KalDer (www.kalder.org) has asked Ernie Zelinski to make a keynote speech about The Joy of Not Working at their 17th Annual Congress in Istanbul, 24th – 26th November 2008.

Ernie's one hour keynote speech will be made on November 26th at 9:30 AM.

KalDer is the Turkish National Quality Organization. Their annual congress brings together approximately 2,500 people from the Turkish business community, academics, students and journalists.

The speech request was made by KalDer because of Ernie's International Bestselling The Joy of Not Working having been published in Turkish.

Cover of the Turkish Edition of The Joy of Not Working

After it was confirmed that Ernie would be flown to Istanbul from Edmonton on an open business class ticket and put up at the Ritz-Carlton in Istanbul for three nights in a suite, besides getting paid $3,000 to make the speech, he decided to accept this gig, even posting it as an speaking event on Morgan James Publishing and at Book Tours by Ernie Zelinski.

Ernie Zelinski is the author of the international bestseller How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won't Get from Your Financial Advisor which has sold over 90,000
copies sold and has been published in 7 foreign languages.

Real Success Author Ernie Zelinski is best known as the author of The Joy of Not Working: A Book for the Retired, Unemployed, and Overworked, published by Ten Speed Press in Berkeley, California.

Ernie Zelinski's books (some self-published under the Vipbooks imprint have now sold over 550,000 copies worldwide.

Ernie Zelinski is also author of the unconventional career book Real Success Without a Real Job: The Career Book for People Too Smart to Work in Corporations. His latest work is 101 Really Important Things You Already Know, But Keep Forgetting.

Feature articles about Ernie Zelinski and his books have appeared in major newspapers including USA TODAY , Oakland Tribune, Boston Herald, The Washington Post, National Post, Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, and Toronto Star. He has been interviewed by over 100 radio stations and has appeared on CNN TV’s Financial News, CBC TV’s Venture, and CTV’s Canada AM.

Ernie Zelinski has a B.Sc. in Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Alberta. He occasionally speaks professionally on the subjects of book marketing, solo-entrepreneurship, early retirement, and applying creativity to business and leisure.

Ernie Zelinski is uniquely qualified to write books such as How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free, given that he opted for semi-retirement when he was only thirty years old and close to financial bankruptcy (with a net worth of minus $30,000). Yet today Ernie is a prosperous writer, entrepreneur, and connoisseur of leisure who maintains a three- to four-hour workday and doesn’t like to work at all in any month that doesn’t have an “r” in it.

Ernie lives in Edmonton, where, besides hanging around his favorite coffee shops with his laptop, he enjoys running, cycling, tennis, reading, and traveling.

POSSIBLE SPEECH TOPIC FOR KALDER: HARD WORK AND REAL SUCCESS - OIL AND WATER!

If you burn the candle at both ends, you are not as bright as you think.
- Unknown wise person

Although I ofen stress the importance of imagination, perseverance, dedication, commitment, and action in my books, it may come as a surprise - to a few people at least - that I am not a proponent of hard work. By hard work I mean working strenuously, for long hours, and on as many tasks and projects as possible.

Here is a Zen story to make my point:

A student, most eager for enlightenment, went to the Master and expressed his desire to be his student and become enlightened. The Master welcomed his enthusiasm and told him he would be honored to help him. "How long will it take?" asked the student.

"Usually about two to three years," the Master responded, "but it depends on how hard you work at it."

"Oh," the student declared, "I will work extremely hard - I will try to work at it both day and night."

"Well, in that case," the Master advised, "it will take you at least seven years."

Plain and simple, the moral of this story is: hard work and real success - oil and water! Put another way, hard work and real success don't mix all that well. Real success, in fact, is about working smart and not hard.

Personally, the only time I am a big fan of hard work is when someone else is doing it and I am paying for it. This is not to say that I won't work hard at times, particularly on projects that excite me immensely, or ones that I must complete within a certain time frame. But for all intents and purposes, I find most hard work detrimental to my well-being.

Contrary to popular belief, the work ethic is a terrible mistake, a cute term gone haywire. It is promoted most vehemently either by employers who want to exploit pathetic workaholics or by pathetic workaholics themselves who are trying to justify why they work so many hours and have no real life.

As is to be expected, everything has a price attached to it. There is a price for not working hard enough; there can be an even larger price for working too hard. Not so long ago I received a letter from Jeffrey Carson (his name has been changed due to the personal nature of the letter) from the eastern United States. Incidentally, the letterhead indicated that Carson's occupation was Attorney at Law.

