see i was making about 150 000 euros a year just after a couple of years of working experience as
a data analyst eventually working as a freelancer for a big bank in Amsterdam
i honestly thought i had it all now earning more than i've
ever could dream of i bought my own house i travel a lot i even have some extra money to invest
and i've quit i've left everything behind and i've quit my job before it's too late
let me explain over the last five years i've learned three lessons that made me decide to
take a risk quit my job and start living the life i want today i'm sharing them with you
lesson one at the start of my career when i was doing a traineeship i got to work for a
company through that same traineeship that built the infrastructure for big telecom providers in
holland and this company was not located near a big city in Holland and why is this important?
well the people working there were also not from a big city they had a different kind of mentality
i would say they were a little bit more down to earth maybe their life was a little slower than
those living in a big city you know how they always say in a big city everything is so fast
the tempo is a little bit higher but these guys seem a little bit more calm chill down to earth
and these guys there were mostly guys working at this company were kind of you know tough guys and
i remember one guy in particular let's call him Bert Bert was one of those like he was a tough
guy he was messing around making fun of everyone but in a light-hearted way he was a good guy and
i remember talking to him and he explained how he actually got to work for that company when he was
18 finished high school he basically just walked into in the office said hey i'm looking for a job
do you need someone they offered him his first job being in the field doing some kind of construction
building the infrastructure and he worked his way up to some kind of project management role
our department was focused on just one client and one day the client decided to pull the plug
they were not satisfied with the quality of work we were delivering and they said they did not
want to work with us anymore so from one day to the other our manager had to tell everyone in
our department that it's done we're done people had to start looking for other jobs there was
basically going to be reorganisation in the company and the moment the manager said this
some of those guys some of those 30 40 people that were working there including Bert the tough
guy started breaking down in tears and started crying i can remember them hearing them cry asking
what am i going to do how am i going to pay my mortgage how am i going to feed my kids remember
he's been working there for 40 years already and he just lost his job this was a big turning point
in my life and it was also one of the lessons i wanted to share with you today that day i realized
that no matter how hard you work no matter how permanent you think your permanent job is
there's things you don't have control over and Bert and some other guys grown men cried that
day because they didn't have a plan b because they were only dependent on one source of income
being that job that they lost that day so that's why i learned your permanent job is not
so permanent that's where i decided i eventually want to be my own boss i want to work for myself
i want to build something myself and not be dependent on a manager or a ceo or whoever
lesson number two now before this sounds like something a typical entitled millennial would say
hear me out i can remember a nice summer day back in 2021 i was walking through a nice big park in
Amsterdam with a good friend of mine it was a really sunny Friday morning i was always free
on Fridays as i had that day reserved for youtube i worked four days in a week as a data analyst so
i had one day in the week where i could focus on shooting videos writing scripts but to be honest
we didn't do any shooting that day because we were just enjoying the sun the weather our nice
conversations and we randomly came across this it looked like a swimming pool but it was only
this deep basically a swimming pool for your feet in the middle of the park in the middle of this
forest so we took off our shoes and we just stood there talking enjoying the sun and i can remember
one of the conversations we had is how this good friend of mine had a colleague at work that just
couldn't understand that my friend was only working four days a week that he wasn't working
full time and he asked my friend what do you do on that day off what do you do on that Friday i
cannot understand why wouldn't you want to work we were laughing about this because we couldn't
understand him how couldn't you appreciate an extra day off where you have extra time
to spend with your family extra time to work on your health extra time to go on adventures extra
time to work on a side project on your hobbies to learn new skills new languages there's so
many things you can do in that one extra day off and i just couldn't understand where he was coming
from why would he ask that and i asked myself why is this but to answer that question first
i need to ask myself why do we work in the first place well usually because of one of three reasons
being play purpose or pressure with pressure i mean economic pressure or emotional pressure
emotional pressure because you have to make your parents proud by becoming a successful lawyer
or doctor and economic pressure because you have to do work to get compensated so you can sustain
yourself and your life either way economic or emotional the motive for work is separate from the
work itself you do the work because you have to not because you like to do it this is actually the
worst reason to work yet ironically this is why most people work now the next motive is purpose
this motive is also separated from the work itself but you do it because you value the outcome and
the results of your work for example a nurse might not like the high stress environment she
works in but what keeps her going is the fact that she's able to help people to heal patients
same reason why people work at a charity and accept the low pay because they have a sense that
they're making a positive impact on the world that they're helping the world purpose is a very strong
motivator to work but it's still not optimal as you don't enjoy the work itself but you value
the outcome of your work and then there is players work play is what occurs when you simply like to
do something the work itself is the reward play is when you play a music instrument when you go on a
hike read a book play video games solve puzzles create videos play is when you're in a state of
flow fueled by curiosity and experimentation and for this reason people intrinsically want
to learn more and improve the work itself is the greatest motive work that feels like play
is the most powerful driver for high performance and consequently success and for success i have
one simple definition doing work that feels like play fulfills a purpose and gets you paid there
is a Japanese term for this Ikigai and there is an Ikigai for everyone if you are not lucky enough to
find your Ikigai in your current workplace then that should be your goal to create a life where
you are doing work motivated by play and purpose i mean why wouldn't you as far as i know we only
have one life that means you have about 50 60 years left to do whatever you want and i get it
if you're currently doing work motivated by pressure this costs a lot of energy both mentally
