity hacks" that such experts
would teach us.

Instead, I looked at our supervisor doing his thing just like

everybody else, but with one significant difference. He was
coming home at 1 pm, free and clear every day — no shortcuts,
postponed work, or BS. Seeing this happen with my own eyes
enabled me to believe this person has something I can learn
from.

If you want to increase the value of your work and free up your
time, you must first believe there is a better way. This is where
many people struggle because, let's face it, it slams against our ego
when we acknowledge that there is a better way than what we're
doing. Deep down inside, most people would think, "This is the
best I can do. I've figured it out to the best of my knowledge. This
is all I can put together; everything else is a threat."

Belief destroys all of this. When you believe, you open yourself
to a new internal reality that pushes against or even clears your
ego away. When you say, "I believe that there is a better way,"
this means implicitly that: "What I have chosen to believe all
along, what the limits that I have stuck to all along, are wrong. I
believe there is a better, and I am willing to embrace that better
way."

This is more than just a technical issue of learning new

information. This is also a pride issue. This is also an ego problem.

Because of the power of belief, letting go of all that gives you the
openness you need to make things happen. Again, it only occurs
after some time but is a compelling process.

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I was fortunate enough to be instructed by somebody I could see
pull this off. It isn't a theory. It isn't some reputation where
people say, "This person knows what they're doing, and you
should listen to them."

No! Instead, I saw this person pull it off. You have to turn your
mental camera when it comes to the skill sets you're trying to
improve at work to the times when you can pull off what
William pulled off.

The good news? Everybody has at least one day where things
just fell into place. You weren't even planning it. You may even
be in a foul mood, but everything was smooth as butter. You
were able to meet your quotas. You were able to produce the
highest quality. You can do everything expected of you, and it
doesn't feel like a chore.

All of us had at least one day of that kind of work. You only
need to focus on that day. Pick it apart. Understand its inner
workings to unlock your inner William.

I was fortunate to have someone I could look to who does my job

hyper-efficiently. He was demonstrating this all to me. He wasn't
spouting out theory.

You have to do this to yourself. This is a challenge because it

requires tremendous belief and willingness. You can add more
value to what you do. This is especially true of what you do
daily, which is more accurate than you can imagine. The only
question left is, Is this worth it for you?

The good news is that by shifting your focus from what you
stand to gain right now to how you can bless the rest of the

91
universe through your improvements, you can achieve a
breakthrough because this is not about you. This is about you
leaving a legacy. This is about you leaving an impact. This is
about you causing a reaction that brings positive change in
people's lives.

It has nothing to do with your hourly work's dollar and cents

value. It has nothing to do with the social status of your work or
how easy it is to replace with machinery, software, artificial
intelligence, or whatnot.

Instead, it's about the value chain of the Universe, so to speak,

flowing through you at your particular time. Do you choose to
do what everybody else is doing and feel dead inside? Or do you
see the importance of this value and add your voice to this
universal song called Life?

I don't mean to wax all philosophical, but this is the core because
we all have a William trapped inside us. The question is, do we
believe enough to let our inner William shine?

This is William, who can detect patterns. This is William, who

can overcome old ways of thinking and a slavishness to find
comfort and convenience in coming up with something new.

The big payoff is the tremendous amount of time that you save.
This is the time that you can turn into anything. Spend time
reading, and you become more knowledgeable. Spend more
time in the gym, and you become fit. Spend more time with your
relationships, and your relationships become deeper and more
fulfilling. I could go on and on. The new time that you get is
worth it.

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You can compare what you stand to gain with what you
currently are getting, which is a little. You're like most other
people. You grind your wheels. You put in the same amount of
work with the same attitude day after day. You keep doing this
to your job and duties weekly, month after month, and for what?
Sometimes, you start feeling like It all feels like some trap with
no end in sight, no purpose, and no hope.

The good news is that you already have the answer. You already
have your inner William. Just believe that you can figure things
out. Believe that those days, when things were easy and came
together as smoothly as butter, were not flukes. They contain
secrets that can unlock real value in your working life.

Work to Leverage Your Synchronicity with Those Around

You

Being in the same space and time with others can produce
opportunities for everyone to achieve more. Your work may
inspire other people. They could show you a few things on how
to level up your job. The general atmosphere may lead to people
doing the right things at the right time, place, and quality
standard.

While much of this can be described, much more is left

unexplained. One thing is sure. It works. This is why it's crucial
for you to leverage your synchronicity with people you work
with, whether you are working right next to them or working
separately but are part of a more extensive process involving the
work of others.

