In an interview with the Harvard Business Review, the then
\n79-year-old (now 83) Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian David
\nMcCullough explained why he had no intention of retiring from
\nwriting.<\/p>\n
“I’m having a ball. I can’t wait to get out of bed every morning.
\nTo me, it’s the only way to live.<\/p>\n
“When the founders wrote about life, liberty, and the pursuit of
\nhappiness, they didn’t mean longer vacations and more comfortable
\nhammocks. They meant the pursuit of learning. The love of
\nlearning. The pursuit of improvement and excellence.<\/p>\n
“I keep telling students, Find work you love. Don’t concern
\nyourself overly about how much money is involved or whether
\nyou’re ever going to be famous.<\/p>\n
I’m giving a talk at Dartmouth this week. It’s called the Hard
\nWork of Writing. And it is hard work. But in hard work is
\nhappiness.”<\/p>\n
However, there’s a flaw in David’s hard work equals happiness
\nequation.<\/p>\n
Namely, it only holds when you actually like or love the work you
\ndo.<\/p>\n
Conversely, if you work 9 to 5, forty hours a week at a job that
\neither bores you or you actively dislike — or even hate — the
\nresult is the opposite of happiness.<\/p>\n
You feel like a prisoner or indentured slave, stuck seemingly
\nforever in a rut. And as my late client SK once observed, “A rut
\nis a grave without a cover.”<\/p>\n
To me the 4 most important things in my life are (a) my family,
\n(b) our health, (c) having enough money that we are financially
\nsecure, and (d) having work I don’t just like but absolutely
\nlove.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, I more or less have most of those items on the list.
\nI was recently in a car crash, which endangered item B for me,
\nbut after just 4 weeks of physical therapy, I was 100% recovered.<\/p>\n
I can’t exactly articulate why I love reading and writing so much
\n— I just do. I have written since the 7th grace, and now, as I
\nwill be 60 in July, there is still nothing I would rather do.<\/p>\n
I have other interests. I have a few hobbies. My wife and I
\nsocialize with friends. But that’s peripheral for me.<\/p>\n
If I can write 10 to 12 hours a day, working on projects that
\ninterest me — and I am careful to take on only those writing
\nprojects that do — and then read after work, I am a happy camper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an interview with the Harvard Business Review, the then 79-year-old (now 83) Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian David McCullough explained why he had no intention of retiring from writing. “I’m having a ball. I can’t wait to get out of bed every morning. To me, it’s the only way to live. “When the founders wrote about life, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1152,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bly.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}