Money and Happiness

If you haven't heard of Tim Ferriss, you probably will. He's the blogger making some waves with his book "The Four Hour Work Week". Whether you think his ideas are practical or absurd, they at least make you sit down and think for a minute. Today, I found this argument against money = happiness on his site. Coming off a week where I put in 120 hours on just one project, this post hits home like a ton of bricks. What the hell am I doing putting myself in a position where I have to work 120 hours a week?

If you don't know, I'm a computer programmer. I work in a small business where I'm often the only technical person on staff. Our primary business isn't software or hosting or anything like that so I develop and host systems to support our work and our clients' work. Unfortunately, I'm overextended and underspecialized (if that's a word) leading to a continual state of chaos in my day-to-day work. Extended periods of apathy and low productivity driven by task overload eventually lead to long hours of work where, ignoring all other tasks, I focus in on one deadline.

In either case, I suffer, my wife suffers, my son suffers...everyone around me suffers for my stupid job. One of these days, it will change, but then again, I say that everytime I go through a week like last week. Maybe having it in writing will make it real.