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The key here is to understand that you are part of a greater
whole. Your output is not yours alone. It is influenced by the
work of people who came before you in the process and the
work of others after you.

This is easy to understand in a factory setting. If you assemble a

part of a machine, it's easy to see that you still need to start with
something. You started with a piece that somebody else put
together or materials that somebody else manufactured. You
then work with the piece or item sent to you in the assembly line
to add your contribution.

It then goes to somebody else. They either add more parts, work
on it with a machine, or pack it for shipping. Being part of a team
allows you to shine in whatever form it takes. Again, as I have
mentioned several times in this book, you should immediately
get somebody to pat you on the back and validate your work.

By looking at your work, you can quickly tell if it matches the

standard. You can easily know if you produce enough. This is
your contribution. This is your chance to shine.

If a sense of legacy drives you, this is how you make it known to

the rest of the universe that you exist, that you matter, that you
had an impact. It doesn't matter how small it is. It doesn't matter
how easily forgotten it is. It doesn't matter how quickly people
take it for granted. What's important is that you know.

Together, Everyone Achieves More

By understanding synchronicity and your ability to contribute to

a process that is larger than you, you become part of a team. In

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this context, a team can be broken down into the phrase
"together everyone achieves more."
I understand many companies have used it as some shallow
slogan. It does roll off the tongue. But if you look at the essence
of this saying, it goes to the core of why you should work with
value in mind. It goes to the core of why you should be
motivated by a sense of legacy.
Purpose-driven work is crucial for you and also impactful to
other people, not just for your mental and emotional well-being.
It also forms the core of your spiritual aspect.
Everybody needs a sense of why. Why am I here? Why do I do
these things day to day? Why am I doing this instead of
something else? Why do I have to do this to earn a living? By
becoming part of a more extensive process and being mindful of
how you contribute to that more comprehensive process and the
outcome of that process, you make sense of the big whys in your
life.
Remember, your working life takes up at least 1/3 of your adult
time. Make it count for something. Doing this type of work
doesn't even include the time you spend getting to and from
work. The time it takes to move from one place to another is
separate from when you work, which is a big chunk of time.
You start going beyond the material rewards by understanding
synchronicity and a value-based approach to work. You start
seeing that the adaptations you must make and the journey you
are forced to go through lead to mental and emotional skills that
help you in many other areas of your life.

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Working with challenging personalities at work makes it easier
for you to get along with difficult people in your personal life.
Many people in your life you love and who are very close to you
but do go through moods. Sometimes, they go through
situations that bring out their worst side.

This doesn't mean that you turn your back on them. This doesn't
mean that your relationship has broken down beyond repair. It
just means that you have to be adaptable because you never
know. Tomorrow, it might be your turn to be moody and your
turn to be more understanding. That's how relationships work. It
is built on give and take.

You're better prepared for your relationships' stresses,

challenges, and day-to-day drama when you actively learn
mental and emotional adaptation skills at work. This is how it all
works.

The same goes for spiritual adaptation. Questions involving

why. Questions involving the larger universe and your place in
it. Questions concerning a sense of validation, destiny, and your
legacy. You confront all of these in one form or another in the
world of work. You build skills navigating these, just like mental
and emotional skills involving other people, and they prepare
you for these questions in different areas of your life.

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 CHAPTER 9

THE ART OF WORK:

LABOR WITH A SENSE
OF DESTINY

Legacy all boils down to a simple question: What do you leave

behind? Ask yourself fundamental questions: Are you just a
person who was born? Do you want to be the person who grew
old, got sick, and died?

I don't mean to sound depressing when I talk about life like that,
but this is the fate of most people. There's a certain desperation
when talking to people and anonymity behind it all. And if you
zoom out too quickly, the big picture you see could be more
reassuring. It's the opposite. It's pretty depressing.

Imagine being born, living your life, enjoying yourself, getting

old, getting sick and dying. You may have children along the
way, and this repeats the process repeatedly, generation after
generation. It begs the question. Why?

