What’s Wrong With Being ‘All In’?

Being ‘all in’ carries stigmas.

It tends to mean you’re obsessed. Obsessed with your idea. Or obsessed with working long hours. Something negative.

Is there a non-workaholic, essentialist place on the scale between being average and being reckless with yourself?

##**Doing work that matters? **

If the work you’ve enrolled in is worthy of the time and life it needs from you, congratulations.

Being ‘all in’ is about bringing the best of you to the things that you do. Not relative to income or opportunity, but relative to you. You don’t need a promotion, deal or pay rise to do your best work. You need only choose.

We choose to marginalize ourselves by counting beans and cursing stars, or to be proud of a healthy-yet-full day of commitment and craft.

##**Not doing work that matters? **

If the work you’ve enrolled in is not worthy of your time and the life it needs from you, I’m sorry to hear that.

You may want to do something about that.

But until you do, we still get to choose what kind of a person we want to be: someone who brings your very best to the opportunities of the day, or someone who begrudgingly does the minimum until something shinier comes along.

Workaholism isn’t the point (it’s actually a pretty bad idea). Income isn’t the point either (it doesn’t control our effort, we do).

Are you the type of person who goes ‘all in’?