One underrated and inspiring book to read if you absolutely hate your job

Apr 04, 2023

There’s nothing that will get you motivated to make big changes in your life like absolutely hating your job.

A crappy job (or just working for crappy people) can be truly suffocating.

It’s not just that it consumes so many of your precious, finite hours on this planet — though that is surely a big part of it — it’s that you know you’re trapped.

You need shelter, you need to eat, and thus you know your employer has you over a barrel.

Around the start of the COVID pandemic, I was in a dark, dark place regarding my employment situation.

The pay was great, but the work was boring and unfulfilling and the management was brutal.

Although I have a new 9-to-5 now — one I quite like and that pays me even better than before — I spent a lot of time looking for ideas about how to escape my previous situation.

There was one book that I happened upon right away that set me on my current course of generating an average of more than $50 per day in side hustle income in just 5 months.

I do like my job right now, but I know employees are expendable and I’ve always wanted to own my own business.

I also want to ensure I have options and emergency income should anything pop up that I can’t cover with my salary.

The underrated book I discovered is called The 10 Pillars of Wealth by Alex Becker.

Let me tell you why it’s one of my all-time favorites.

An illustration of a motivated man reading a book in a rainstorm. — A digital illustration of a motivated man reading a book in a rainstorm (Credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

Traffic fighters

Becker’s writing style is, quite frankly, pretty arrogant.

That’s one of the reasons I love it so much.

You can tell Becker has an absolute disdain for 9-to-5 life and society’s acceptance of it as a necessary evil.

Becker spent a lot of time in a job he absolutely hated — as a firefighter in the U.S. Air Force — and that’s one of the things that drove him to build his own businesses and control his own life.

His depiction at the start of the book of thousands and thousands of people on the freeway commuting to their crappy, soul-sucking jobs as “traffic fighters” hooked me right away.

I’ve always hated going into an office.

I truly despise the whole process and experience, from getting up early, sitting on the freeway, sitting on my a** in a cubicle all day, going to pointless meetings, participating in mandatory office fun, making chit-chat, to sitting on the freeway again instead of spending time with my kids or on my hobbies.

Some people love a lot of this stuff and more power to them. They are clearly better built for this society than I am.

For the rest of us, Becker’s book is an antidote.

A path to freedom

I started listening to Becker’s book on lunchtime walks down a nearby forest path around the start of the pandemic.

It was the best part of my day.

Not only did Becker’s message and delivery speak to me, even the audiobook narrator sounded like he had a f**k you attitude toward society’s vision of a great job.

If I had to describe him, I’d say he’s like a sarcastic, angrier version of Jimmy Kimmel.

(Side note: I’m going to drop my affiliate link for the book right here if you’re interested in picking it up. It’s super cheap and, like I said, worth every penny.

I only listen to audiobook versions of self-help because that allows me to do things like walk down forest paths while I learn from them.

If you’re new to Audible, you can listen to this audiobook for free if you sign up for an Audible trial using this affiliate link.

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming).

Becker walks through his 10 pillars in a funny and engaging way, sketching out a path to escaping the 9-to-5 life.

As I said, I’m not quite free of those bonds just yet, but Becker’s lessons have set me on a course to building a significant income on the side as I build toward freedom.

A man hiking up a mountain made of money. — The path to riches (Credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

Main pillars

I strongly urge you to check out the book, but two lessons he teaches have already changed my life.

One of the pillars really grinds down on the importance of separating time from money.

If you’re building a business that’s just going to suck more hours of your life than the 9-to-5 did and that you have no hope of scaling, you’re headed in the wrong direction.

Trust me, nothing is more satisfying or motivating than getting out of bed in the morning and checking how much money you made while you were sleeping. This is the kind of work you should be gravitating toward.

Another pillar explains what I think is the most important lesson of the entire book: focusing solely on what gets you paid.

Earlier in my side hustle journey, I was constantly getting distracted by shiny things and wasting an insane amount of time on unprofitable side projects.

In his unique and memorable way, Becker explains why and how you need to focus your energies in certain directions or you won’t get anywhere.

Although I am currently working on side hustle projects like my YouTube channel and two new websites that have yet to generate income, I try to only spare time for that once I’ve taken care of the tasks that get me paid first.

I’m not perfect, I do still slip and get distracted from time to time, but I’ve been able to stay on track for the most part.

The consistent side income speaks for itself.

Start now

My only regret after reading this book is that I waited so long to apply the lessons from it.

I was in a very dark place during the pandemic, depressed and trapped on an alcohol hamster wheel that kept me tired and unable to focus on fulfilling work or reaching my goals.

Now that I’ve cleaned up my bad habits and figured out the true, core secret to success — consistent, small wins every day that compound into exponential gains down the line — I finally feel like I’m on the right track.

At the end of the day, it’s one thing to read a book, it’s another to sit down and do the work necessary to succeed.

But if you hate your job and you don’t know where to start your escape plan, or you’re in the middle of your journey and you’re just looking for an audiobook to pump you up and keep you focused, I cannot recommend this one highly enough.

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