Buddhists have an answer to this. They see it as a chain of

suffering. Essentially, it is pointless (and the whole idea behind

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Buddhism and Hinduism and other Dharmic spiritual paths) to
break this chain because reincarnation is the piece that puts it all
together in those traditions. Not only do you see this pointless
pattern of being born, getting old, getting sick, and dying, it
repeats itself, not with another generation but within your life
because of reincarnation.
You live forever. There is a transfer of energy from one time to
the next. It is also a movement of life force from one form to
another. But underlying living and doing what you do daily is a
sense of helplessness, hopelessness, and futility. It feels like you
can never get out, no matter how much you gain in one life or
how much you enjoy yourself physically. It does not count if you
spend time working; it all ends even if you want emotionally in
one life.
And then it repeats itself, and depending on what you did in
your past lives, it can get worse and worse, or it can get better
and better. But it all ends up in the same place: meaninglessness
over and over again. It repeats itself.
In the West, which is primarily a country that can be seen to
have more economic growth and higher living standards, most
of us don't believe in reincarnation. But still, the pattern remains.
You may have one life to live, but there is something incredibly
depressing when you have to look forward to the same pattern
as everyone else's. There has to be something more.
This is where working towards a legacy comes in. When you
focus on what you leave behind, you start focusing on what you
contribute. You start thinking of a way to contribute to the value
of the people left after you.

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It all boils down to documentation. Even the most intellectually
challenged person in an organization figured out a couple of
hacks, tweaks, or tricks to make what they do go a little smoother,
faster, and meet quality standards. Of course, the more
intellectually gifted the team member, the more innovations we
could expect from that person. But yes, even the most mediocre
team member can be relied on to at least develop something that
pushes the needle, even if ever so slightly forward.

Everybody can contribute, and everybody does contribute in

their way. But it all boils down to documentation. When most
people develop a tweak or shortcut that still produces the same
quality and output volume, they keep it to themselves. It's
undocumented.

Some may think that what they did is nothing to write home
about. Maybe they think it's too obvious and that most other
team members would figure it out alone. So why make a big deal
out of it by letting others know?

Others think that it could be more critical. Maybe they have a

low view of what they do. They believe this is a small thing, and
they're afraid that people might make fun of them for making a
big deal out of something that doesn't matter.

Even others think they will get punished with more work if they
share their tweak, hacks, shortcuts, or innovations. Many people
genuinely believe that no good deed "goes unpunished." So they
keep their mouths shut.

All this innovation and the greater volume, output, and quality
they could have made possible remain unknown. This is too bad

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because if you want to leave a legacy, you have to document the
changes that you have made. This is how you leave an impact on
others.

Working Towards Change

Many employees have this idea that if they document their

shortcuts, hack, or tweak, others need to stick to those changes to
get the results they're looking for. If this is your mentality, you're
going to be disappointed.

People work differently and in different contexts. The changes

you fine-tuned and those that work so well for you might need
to be revised in their contexts. You have to be ready for that.

If this happens, please understand that this is not a rejection of

what you've come up with. This is not invalidation of you taking
the initiative and sharing something you didn't have to share.

Also, remember that this has nothing to do with who gets the
credit. Be ready for this.

Many people think that for them to share some innovation

they've discovered, they must get some credit. These people hold
back from sharing their discoveries if they still determine how
they will be credited.

You have to get away from this. Even if people do not

acknowledge your contribution, please understand that this
doesn't mean you did not. Do not look for validation from
others.

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When you share, the validation comes from yourself because
you got it from you. You put it out there. You overcame your
fears. This is a big enough victory.

It's much easier to understand this victory when you focus on its
impact on others. Again, stop looking for acknowledgment. Stop
looking for some confirmation whether I say it or whether you
get something in writing. Be more significant than that.

You're focusing on leaving a legacy. This is spiritual and

emotional in nature. This goes beyond the four corners of a
certificate of appreciation or confirmation.

Focus on Your Impact on Others

When measuring our impact on other people, it takes much

work to get stuck on the ideal form of this. The perfect form is
when you see that your contribution enables people to level up,
and they turn around, smile at you, and embrace you. You are a
hero for sharing this information. You are a hero because you
empower them to become so much more. You embody the idea
of "together, everyone achieves more."

People can see that the innovations you previously kept to

yourself have dramatically changed the organization. This is full
validation.

Many people need help finding full validation. They're looking

for something more. They're looking to be celebrated.

This happens proactively because the moment you share, people

start executing your tweak just as you described it, and they start

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getting results. What's not to love? They voluntarily look at you
and say, "Thank you."

But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a competitive

world, often fragmented by our drama and the realities we must
navigate. A lot of the time, the perfect reception of the idea you
shared doesn't happen. Do not fall into this trap.

It's straightforward to think that if others react to your contribu-

tion in an ideal way, then contributing is just not worth it. Please
understand that there are also other reactions that you can get
that are just as valid as the ideal reaction.

The Value of Being Misunderstood

When people misunderstand you, it doesn't necessarily mean

that you failed. It doesn't necessarily mean that you just wasted
your time. Maybe you were ahead of your time.

