I first heard the term “gentleman of leisure” used by multimillionaire investor and fund manager Mohnish Pabrai. Pabrai does many things differently than his peers and competitors in the financial industry. He has almost no staff. He has no strict daily work regimen or routine.
Instead, Pabrai considers himself a gentleman of leisure – someone who basically doesn’t need to work, but who capitalizes on opportunities when they become obvious and available to him. He describes Pabrai Funds, wherein he manages over 100 million dollars, as a “gentleman of leisure activity.”
My steady-state assumption is that I am a gentleman of leisure. You know, I was surprised but someone asked my daughters, one of my daughters recently, you know, what does your dad do? And her response was, well he sleeps and he’s on Facebook and that’s it. You know, that was her definition of what I did you know, sleeping and being on Facebook.
Mohnish Pabrai, Source
While I don’t manage hundreds of millions of dollars like Pabrai does, I’ve become fond of this term: gentleman of leisure. I’ve begun thinking of myself as such a gentleman, and already a few things in my mind and my life have changed as a result. Below, I share what those things are, and why, even if you aren’t a multimillionaire, it pays to consider yourself a gentleman of leisure.
Work Is More Fun When You Don’t Need To Do It
We all know people who have retired only to shortly return to work. I can say myself that I’ve always had a drive to create things, whether that’s in the context of a job or business or not.
So even though I now consider myself a gentleman of leisure, I still create things, because that’s simply what I do.
But I now have the added benefit of not having to receive immediate economic benefit from the things I create.
This allows me to think and work in ways that others cannot.
Being a gentleman of leisure frees you to take new approaches in your life because you don’t have the constant weight of needing immediate economic gratification.
If You Didn’t Have to Do Anything, What Would You Do?
One of the questions I encourage people to introspect on if they are trying to create meaningful work is: If you woke up tomorrow and were the last person on earth, what activities would you still do?
Similarly, the gentleman of leisure has the gift (and challenge) of figuring out: Now that I don’t need to do anything, what do I want to do?
If you can figure out what that thing is, you have a huge advantage. You will have done something most people never do. Most people are, to quote a great Frank Zappa album title, “Only In It For The Money.”
If you are a gentleman of leisure and you decide to do something, it means you are doing it for the joy of the thing itself. That will shine through into the final outcome of whatever that thing is.
Longer Time Horizons
There is a great Seinfeld joke about how you’d expect old people to be speeding everywhere because they supposedly have less time left than the rest of us. And yet, they drive very slowly.
Old age ironically makes many people more patient.
Similarly, the gentleman of leisure becomes more patient after graduating from the rat race.
To be stuck in 9-5 life is to be stuck in the day to day, the shortest time horizon possible of work and reward.
The gentleman of leisure, who is less dependent on the money, can look 5, 10, 15 years out. He can afford to be patient and play the long game. He can take his time creating things of higher quality, building a moat that can’t be replicated by his competition in the short term.
A Question and Experiment For You
Do you really want to wait until retirement to see what that phase of your life is going to look like, and try to figure out what you want to do when you get there?
What if instead, you assumed you were a gentleman of leisure, and all your costs were covered until the final curtain fell? What would you feel called to do in your daily life? All too often, that thing is what you should have been doing all along.
Becoming a gentleman of leisure forces you to look beyond the material to derive a sense of meaning. But this change of perspective doesn’t have to be put off until the end of your life.
So even if you don’t want to retire tomorrow – try becoming a gentleman of leisure for a year or two. See how your mindset, daily actions, and work change.
PS: It goes without saying that this experiment is easier to carry out if your liquid net worth covers at least a few years of expenses… Which is one reason to always have an “emergency fund” of at least a few months to a year’s expenses in liquid savings. If you don’t have such a fund yet, perhaps make that your first step on the road to becoming a gentleman of leisure. Not financial advice of course 🙂