One of the hardest mindsets to outsmart is the idea that you work Monday through Friday, and weekends are for recreation and time off; that there are holidays that should be, or worse, must be observed, enjoyed and participated in; that a workday starts at around eight in the morning and is over sometime around six in the afternoon. But the most outrageously ridiculous idea is that anyone would consider that you work 48 weeks a year and then get four weeks of vacation. This idea puts so much pressure, both positive and negative, on people that it creates more stress than a bad marriage. If you observe people who have bought into this idea when they are on vacation it is almost painful. They are doing things other people tell them to do and it is a project to have fun at any cost. Just go to Reno or Las Vegas and look at the expressions on the faces of the fun lovers who are sitting in front of slot machines, or at the ugly, overblown and outrageous hotels there. Most of these folks are overweight, over 40, overalcoholed and overstressed.

I don’t know who set this up, and why thinking people haven’t discarded it, so that everyone’s efficiency and happiness could be improved.

I want you to consider this idea. Put your life together so that you don’t know the difference between when you’re working, and when you’re having fun! Years ago I realized that I couldn’t tell the difference between work and recreation. OK, let’s be real. I know work can be stressful, but so can recreation and hobbies. If you are making a living doing what you want to do, then it’s recreation that results in income. If you are saying to yourself, “Well, I guess I’d better trudge off to work,” and with that attitude off you go, you are not having fun, and you are probably not doing what you should be doing. I have been so fortunate that I can’t tell the difference between work and fun. It’s all fun. Some aspects, of course, are less fun than others, but fun nevertheless.

Let me illustrate. I had such a bad self-image and low esteem when I was in high school that I hid under the blankets of my bed and listened to the radio, dreaming of being an announcer. This was in the 1950s when you needed a deep voice and had to be able to read. This dream, and reasonable hand/eye coordination on the tennis court, was the only thing that got me through high school.

Somewhere along the line I was told that to be a “success” I had to go to college. The same source also said something else, however, that got my attention. I was told that if I went to college I would make, I believe it was, $4,000 more per year than a non-college graduate. That cinched it for me, and off I went to the University of Wisconsin to play tennis and make $4,000 more each year when I finished my education. But I flunked out my freshman year. I hated it! I was about as ready for college as a 12-year-old is ready for a Porsche convertible with 370 horse power.

When the university told me not to come back in the fall, I took all the money I had made and saved through summers and high school after-hours jobs, bought an airline ticket from Oshkosh to Los Angeles and took off. I think the airplane had four large engines with propellers, and the flight took about 14 hours. I was 19 years old, had about $2,000 and an aunt who lived on Imperial Highway in L.A. She picked me up at the airport and I spent the weekend at her apartment. She was nice enough to drive me to Hollywood where I checked into a boardinghouse located right behind Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the place on Hollywood Boulevard where all the stars have placed their foot- and handprints in wet cement and where many of the movie premiers used to be held.

So there I was in Tinsel Town, pursuing my dream to be on the radio. I enrolled in the Don Martin School of Radio and Television Arts and Sciences. God, was I thrilled. It was an 18-month course in all phases of broadcasting including some engineering courses so graduates would be able to pass a government test to obtain a first class radio engineering license. The reason for an engineering license was that radio stations all have transmitters, and smaller stations cannot afford to have an engineer on duty to tune the frequencies, adjust the power, calibrate the directional signals and log the readings on the meters. So to start my career I would need that first class radio engineering ticket.

The school’s instructors were all working Los Angles radio and TV people. Some were over the hill, and one in particular had a voice you would kill for and a drinking problem. To afford the school tuition I got a job at Ralph’s, where I bagged and carried out groceries. I did that during the day and went to school from 6:00 to 11:00 P.M. The school was on the corner of Cherokee and Hollywood, which is about six blocks west of Hollywood and Vine. I thought I was right there where it was happening.

After about 10 months in school, one of the instructors asked me if I would work as an announcer in his newly-purchased San Fernando Valley FM station. I guess the old cork in the mouth trick was working. I don’t mean I was drinking — it was one of the exercises I was doing to lower the pitch of my speaking voice and improve my articulation. But more about that later. I would have hung weights on my testicles if I thought lower-hanging balls would give me a lower voice pitch. The cork exercise can also be compared to jogging with ankle weights: When you take the weights off you can run faster and it is so much easier.

The FM station was just around the corner from NBC TV in Burbank and I used to stop by there twice a week on my way to work to see if any jobs, such as a studio page, were available. When the school instructor approached me about the San Fernando Valley job, I couldn’t believe my luck and so I switched to classes at the school held from 10:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. and worked at the radio station from 6:00 P.M.to midnight.

I was in heaven. I didn’t even ask what I was going to get paid. And never — since that time — have I asked what I would be paid! Chisel this in stone somewhere: Do what you love. The money will follow! I have lived by those words ever since. Later, when I got involved in the financial world that credo changed to: Get other people — your clients or customers — what they want and you will get everything you have ever wanted. Don’t do things for money. Do what you want to and the money will follow.