What's important is that you got it out of you. What's important

is that you worked towards synchronicity. You worked toward
something more extensive and more noble than you. It's on
them.

Maybe they weren't ready. Perhaps they're too dumb. There are
so many other factors here, and they don't involve you being
inferior, brushed, or misguided.

Don't think that you just wasted your time. Contributing simply
isn't worth it because it wasn't received as expected.

Another reward that you get is the beautiful feeling that you
spoke your truth. This is easy to overlook because many people

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think that just by contributing a part of a process, innovation, or
tweak, they are just sharing something technical.

Well, that adaptation took the form it did and had the different
parts it had because of your personality. It's part of you. It's
personal to you.

People can approach the same problem and walk away with
different solutions because they view the world differently. Their
solutions reflect what makes them so different from each other.
The same applies to your tweaks, hacks, and innovations at
work. You're speaking your truth, and this is valid.

When you get this out of you, you contribute to the world by
reaffirming what makes you different and unique. You look at
the universe from your unique pair of eyes, and it's all
manifested in the solution you shared with the organization.

This is a victory because you're contributing your intellectual

DNA to the organization that you work for. It doesn't matter
what they do with that information. What matters is that you got
it out of you.

Another equally valid value you get from working towards

synchronicity is holding yourself and others to a standard. You
must work with a standard when you develop a tweak, an
innovation, a hack, or a new efficient process. This is the unstated
assumption behind such a tweak.

When you do this, you level yourself up. You're playing by the
rules. You're playing with a specific process. You're not
rewriting everything. You're not pretending it doesn't exist.

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This leads to a sense of self-empowerment because you have this
puzzle with a fixed set of rules you are forced to solve. And you
just did it because you came up with this hack or tweak.

This prepares you for the outer world with its rules, rules you
didn't make, and rules you must live with. When you think
about how you came up with a shortcut, you quickly realize that
you have it in you to work within these rules to create something
worthy.

And finally, you establish a legacy when you cope with others.
People can and will oppose you for a wide variety of reasons.
Some people don't like you. Be prepared for that possibility.

It happens. Move on. Get over it.

Other people will oppose you because they don't know any
better. They don't have anything against you. They might even
like you. But they oppose you anyway. They need more time to
be ready. Maybe they need to see the whole picture. Perhaps
they did not master a piece of the process that you learned,
which enabled you to develop the tweak.

Whatever form it takes, they're just not ready. Other people are
incapable.

I know it's sad to say, but some people are just intellectually not
up to the job. They can function at a certain level and are good at
that. Some can be very exceptional. But they can't do it if your
tweak, hack, innovation, or shortcut requires them to go above
that level. They don't blame you. A lot of them blame themselves
because they know their limitations. But at the end of the day,
most people are unable or can't do it.

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Be ready for this possibility. They're opposing you, not because
they don't like you or don't understand the piece. It's just that
they can't work with your innovation.

Work towards a legacy. Leave something behind. Leave

whatever organization you work for better, faster, and more
efficient.

All of us can do this. When we do our own thing and innovate in

our roles, we're like a musician in a symphony. While there is a
conductor, please understand that it occurs in the context of
everybody being competent in their sphere.

When everybody does their best to expect the most from

themselves and seek to leave a legacy, you end up with amazing
music. Start playing your music at work today. It's never too late.

Want to quit your job? Want to get promoted at your current

job to a more ideal position? Want to get the most value out of
the work you do? If you answered YES to all of the above, the
key is DISCIPLINE. Learn how to quickly develop the
DISCIPLINE you need to UNLOCK success in ALL areas of
your life. Get your free discipline building book by visiting:
https://www.remmyhenninger.com/free-discipline-code-book
Also, join our mailing list to get free book announcements,
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105
 THE FINAL WORD ON
MEANINGFUL WORK
IN AN AI WORLD

The very definition of “work” is undergoing tremendous

change in the world of AI. Not only will this have an effect on
what people do to earn a living but it will also leave a lot of legal,
cultural, and political changes in its wake. We are truly facing a
brave new world.

This book is intended to help guide readers through the deep

internal work of self-assessment, self-awareness, and self-realiza-
tion needed to navigate the new confusing, and challenging world
of work we are facing. Armed with this information, geared and
customized to each person’s unique life experiences, it is my
hope that workers in an AI and post-AI world will have the tools
they need to live happy, productive, and meaningful lives.

You have a world to conquer! Don’t let anyone tell you

otherwise.

I wish you nothing but peace, joy, love, and meaning.

Remmy Henninger

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