and physically after a hard day of working because you have to you want to come home and unwind how
are you going to work on building a life fueled by play and purpose if you don't have the energy
nor the time to actually do so this is what people mean when you're stuck in the rat race when you're
stuck in this 905 life but i learned it's what you do in the five to nine that determines the rest
of your life it can take one year five years maybe even 10 years but as long as you don't do anything
you'll end up in exactly the same spot you are in right now it took me about seven years to
give myself at least a shot at living the life i want to live i work my way up from a trainee to an
employer from an employer to a freelancer and from a freelancer to now currently a growing content
creator because i found creating videos and sharing stories feels most like play to me while
fulfilling a purpose and potentially getting paid enough to sustain myself and this is something
i was missing in my job as a data analyst even though there was a little bit of room to express
myself creatively in building dashboards and i got to work with cool colleagues i was missing the
sense of purpose because to be honest it wasn't fulfilling in fact i would sometimes ask myself
why am i actually doing the stuff i'm doing i could never see the positive impact i was making
on society how were my dashboards impacting society and the people around me in a positive way
it wasn't that clear but okay so now that we've learned that a full-time job is not so secure
as you think it is and that ideally you should do work that feels like play how do we actually make
a living out of play this brings me to lesson three back in high school i was around 17 years
maybe i had to make the decision of what i was going to study and therefore what i wanted to be
later on in life what kind of job i wanted to have but the thing is i had no prior work experience
yeah as delivering newspapers and working at a supermarket how was i supposed to know what
study to pick therefore what kind of job i wanted to have for the rest of my life basically i didn't
even know what it meant to have a real job what do you do all day in an office but i just had to make
one of the most important decisions in my life basically impacting the rest of my future based
on no experience and no knowledge so what did i do i just picked a study that sounded interesting the
study itself not the possibilities that i could have after studying and it really felt like i
had to pick this one thing that i was going to do for the rest of my life but nobody told me
about e-commerce nobody told me about drop shipping nobody told me about investing i
didn't know Youtubers were making money i didn't know content creation was a thing nobody told me
that it's not about getting a job and working it's about creating value and getting rewarded for it
you see you can work in a restaurant 80 hours a week but you're not going to get rich because
it's not about working hard it's about offering value and it's simple really we get compensated
proportionally to the amount of value we can bring to society to the world now when i look at myself
over the years i've acquired the skills and the knowledge to become a data analyst since
so much data is generated by companies nowadays companies need to analyze and utilize this data
to get the competitive edge they need data analyst jobs are high in demand but there are just not
enough people to fill up all those jobs good data analysts are scarce and therefore valuable but the
value i have to offer will always be limited by my time there's only so many hours in a day meaning
there's only so many dashboards and reports i can build i get compensated for the amount of hours it
takes me to build a dashboard but once i've built a dashboard and it gets used for weeks months
maybe even years long after i finished building that dashboard i don't get compensated anymore
so i get compensated for the amount of hours i put in into building the dashboard building the report
analyzing the data rather than the value it might bring to the company i get compensated for my
input the amount of hours rather than the output the value my work brings and this is the exact
reason i've quit my job to pursue something where i get rewarded fairly for the amount of value i
bring and not for how many hours i've put in when i create a video on youtube that's not valuable to
the world i don't get a lot of views and i get compensated accordingly i don't get anything
however when i do make a video that's considered valuable maybe it's entertaining or educational
and it does get a lot of views i also get rewarded accordingly it doesn't matter how many hours i've
put into creating both videos i get rewarded for my output not for my input and it gets better
my videos will exist on youtube long after i've created them meaning my videos will be of value to
some people long after i've created them meaning i will get compensated for that value it brings
long after i've created them and it gets even better i can do this at skill i can make one
video that can potentially get viewed by millions of people meaning it can be of value to millions
of people and i get compensated accordingly so my composition is not limited by my time unlike
my data analyst job and unlike the waiter at a restaurant that cannot serve a million tables at
the same time he cannot leverage his skills he cannot scale up the value he's bringing
to the world so do i feel some sense of guilt for quitting a job that a lot of people would consider
a dream job definite but to be honest i would feel more guilty if i would have the opportunity
to build a life that i actually want to live but not do so because that would be a true disgrace to
the people that do not even have the opportunity to build a life they want to live although i think
a lot of people have the opportunity to build the life they want to have but do not realize
so because in fact if you're watching this video that means you have a mobile phone a laptop or a
computer and an internet connection and with those things you can learn almost anything you want
online for free that's what i did i didn't go to film school i didn't know anything about
cameras i just watched a lot of youtube videos i learned everything online picked up a camera
some lenses and started creating videos and i'm trying to build a life based on making
videos is it scary 100 but i'm still gonna do it because as i said i think it's scarier to
know that you have the opportunity to create a life you want to have but choose to not do so
and accept this kind of mediocre life where you're surviving instead of thriving now that
sounds a lot scarier to me than just going for it at least trying so if you're still watching that
means you have a mobile phone that means you have a laptop and an internet connection go for it go
figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life and then go do it go get good at it
and build the life you want i know it sounds cliche i'm getting an emotional here i know
it sounds cliche but if i can do it then you can definitely do it i will be sharing my journey my
struggles and my life lessons on this channel i'm glad to have you on this journey with me cheers
over the last five years i've learned length i get rewarded rewarded i get rewarded for the amount of
put into creating both videos videos what the [ __ ] i am starting to become danish is it scary
100 percent but i'm still doing it yeah is there doing it see how confident i am