Conventional wisdom says that if you work hard you will always come out on top, but we have identified 3 ways of freeing yourself from that default outcome while maintaining an endless grind.

As every good American knows, the only way to not succeed in our free country is to be incredibly lazy. Opportunity is everywhere for anyone who tries, and there is enough to go around for everyone. The myth of wealth disparity in our fine nation is really evidence of an effort disparity, with those on top having earned their fortune with good old elbow grease and know-how, while most of us were giving into our sinful penchant for idleness and slack. The proof of hard work is in the bank.

But what if, for some reason, you wanted to work really hard without getting filthy rich? While we cannot imagine that actually being a thing, just in case anyone decides to try it, here are three ways you can sabotage your own success while partaking in Sisyphean labors.

Do What You Love

While this is not a guaranteed method of failure-by-effort, and in fact there is no foolproof way to lose with hard work in America, it does succeed more often than 9 out of 10 times. Sure, some people are able to harness their most heartfelt passions into a rewarding career, but most people’s interests and/or approaches are so singularly unique that there is just not a wide enough market for them to risk making it big. And while there are many fields in which one might toil mightily without gaining any ground, those who really want to swim against the currents of conquest would be wise to explore creative endeavors, especially in the arts.

Even though almost every advance of humankind has been imagined into existence by creative laborers, rarely do they ever see earnings for their efforts. Instead their ideas are appropriated, co-opted or bought out for almost nothing by those with the moral fiber, courage, resources and power to make them profitable. While there are numerous cases of artists, musicians, authors and other creative types gaining wealth and prestige – the vast majority of those who work in the medium of imagination are relative socioeconomic failures. So if you love hard work, but have some kinky aversion to prosperity, the arts are a good bet.

There are many other ways to wrangle your inner purpose into financial defeat that require no imagination whatsoever. Social activism is a great example. Putting your back into making the world a better place can require constant effort that will usually have zero net return, and often even land you in the red, and perhaps even in jail or dead under mysterious circumstances. Unless you are unlucky enough to strike YouTube gold or become a pseudo-celebrity on Medium or Patreon, fighting on the front lines of social justice will probably allow you years of struggle without risking any personal gain.

And if you tried doing the thing you love and still prevailed in spite of the odds, do the thing you love second best, and chances are that an existential and financial stalemate will be waiting for you in the near future.

Lose the Birth Lottery

If you think that the circumstances into which we are born, and the often inescapable trajectories they plunge us into, are beyond our ability to control – you need to stop playing the victim and take responsibility for how your eternal soul decided to enter this world. Those of you who cannot accept your own hand in your fate do not need the advice in this article to fail.

In America almost any courageous soul who is born poor and black will have heightened abilities to avoid the accomplishments awaiting them at every corner. Black privilege is the cornerstone of profit-free struggle in our proud nation, and the forefathers expressly fought to protect the right of people of potential means to avoid accomplishment by racial identity. Pigmentation is a powerful tool for eschewing ascendancy, regardless of how hard you might otherwise endeavor.

Even if you are already not black, you might have chosen to be born just plain poor, Hispanic, female, homosexual, trans or some other kind of outcast or minority, since historically their probability of success has tended not to increase in response to effort nearly as often as straight white males born to even moderately affluent families.

If you are raging against the proverbial machine just because the circumstances you were born into make advancement too easy, stop blaming the system – it didn’t force you to rise up from the primordial sludge of cosmic potential into whatever human form you have taken. Heck, it didn’t even give birth to you. If you let the machine pick your numbers and were unable to avoid losing the birth lottery, that’s still on you.

Avoid Good Luck

Of all the obstacles to limiting gains through increased industriousness, none can be as devastating to mediocrity as a bit of good luck. Most setbacks that occur to our success, natural and personal disasters that derail us from the fast track to achievement, are simply a matter of avoiding good luck. Where some may snub fortune and fame through the simple grace of health issues, criminal activity and natural catastrophe – others will careen skyward simply because they do not actively work to avoid good luck.

While you might think that we do not have much of a say in the sort of luck we experience, there is absolutely loads of statistical data to illustrate otherwise. Most good luck has nothing to do with chance, but comes from simply avoiding certain risks. Certainly you are not looking to invite disaster, but if you learn to balance the tightrope of risk statistics, you can position yourself somewhere between serendipity and sorrow.

For instance, say you are going to take a business trip, and want to know how to travel at medium risk. Since airplanes are the safest, and cars the most potentially dangerous, the best bet is to take a train – since it lies statistically between the other two forms of transportation, so far as likelihood of accidental misfortune is concerned. The same goes for diet. Eat foods that straddle the center of statistical probability for heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Sex? Use a condom only half the time. You get the picture.

Of course memorizing countless statistics and incorporating them into your daily activities is going to take a lot of effort, and so when you do eventually fail despite all that hard work, it will be that much more rewarding.

Nobody ever said life would be easy, but it is. However it doesn’t have to be. Just because you happened to be born American doesn’t mean you have to settle for success. It is your right to carve out your own destiny, and if you wish to avoid automatic accomplishment, but still want to put in the work, there are more ways than we have listed of doing just that. The only thing standing between you and a perpetual treadmill of anxiety and debt are the choices you make today, so unless you are willing to pull the rug out from under yourself with considerable strain, don’t complain about how easy it is to be a winner. There’s always a choice.

Written by Joshua Scott Hotchkin

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