I've had more than one person ask me in the last few years when I plan to "retire".

My standard answer: "Never".

If my work is my vehicle to make positive change happen in the world, and I enjoy doing it, why would I ever plan to stop?

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Where I'm constantly figuring out how to keep adding increasing amounts of value?

Mercenary or missionary?

You've probably heard this framing before.

A mercenary shows up mainly for the paycheck. Nothing wrong with needing an income - we all do. But when money is the only reason you're doing the work, it's hard to keep the energy and motivation going on forever.

A missionary shows up because the work means something. Because they believe in what they're building, or who they're serving, or the change they're helping create.

Here's what I want to be very clear about: this is not a founder-vs-employee thing.

If we hire someone at Spark tomorrow, I'd call them a missionary too - as long as they believe in what we're trying to do. You can find a mission worth giving yourself to, and join it.

The question isn't whose name is on the door. It's whether the work connects to something you actually care about.

Naval Ravikant says it best: "Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion."

Don't we all want to be both peaceful and happy?

When your work is aligned with your mission, that's exactly what it starts to feel like - even on hard days.

People who kept going

The examples are everywhere.

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam - India's Missile Man, later President. He was 83, and had been teaching at IIM Shillong as visiting faculty for three years. On July 27, 2015, he collapsed on stage - fifteen minutes into a lecture on "Creating a Livable Planet Earth." He died at Bethany Hospital an hour later.

Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997, at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta - the same Mother House from which she had led her order for decades. She was 87. She had stepped down as head of the order only months earlier, after years of failing health, but had stayed active in the work until the very end. Her order now runs homes for the poorest of the poor in more than 100 countries.

Rishi Kapoor was 67 when he died in April 2020, after a two-year battle with leukemia. He was still playing lead roles - and still shooting. His last film was Sharmaji Namkeen, a comedy about a recently retired widower who discovers a passion for cooking. When his family broke the news that he needed to fly to the US for treatment, his first response was: "What about Sharmaji Namkeen? I can't leave this film - everyone is waiting for me here." He returned from treatment and shot for thirty more days before the relapse. The film was eventually completed - with Paresh Rawal stepping in to finish the remaining scenes - and released on Amazon Prime Video in 2022. Ranbir Kapoor, his son, helped bring it to the screen. Rishi would have been 70 by then. He never got to see it. But he never stopped wanting to be on set.

David Senra hosts the Founders weekly podcast - 400+ episodes, each one a deep dive into a biography of a great entrepreneur. He's been doing it for almost a decade now. On the show itself, he has said: "I'm still doing episodes every week and we'll work on Founders until I die."

Seth Godin publishes a blog post every single day. He's been doing it for almost 3 decades now. He is now approaching a staggering 10,000 posts. His 24th book, The Knot, comes out in September 2026. He calls himself a teacher who does projects. He is 65. He shows no signs of slowing down.

The pattern isn't that these people hated rest. They found work that resonated with them at every level - and walking away from it never felt like an option.

Finding your Swadharma

There is something called Swadharma - a Sanskrit word for your calling, the work you were built for. I think each of us owes it to ourselves to find it... and then, once we find it, invest the rest of our lives living it with enthusiasm and intensity.

Last week, I wrote about how to avoid burning out from work. But that post was incomplete.

I mentioned that it's the choice-less state tasks you do on a daily basis - exercise, meditation, time with loved ones - that help sustain your energy at work forever.

But that's not sufficient to avoid burnout on its own. You also need to be working on your Swadharma.

As the saying goes, each of us is born twice:

• The day we're biologically born

• The day we find out why we were born

And once we find our reason for existence, we owe it to ourselves and the world to work with gusto toward our mission... until our last breath.

So..I believe burnout happens when the music within you feels trapped and can't express itself.

And not when you actually work your butt off on sharing your music with the world.

What we're building at Spark

Our mission at Spark: help learners find the teachers they love - who stay with them through the long, messy work of personal growth.

We see Spark as a learning reinforcement platform. The courses hosted on Spark start the journey for the student. Long term reinforcement is what helps learners change their behavior, leading to better outcomes for them.

We're still early, but we have the ingredients - and in the coming months, we'll start experimenting with ways to make reinforcement stick.

If you're a teacher on Zoom who cares about more than selling a one-off course - if you're invested in your students' growth over time, not just their enrollment - we'd love to have you along.

Reply to this email if that sounds like you, and I'll set you up with early access.

Onward!