As someone who loves his work, here is how I see it.
No one is happy and motivated at all times when working. For any substantial work, that work is divided into many different things. Some of those things are inevitably going to be things that you do not love, and some will be things that you actively dislike. Loving your work means loving the composite of the things you love and the things you don’t love, and it means that the parts you love give you the motivation to do the things you don’t.
In my job, there’s a core task. I spend the bulk of my time actively engaged work time either on that task or trying to find ways to do that task better. I love both of these tasks, but I also spend a large amount of time waiting for these tasks to reach a point where they become engaging, and I have to deal with people many of whom I’d prefer not to deal with, and I have to do things like maintain all the computers and connections and programs necessary for this work.
But that’s true of anything! I love eating, but there are subsets of this task I don’t enjoy, and that’s even more true of baking or cooking. It’s true when I play a game, or write an article, or watch a television show (gotta skip those ads!), or anything else I can think of. There’s nothing special about work.
But that’s true of anything! I love eating, but there are subsets of this task I don’t enjoy, and that’s even more true of baking or cooking. It’s true when I play a game, or write an article, or watch a television show (gotta skip those ads!), or anything else I can think of. There’s nothing special about work.
Ok, this makes more sense to me. There are certainly things which I would say I ‘love’ doing which I do not enjoy every aspect of. In that sense I have never loved work but I can imagine that some people are fortunate enough to do so. I still don’t really understand pjeby’s comment in this context though. I love snowboarding in this sense for example but I still have to make a conscious effort to motivate myself with the sub-tasks required to get to the enjoyable parts.
Working is merely a particularly large and complex sub-task I perform in order to obtain the financial resources to do the things I actually ‘love’ and many (work and non-work) sub-tasks are boring and unpleasant and require motivational hacks to get done, which seems to be the whole point of the kind of self-improvement being discussed.
As someone who loves his work, here is how I see it.
No one is happy and motivated at all times when working. For any substantial work, that work is divided into many different things. Some of those things are inevitably going to be things that you do not love, and some will be things that you actively dislike. Loving your work means loving the composite of the things you love and the things you don’t love, and it means that the parts you love give you the motivation to do the things you don’t.
In my job, there’s a core task. I spend the bulk of my time actively engaged work time either on that task or trying to find ways to do that task better. I love both of these tasks, but I also spend a large amount of time waiting for these tasks to reach a point where they become engaging, and I have to deal with people many of whom I’d prefer not to deal with, and I have to do things like maintain all the computers and connections and programs necessary for this work.
But that’s true of anything! I love eating, but there are subsets of this task I don’t enjoy, and that’s even more true of baking or cooking. It’s true when I play a game, or write an article, or watch a television show (gotta skip those ads!), or anything else I can think of. There’s nothing special about work.
Ok, this makes more sense to me. There are certainly things which I would say I ‘love’ doing which I do not enjoy every aspect of. In that sense I have never loved work but I can imagine that some people are fortunate enough to do so. I still don’t really understand pjeby’s comment in this context though. I love snowboarding in this sense for example but I still have to make a conscious effort to motivate myself with the sub-tasks required to get to the enjoyable parts.
Working is merely a particularly large and complex sub-task I perform in order to obtain the financial resources to do the things I actually ‘love’ and many (work and non-work) sub-tasks are boring and unpleasant and require motivational hacks to get done, which seems to be the whole point of the kind of self-improvement being discussed.