Dear Ernie,

It's Monday and I've taken the day off. I've just finished reading The Joy of Not Working, which I found at the bookstore last Saturday. It's always exciting when a bit of revelation occurs in one's life. After two heart attacks and a near-death cardiac arrest last winter, you'd have thought I'd have gotten the message, but this work ethic doesn't go down easy.

So, after six months of near-suicidal depression about work and how much I hated it, I found your book. I can only say, from the bottom of my heart,
thank you.

Best regards and sincerely,

Jeffrey Carson

The really good news for me was that this attorney had no intention of suing me on behalf of a client or himself. The good news for Carson was that he had
realized how the work ethic could end his life if he didn't stop believing in it so fiercely.

Of course, corporations would like you to believe that "hard work is good for you and it never harmed anyone." There are reasons to believe otherwise, however.

Evidence That Hard Work Can Kill You

• According to a 2002 study in the British Medical Journal, employees with stressful jobs are twice as likely to die from heart disease as
  those who have jobs with little or no stress.
• Employees who work over forty-eight hours per week double their risk of heart disease, according to a 1996 UK government report.
• According to a 2003 American study, long-term job strain is worse for your heart than gaining forty pounds in weight or aging thirty years.
• Approximately two million workers die annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, according to one United Nations report. This means that work kills more people than war (650,000 deaths per year).

The core of the matter is that hard work can kill you. Another dark side of the work ethic is how many rainbow-chasers end up working hard all their lives, expecting success, but with nothing to show for it. The key to success, in fact, is to work on the few things that are truly important and make a difference
in this world, and to disregard the rest.

In this regard, Peter Drucker advised, "Do the right things instead of trying to do everything right." To ensure that you don't spend time on projects that don't produce meaningful results, and instead have time for creative thinking and leisure activities, get in the habit of asking yourself the following questions:

• What is the best use of my time right now?
• What is the best book I could read right now to learn more about running my unconventional business?
• What is the best way to market my product or service right now?
• Is what I am doing today going to enhance my life today and in the future?
• What project will make me the most money with the least risk?
• Who are the best people to spend time with so that I can learn more about my career or business?

Clearly, if you are channeling your hard work into areas that offer little chance for big payoffs, your hard work will likely be in vain. On the other hand, if you work only four or five hours a day at creative endeavors that offer the likelihood of immense payoffs, four or five hours a day may be all that you need to hit it big so that you can live a comfortable life. Even two or three hours a day can do the trick in Britain, Canada, the United States, and Australia, given the opportunity that exists in these countries.

In the same vein, perhaps you have been told by the career experts to gain broad experience. In my view, it is better to focus one's energy in one key area, certainly not more than two or three. Too many projects will divide your focus at the expense of all your important ones. The ideal is to specialize in a very small niche, a niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and become a master.

Some people may want to pursue more than one source of income, as advocated by Robert Allen in his book Multiple Streams of Income: How to Generate a Lifetime of Unlimited Wealth (Wiley, 2004). His advice on cultivating more than one source of income is sound. A person in an unreal job or unconventional business can only devote his or her attention to so many projects, however.

If you want to keep your business a simple operation and a one-person show, as I do, the number of sources of income should probably be limited to three or four. Although in the past I have handled being a writer, self-publisher, professional speaker, and part-time college instructor all at once, I wouldn't attempt to undertake more sources of income. No doubt if I had attempted to add being a landlord and multi-level marketing to the other four streams of income, I would have experienced a serious drain of mental and financial resources to the point that my writing and self-publishing would have had to be abandoned.

The key is not to overdo things. Pablo Picasso was one of the most prolific and influential artists of the twentieth century. No doubt you will agree that Picasso, who excelled in painting, sculpture, etching, stage design, and ceramics, attained an impressive measure of real success without a real job. Yet Picasso, like me, did not believe in being an achiever at all costs.

"You must always work not just within but below your means," claimed Picasso. "If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve."

There is much more to say about why overwork can ruin you, but the topic in itself deserves another book. Come to think of it, I have already written two that cover the topic quite well. But, instead, let me recommend Richard Koch's The 80/20 Principle Doubleday, 1998), which will teach you the secrets to achieving much more impressive results with much less effort.

Suffice it to say that, regardless of your field of endeavor, creativity ultimately produces the biggest payoffs. Although both creative effort and hard work require action, the former is at the heart of real success without a real job. The latter has been known to lead to nervous twitching, heart attacks, and dubious results.

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe