When Hard Work Ain't Really Work

Last week I was able to write a really long piece on being prepared to work hard. For my 3rd Project 52 post, I’d like to expand my thoughts on the matter of hard work and would like to explain why I don’t necessarily that I’m “working” in the average sense of the word. We’ve all heard the mantra “When you love your job, you’ll never work again.” and whilst there is incredible truth in that, I don’t think that it fully captures why it is seemingly true. If I could elaborate on that concept (my interpretation thereof), I’d like to believe that you’ll never feel as if you’re really “working” when the following is in place:

• Passion. It all starts with the passion you have for your job and the industry + marketplace + economy that it falls into. Without an almost addictive passion for your job, you will never be able to sustain your happiness or ambition in one job in the longer term.
• Love. For me, the love comes after the passion and the love should be for your actual work. In this sense the work is the actual stuff / tasks that you need to take care of on a daily, weekly & monthly basis, whilst your job is more of a holistic, “catch-all” description of what you do.
• Environment. There’s nothing like hating your job, because everything about it feels like a sucky, 9 - 5 corporate job. Having a workspace which allows you to exercise the above mentioned passion & love, will really take away all of the nitty-gritty involved with doing your job, as the crap stuff associated with it is kinda hidden behind a layer of awesomeness & tranquility around you.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting alone in our offices on a Saturday morning and I really couldn’t be happier.** Nothing I’ve done this morning has felt like work, as I feel so inspired about everything that is happening in & around WooThemes, Radiiate & The Rockstar Foundation that it’s easy to get lost in my passion, love & the environment in which those two things really catch fire. If you can’t write a blog post like this about your job, you seriously need to consider changing it. I believe everybody deserves the right to love their job and I also believe that the real value for employers is having employees that truly love what they do.

** I could be doing many other things that would make me happier. I try not work on weekends on a regular basis (especially not on beautiful Saturday mornings), but I lost some work-time in the week due personal situations, which means I need to make a few sacrifices in order to catch up.