The 9-5 or Your Passion 24/7?

Hey amorteurs,

Happy New Year! If no one's told you personally, let me be the one.

This issue concerns whether to work a stable 9-5 job or work on your passion 24/7, inspired by this tweet from @thesyedhuq. Check him out, he's one of the best young rising creators on the Twitter scene.

Before we begin, if you're looking to launch a newsletter, click here for that plus love and New Year's blessings from me.

Let's get started.

The 9-5 Job or Your Passion 24/7?

Twitter hates the 9-5.

You can't escape it. We're living in the digital age where everyone's making it on their own time and on their own terms.

Digital Freedom is within reach for all of us. As a result, the stable 9-5 is getting a lot of hate, especially as economic stability declines and the number of people seeking personal fulfillment rises.

So the question stands:

Security First, Passion Second?

Should we follow security or high-risk, high-reward?

We all want the 10k/month lifestyle. Yet the truth is, not all of us get there.

Creating and the digital lifestyle are not for everyone. But for the few that seek it, how do they go about it?

The conventional approach, as gleaned from the replies and my own personal understanding, is:

1. Keep the 9-5 as your main source of income.

2. Work on the passion project as a side hustle until it takes over.

But there's a glaring problem:

Passion Projects Require Intensity

For a passion project to succeed, you need intensity.

You may not see it, but most creators start working on their craft 24/7.

Literally, all day. Syed himself puts it best.

You can't get "24/7"-type hours if you dedicate half an hour at the end of each work day to it.

(Though that's certainly a perfect way to start!)

Passion projects require passionate intensity. But you have the 9-5 to maintain.

And you don't want to quit what's paying the bills. Or, in my case, what's paying for my Chipotle 😋

Here's an idea that may let you have both cakes, eat them too, and duplicate them before the next patch:

The Solution: Passion Sprints

I recently had winter break. It's been draining but also great.

Draining in that family parties are killing my social battery.

Great in that I have so much unexpected free time.

Like so much. Now that I'm not writing 1 bajillion papers or responding with the minimum viable word target for Canvas discussion posts, I have so much free time to work on my content.

(I'm still working part-time though 😜)

During this time, I'm getting more done than I ever did writing 30 min to an hour during the semester. The focus is incredible.

This is obvious but understated: focus is the prime metric. 60 minutes of deep work is better than 60 minutes of scattered work split between 6 days (as far as content batching goes).

So here's your fix: run passion sprints.

1. Determine when you have undisturbed off-time from work and school (vacations, breaks, weekends, days off)

2. Schedule dedicated deep work blocks to only progress your passion projects (top business priorities, digital products, etc.)

3. When you return back to work, maintain the minimum viable daily maintenance habits (engagements, tweets, etc.)

Let me know what you think!

Cheers, internauts.

Thanks for reading this newsletter. You have my greatest appreciation.

If you haven't already:

1. Follow me on Twitter @amorwriter for more digital writing advice impersonation.

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P.S. For making digital writing easy, check this newsletter I wrote last week. Oh you won't >:)