“The “what” of your job, always trumps the “why”.
No matter how much you believe in the mission of your work, or how genuinely you admire the people you work with, neither of these will sustain you if the actual activities – the “what” of your work – are not things you love to do.”
This is a tweet from author and researcher Marcus Buckingham. I printed it out and stuck it on my office wall, because it sums up how I feel about work. It’s one of the reasons I’m a freelancer – so I can do more of the activities I love and less of the ones I don’t.
In his book, Love + Work, Marcus talks about the fact that we are all unique, we all have unique loves and are drawn to different things. He talks about finding the “red threads” that connect the things we love in our work, and aiming to find ways to spend more time doing the activities we love.*
I could almost stop writing this blog post here, because this sums up everything I want to say on the topic! But I’ll add a couple of things.
If this is a subject that resonates with you – maybe you work in HR or training and development, or you’re interested in how children come to learn their strengths and talents, or you’re a career change coach, or like me you’re just generally interested in how we find and use our talents – I’d highly recommend the Love + Work Leader course as well as the book. You can find out more about both of those here.
My ongoing journey from 9-5 employee to part-time freelancer has encompassed a lot of figuring out and exploring. Understanding what I’m brilliant at, who I work best with, how people see my skills. I’m always adding new layers to that understanding, although I do have a very good certainty now about what I do well and what I enjoy doing.
And that’s what I want for other people. I didn’t enjoy it when I worked in environments where people expected me to behave like someone else, to fit in, to sit down in one place all day, to do tasks that bored me or that I hated, to be micromanaged, or where I vanished into the background and nobody noticed my contribution to the work we were doing.
I chose to become a freelancer and to continue my journey without an employer – but finding everyday joy in your work is possible with the right employer and manager, just as it is as a freelancer with the right network of support.
If you only do one thing towards finding the joy, the love, in your work, read this book. I wish Marcus had written it years ago!
And if you want to read my story (so far) of finding joy in my work, you can do that here. I think there’s more to say still, so it won’t be my last writing on the subject.
*The first link to the book is an affiliate link, meaning I will receive a small payment for referring you. You can of course search for the book yourself elsewhere if you prefer.
