Passive Work

I used to feel bad for spending hours watching videos on Youtube, reading articles on Wikipedia, and watching series on Netflix instead of working.

And somehow, I realized.

This is passive work.

I receive information about fields I’m not initially interested in, and then I’m a professional woodworker. I can also raise kittens, chop an onion in 12 seconds, and edit videos on Final Cut Pro.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’ve even tried doing these things. But watching all these videos, and reading all those articles on Wikipedia and Medium made me more likely to undertake new challenges and learn things I had no idea ever existed.

I call that passive work. The art of expanding one’s culture, and mentally learning new skills by consuming content daily. This helps us apprehend new topics much more easily by providing us with disorganized chunks of knowledge.