The internet is teeming with promises of what awaits you if you leave your 9–5 to pursue the dream of being a “creator” or going into business for yourself. You get to set your own schedule. Freedom.
But what if jumping ship sets you up for a life of “slavery” instead?
In the story of Passover, we recount that “the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with heavy labor.”
The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that the sages defined “heavy labor” as “work that has no time limit.”
For example: “dig until I return” is a lot different from “dig for 20 minutes.”
Rabbi Sacks explained that there are two aspects of slavery: physical and psychological. The psychological effects can sometimes be worse than the physical effects.
The “heavy labor” was designed to crush the spirit of the slaves, by depriving them of the freedom to make decisions about how to use their time.
The sages were way ahead of modern science.
The nervous system relies on having a beginning, a middle, and an end. When we don’t have a time marker for an activity, the nervous system turns hyper vigilant.
In a state of hyper vigilance, it reacts to every external stimulus.There’s only so much the nervous system can tolerate in this state. When we’re here for too long, we burn out.
There are many types of work where we might think we’re free, but we are actually a slave to when a client is ready or a client needs us.
If you’re building your schedule around the needs of clients, you’re not free.
This also applies to creative work.
When you sit down to create, do you have a time limit, or do you stay in front of thew computer until you “feel complete” with your current project?
If you don’t set a time limit or some other objective marker, you may be in the illusion of free, but you’re not free.
Freedom comes within a structure. Ironically, we find ultimate freedom the more we are ahere to a time line.
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