Four Steps to Achieving a “Work-Free” Life

I read a piece this weekend by Paul Lawrence called Never Work a Day in Your Life Again. In it, Lawrence sets out four steps to achieving your goals. His point is not actually that you won’t have to work for a living, but that if you can get paid for doing something you love, it won’t feel like work. And you’ll be much happier than if you just have a ‘job,’ regardless of how much money that job brings in.

Here are Lawrence’s four steps: First, ask yourself what you would do if you could do anything you wanted, regardless of how much money it made. If you would be financially taken care of no matter what, what would you do? Then take that idea and develop a plan for how to make money doing what you love. Once you have the plan, you need a strategy and action steps for achieving the plan. And finally, you need to actually execute the steps.

While these four steps are simple, they aren’t necessarily easy. Like many things, it isn’t difficult to know or understand what to do – the difficult part is actually doing it.

You can apply these same four steps to your legal career, but it’s tough to do on your own. Some people are great at making the plan, but stall when it comes to defining the action steps. Others have no problem identifying the steps, but have difficulty overcoming the obstacles to taking action. Still others are paralyzed when the initial plan needs to be modified or changed.

So what do you do if you’re having trouble following the four step plan to doing what you love? Don’t try to go it alone. Get some help. Educate yourself. Find a mentor, colleague, coach, consultant, advisor or other expert to help you get over those hurdles. But don’t give up.

To learn about how I help my clients overcome their obstacles, click here.