If you’ve been online on any entrepreneurship blog for more than five minutes in the last four years, you already know that you need to follow your passions and do what you love. This is the best career advice out there. Getting a job is so 1990s. These days you have to follow your passions or else you’re just wasting your time.
What exactly does this mean? I don’t know. The world that I live in there are bills to be paid and money’s needed. Money isn’t evil. You can’t always just be following your passions.
I wanted to look at the idea of why a real job is good for you in your 20s before you attempt to work for yourself or you try to start your own online business. I’m going to explain the benefits of working a 9-5, while you try to pursue side interests.
Let’s get started!
You Learn How to Master Time Management
You don’t have any time to waste when you have a job that you’re committed to. You have 8 hours of work in a day. On top of this, you also have to travel to and from work, prepare your meals, and worry about any other commitments that you might have.
So in other words, you’re forced to make the most out of the little free time that you can somehow squeeze in. If you ever want to be a full-time entrepreneur, you’ll be smacked with the reality that is very scarce. You never seem to have enough time for anything. You always wish that you had more time.
When you work a job and try to get a business off the ground, you’ll see what it’s like to be forced into mastering time management. It won’t be easy, but it’ll show you what you’re made of. You might have to untag yourself from Facebook photos a few days later.
You Interact with People.
Being forced to show up at work every money creates an environment where you have to constantly be interacting with others. You learn how to work in a team, become a leader, help others, and to put up with annoying co-workers. You’re constantly surrounded by others and by tasks to complete.
This is high valuable when you eventually decide to branch off on your own. You’ll have that experience of being a leader, follower, and student.
When thinking about what to do after college, it’s easy to get caught up in the idea of “being your own boss.” I suggest that you work a bunch of jobs while you attempt to start a business, so that you don’t get bored and earn that valuable experience of being apart of an established team. There are just so many hidden benefits in working for a highly efficient group.
Oh and there’s one more benefit of working for a company…
You Make Money
When you work for yourself money is NEVER guaranteed. There will be months where your laughing all the way to the bank. Then there will be times where things are lean and you’re struggling to pay the bills.
When you have a job, you work and you get paid. There’s no disputing this formula. As fun as it is for online bloggers to laugh at the idea of a job, the reality is that steady income beats no income.
It’s also important to have money coming in just in case you have any debt from your student credit cards or from your student loans. Most 20-somethings don’t have the luxury of being debt free. College tuition fees are soaring and credit cards are used fair too freely. Many young people will have debt to deal with. Your first job should help you deal with this debt.
That’s why I totally recommend working what they call a “real job” in your youth. If you want to explore how you can use your free time to make more money, then I highly urge you to check out my freshly self-published book. You’ll see how your little bit of free time can actually lead to more money and more fun down the road. You owe it to yourself.
About MD
