Having My Hot Girl Summer, Always
Sorry, I’m Appropriating.
I’m neither a hot girl nor in summer at the moment that I’m writing this, but I was thinking about this saying the other day and I can’t help but want to borrow from its vibe. It is a vibe. So, here’s where I connect with it. Hot Girl Summers are about; looking good, feeling good, and having fun. Sure, there’s some aspect or component of it that is about your relationship status and maybe being on the lookout for mates, ignore that part. Think of this more as when you were in middle school and high school. Summer was the shit. No set schedule, no real “rules” to live your day by, and no worries about being to class on time. Being an entrepreneur is kind of like a professional hot girl summer, always.
They Say Control Over Your Life Is Key To Happiness
There are people out there right now saying (and by people I mean sociologists/anthropologists/thought leaders/whatevers) that we will never go back to the office. That WFH (which is way too close to WTF for my liking) is here to stay. The reasoning: employees are happier when they can work from home. Now, as someone who used to manage A LOT of people in one office, I feel like this is unintentionally putting a spin on the messaging that suggests being in an office sucks. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but there are definitely reasons why I do agree that the WFH life is here to stay.
I’m going to ignore all the benefits there are for businesses (and how they will likely take advantage of increased profitability by paying lower wages to out of state workers, lowering overhead generally with less office space AND passing that to their shareholders and not their stakeholders (the employees themselves.)) I’m going to focus instead on why anyone would prefer WFH as the foundation of their employment over an office life.
I Do What I Want
Working in an office (even as the boss) comes with certain rules. These rules [ie. wearing pants, socks, and shoes, or “no eating at your desk”, or “have a desk”, or “don’t take your laptop to the bathroom”] are impediments to personal freedoms. Although there are sanitary reasons that surely drive some of these rules, there’s also the little knocks on your personal freedom. Let’s say you start your day happy as a clam, we’ll call that 100% happy for that day. Each little bit of freedom that is taken from you lowers that rate of happiness. So, your alarm goes off but you slept through it. Now you don’t have time to get a Starbucks on your way in and have to drink the nasty ass office coffee (-7% happiness). That lost time takes away some personal freedom. No big deal, let’s keep going.
There’s a client visiting the office today (mind you, it’s not your client and you have no relation to this client meeting in your work) so you have to dress “presentable” for the client. Can’t wear those yoga pants/sweat pants you wanted to wear today (-5% happiness). Not only that, but there’s going to be a “all hands” staff meeting to prepare for the client visit, so first thing when you get there you have to meet in the conference area for a quick meeting (-4% happiness).
I Do My Best Work Alone
Now, you’re a bit stressed because you have a big project you’re working on and you really want to get it done before you head out to lunch. Unfortunately, your office neighbor (cube/desk/pod/etc.) just happened to have the funniest story to share with you and it’s just one of those stories that seems to never end (-6% happiness). Looks like you won’t be able to get this done before lunch because your supervisor actually wants to grab a bite to eat with you to discuss your progress on that project (-10% happiness).
You Get My Point
I don’t need to even get you past your first coffee break before you’ve already accumulated a negative thirty-two percent (-32%) hit to your happiness that would be completely gone if you had just been working from home that day. Not to mention that you didn’t live in a place that was too expensive for the job that doesn’t pay you enough in the first place anyway, right?
So when I say “personal freedom” I don’t just mean waking up and doing whatever the hell you want, I mean having control over doing whatever it is you have to do today, and doing it your way. This is something that comes with being an entrepreneur. Although sometimes too much freedom can breed laziness and procrastination, there’s an aspect of happiness associated with the control it provides that is probably why so many entrepreneurs love what they do even when it can totally suck.
Endless Summer
This is why I look at my life as a perpetual summer break. Everything that I do, I choose. Sure, sometimes I have to do work for a client that sucks, or sometimes I have 18 hour days of calls/research/drafting and I’m dead by the time I get home, but it’s mine. My work, my choice, my creation. This allows me to wake up every day and feel like it’s the first day of summer all over again, and it’s not just a summer day, it’s a Hot Girl Summer, and it’s a vibe.
