Owning a business, or being owned by one
Knowing how to work hard is not a reason to build another job for yourself. Notes on a different relationship with work.
An open question, not a conclusion.
I have run businesses where I was the person who made everything work: operations, people, customers, logistics, the phone at night. That teaches you a lot. It also teaches you that being able to carry the load is not the same as wanting to.
The trap is subtle. You know how to work hard, so you build something that needs you to work hard. The business grows, and so does the number of things only you can do.
What interests me now is the opposite design brief: businesses that are useful, durable and increasingly independent of my constant attention. Not passive in the fantasy sense, but built so that the routine runs itself and a person is needed where a person is genuinely needed.
Automation is interesting to me for that reason, not because it is fashionable. The real question is whether it changes the relationship between effort, value, ownership and freedom, or just lets you be busy faster.