The Shift That Makes Vacation "Optional"

In partnership with

The thing about loving your work is that it becomes invisible. You know that Sunday night feeling?

The dread. The weight in your stomach.

The mental countdown to Monday morning alarm. Most people live there. Every week. For decades. But some people don't.

They check their phone on Saturday morning and see work emails. Instead of anger, they feel curiosity. Instead of resentment, they feel pulled in. They respond because they want to, not because they have to.

Their friends think they're workaholics. Their family worries they never rest. But here's what nobody understands: they're not working harder.

Work stopped feeling like work. When you love what you do, the boundaries disappear. Not because you're obsessed or unhealthy, but because the thing you do for money happens to be the thing you'd do for free.

You wake up thinking about problems you want to solve. You go to bed with ideas spinning in your head. You talk about your projects at dinner parties, and people either think you're inspiring or insufferable.

The weekend becomes just another day. Not because you can't relax, but because you don't need to escape. There's nothing to recover from when Monday doesn't feel like a prison sentence.

Vacation becomes optional. You might travel, you might rest, but you don't desperately need to run away from your life every few months just to remember who you are. Hobbies become irrelevant.

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

This is the easiest way for a busy person wanting to learn AI in as little time as possible:

1. Sign up for The Rundown AI newsletter

2. They send you 5-minute email updates on the latest AI news and how to use it

3. You learn how to become 2x more productive by leveraging AI

Sign up to start learning.

Not because you're boring, but because your main thing already lights you up. You don't need side projects to feel creative or fulfilled. This isn't about hustle culture or grinding 24/7.

This is about alignment. Most people trade time for money doing things they don't care about. Then they use that money to buy back pieces of themselves on nights and weekends.

But when work becomes play, when your skills match your interests, when your paycheck comes from doing what you'd do anyway – everything changes. You stop living for Friday.

You stop counting down to retirement. You stop needing so much stuff to fill the emptiness that comes from spending most of your waking hours doing things that don't matter to you.

This is what freedom actually looks like. Not having no work, but having work that doesn't feel like work.

The best part? Once you taste it, you can never go back to normal.