Did working manual labor help you figure things out? I am seriously considering working a job such as the one you described part time to pay the bills after school while I try to build a freelancing business.

Absolutely, I think it kept - and keeps - me sane. Physical stuff is great in that it keeps your body in shape and at the end of a day you can literally touch the result, you can see it, it is solid. Virtual work is much less satisfying in that sense, you could be programming the stars from heaven but if it is business logic internal to some application you'll be happy if some maintenance programmer sees it 10 years down the line.

I think that's a big part of what drives the open source movement, programmers getting appreciation from other programmers about their work in a way that 'closed source' will never give and money can't provide.

The last couple of weeks I spent on two tracks, the one is building a small RV (just drove it to the other side of Europe, so I guess that worked out well :)), and a web project that I hope to launch sometime later this year.

When I'm tired of the one kind of work, I switch to the other, it seems to work better that way.

I think one of the biggest benefits of physical work is that you can more easily turn it completely off.

You have to be in your garage to be woodworking for example. You can't be on the couch with your wife pretending to watch a movie with her.

Perhaps we can also see the quality of work more easily from physical work too.

That's so true. Especially for debugging, that's something I can't ever fully quit until it is done and the bug is squashed. I might as well stay awake until a bug is taken care of once I know about it because I'll just keep on fretting about it and mentally reviewing the code trying to figure out what is going wrong.

That sort of mental occupation does not happen with physical work at all.

I am going to chime in here with my experience on this:

I worked my way through college, mostly as a bartender, and for a little bit as a janitor for the school. In high school I set up large canopy tents for a company. I learned through this that a lot of physical work is cathartic. I can get my frustrations out. I provides my body something to do, and my mind a trivial foreground task, so I can get lost in thought -- not the intense focus of solving a problem, but just a mind wandering, tangential set of thoughts. I learned how nice it is to be able to walk away without concern, without the work consuming my thoughts.

There are two different aspects of all of this from my perspective. One is the exercise portion, bartending can be a good aerobic workout if you let it. Particularly if the bar has good music, basically you dance all night. This really is a good way to "zone". The other aspect of it is the menial task as a gateway to meditation. I mentioned my good thinks above, most of these came sweeping or mopping. Mopping a mile of hallways at night, or cleaning up after the bar closes, provides this, and is a great way to learn to enjoy the quiet.

All of this is hard to get as a professional. I personally would take that job if I were you, just to learn about the stuff I mentioned. The skills have definitely helped me in my life. Anytime I feel burnout coming on, I have to stop and reprioritize. I don't have bars or universities to clean up anymore, and I don't go dancing much. Instead I apply these things to my gardening and yard. Mowing is almost as good as sweeping. So is pulling weeds. The exercise i get by going for long walks, or hitting the gym. Doing this stuff really helps me get centered, and allows me to be more productive than I would be without, even if I reclaimed the couple hours spent on it daily and used them for work.

HTH

edit: thought about, but forgot to mention: There was a big component of bartending: talking to people every day. I am a total introvert, I can go days without talking to people about something other than work. The bartending thing really forced me to interact with people in a social, general way. This is surprisingly important, even if it feels awkward/uncomfortable. At least a couple times a week I go to a coffee shop or bar and interact with strangers, because it really does seem to do something.

Thanks for the great reply. Back in high school I used to work at a real nice hotel doing Bell and Valet service. I remember being quite similar to your experience as a bartender. I wasn't dancing but the job had its own charm in running a mile for cars or seeing how well I could pack the bags in a car and all of the other small things like those that make up a job like that. I also attribute learning how to be more social to this job like you do with your bartender job. Being forced to talk to strangers all day definitely builds up some networking suaveness.

The thing that I really liked about the guest services gig was that the harder I worked the bigger my take. I made a lot of money doing the job and I definitely felt better about it because I knew that if I hadn't put in my best effort I wouldn't have made quite as much. So, I guess what I am trying to assert is that perhaps there is a sort of link me and presumably you, sophacles, who enjoyed working a service job, moreover one that most people hate, because of the nature or getting more value for more work and our interest in entrepreneurship?

Maybe there is that link you assert. I'm not sure tho, what you are saying... I do enjoy the nature of getting more value for work, and I have a passing interest in entrepreneurship, in that it usually involves an interesting challenge. I am however, very unmotivated by money (and value as measured by it) as an end.

To me money is merely a means. The real goals are:

* Interesting problems * Interesting people interactions * adventures * access to cool toys/equipment (and the actual need for it) * changing environment

Money just pays the bills and puts food on the table. I personally have a long history of maximizing the points above (the money has been good enough to not be a problem too :)). Sure, I could work real hard, and get the money to enable the rest, but the net money and benefits would probably be the same, but for more work. Instead I build a way to get my goals into my environment.

Does this match what you were saying?

Yea that definitely does. I am trying to live my life after I graduate from school the same way. My biggest fear is sitting at a desk doing nothing of importance for the next 40 years. Being from a small town and living a pretty boring life for my first quarter I want to have adventure and not just horde piles of junk.