When we are good at something the temptation is to keep doing it. Sometimes for way longer than necessary.
For example, people that are good at making money tend to keep making money, even though they will never be able to spend everything they earn. This is a sad waste of life. Spending time doing something just because you are good at it, when the rewards are meaningless, is a frittering away of your most precious and irreplaceable asset – your time.
Don’t misunderstand what I am saying here – if you get an immense amount of pleasure from the activity – more pleasure than you would from any other activity that you could be doing – then it is not a waste of time to keep doing it. But how many people are actually doing the thing that gives them the most pleasure? So if you enjoy your work then that’s great. But if you don’t enjoy your work quite as much as, say, salmon fishing or waterskiing, then carrying on working when you don’t need the money is foolish. Better to quit work and spend your time doing things that you love and enjoy more. The late publishing tycoon, Felix Dennis, in his book “How to Get Rich,” said, “If I had my time again, knowing what I know today, I would dedicate myself to making just enough to live comfortably ($60-$80M) as quickly as I could – by the time I was 35. I would then cash out and retire to write poetry and plant trees”. Dennis died in 2014 leaving an estate worth in excess of £200 million to a charity that he had set up to plant and manage a 3,000 acre forest. He also left several volumes of poetry.