Can You Ever Really “Love” Work?

Matt Tanner
Sep 7, 2018 · 7 min read
Photo by Renee Fisher

The text, sent by my best friend, caught me a little off guard:

“Your writing is really starting to get on my nerves.”

Whoa, shots fired!

I immediately started wracking my brain for an explanation. Was it the dad humor? My penchant for ending sentences with a preposition? My over-reliance on parenthetical asides? (Sorry, I just like them.)

No, as it turned out, the articles were just making him question his current career path.

“I’m not sure I love my job as much as you seem to think I should,” he clarified.

That very same week I got an email from a woman with similar feedback:

“Your articles are making me think way too much, which is pretty annoying. Thanks (I guess) for the kick in the career pants.”

While I was encouraged to find out that someone other than my mom was reading what I was writing (hey, at least two other people actually!), it dawned on me that perhaps I needed to clarify a few things.

Namely, what exactly does it mean to “love” your work?

And is it even possible?

Loving something doesn’t mean it’s flawless

I used to think it was really annoying when people talked about how hard marriage was. If marriage was so hard, I thought, what’s the point? Maybe you should’ve married someone that made it easy? Or like, never gotten married?

Then I got married and before we could blink, nine years had passed and we were taking care of a dog, two kids, two careers, and a house. There isn’t a lot of time left over in the day to take care of our own relationship. So yeah, I can now begrudgingly admit that marriage is kind of hard.

Just the other day my wife reminded me five times to make sure to leave the kids’ carseats at preschool after dropping them off. She hand-wrote a note and put it on my dashboard the night before. She texted me that morning to remind me again.

Did I leave the carseats at the preschool? Of course not, because I am a forgetful idiot and being married to me is hard!

And yet, we still love each other.

There is some debate about the validity of the oft-repeated statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce, but whatever the actual percentage, it’s still a lot more than zero. I would wager that many of these marriages end due to impossibly high standards of what a marriage should be. To think that marriage (or a job) will be perfect every moment of every day is ludicrous.

Even worse than the marriage statistics are those measuring job satisfaction. The number of employees disengaged at work is holding steady at a whopping 85%. The problem there, I suspect, is largely the same.

Sure, I write a lot about how much I love my work, but everyday there are countless things about my job that annoy me. For starters, I work alongside these beings called humans, and as it turns out, not all of them are actively doing exactly what I want them to do. Sometimes it feels like quite the opposite, like the time I sat down on a couch in a meeting room and realized it was covered with someone’s nail clippings.

Miscommunication happens almost daily. Office politics occasionally get in the way of getting work done. People argue. No workplace is totally immune from this stuff, which means quitting and finding another job is never really an escape from it.

The work itself can suck sometimes too.

I love delivering training sessions, writing, and coaching people, but sometimes being in the midst of the creation process is pure hell. When I am staring at a blank screen and have to craft a program outline or write an article on a deadline, I can honestly say I feel sick to my stomach. That’s probably not how most people would describe “love”, but I know from experience I can push through these moments and come out on the other side, largely unscathed. I’ve grown to love even the parts that are difficult.

I choose not to write about all of the things that annoy me about my job, not because I am trying to paint a misleading picture of a perfect life (that’s what Instagram is for), but rather because I just don’t want to dwell on these frustrating aspects.

After all, the surest way to find a job you love (or anything, really) is to adjust your expectations.

Start with the job you already have

Years ago, when I was in the throes of job misery, I found a book that claimed to help you “find work you love” in just a few short weeks. Within the first few pages the author (who shall remain nameless) was instructing me to write down what I was “born to do” and what I “really loved to do”. The whole idea was to hone in on my professional dreams so I could tailor my search for a job that would “never feel like work”.

Sorry if you just threw up a little bit in your mouth while reading that!

I had a similar reaction when reading the book, which felt cobbled together from Pinterest boards, but I did as the author instructed and listed out all of the things I really and truly loved. Unfortunately, I am still waiting on that job where I can play video games while drinking beer and watching college football. (Seriously, I’m waiting. If that is a job you have available, you need to email me immediately. I AM YOUR GUY.)

I donated that book to Goodwill before coming close to finishing it, but I did continue to wonder if it was possible to find work that I loved. In fact, it was all I really thought about.

Mostly on Sunday nights, when I was lying in bed unable to sleep.

I would drag myself out of bed every morning and go through the motions at work. Things got incrementally better each day and by Friday I would have convinced myself that things weren’t that bad (I think this is how Stockholm Syndrome works). The weekends represented an enjoyable escape from reality, but inevitably, Sunday evening rolled around and I would be depressed all over again.

I knew there had to be a better way, so I became hyper-focused on finding a job I absolutely loved.

I did all kinds of silly things chasing this elusive dream. I applied to jobs I had no business applying for (cough, radio DJ). I tried writing a novel and failed spectacularly. I daydreamed about winning the lottery or becoming a professional sports gambler. Finally I threw in the towel and just did what everyone does when they can’t figure out what they want to do with their life: I went to graduate school.

The one thing I didn’t do? Not once did I put forth any effort toward loving the job I already had.

There is a story Zig Ziglar likes to tell about a woman that came up to him before a seminar complaining about her job. She goes on and on about how much she hates the people, the work, the commute-all of it. She is in such a frenzy he can barely calm her down. Finally, he asks her to take out a piece of paper and write down everything she does like about the job.

The woman looks at him like he’s crazy. She just got finished telling him she doesn’t like anything about her job. But after some coaxing, she eventually admits she does like how much she gets paid. She liked her insurance package. Her parking spot. In the end she comes up with 22 things.

When he sees her at the next seminar she comes up to him and let’s him know that things are now great. “You won’t believe how much those people changed,” goes the punchline.

Not only do we expect perfection from our jobs, we expect our employers to be the ones to manufacture this perfection.

What a ridiculously naive outlook.

Sure, some companies are going to do their very best to cultivate engagement and workplace happiness, but the kind of stuff they are going to do at scale may or may not resonate with you (ping pong tables and cold brew coffee on tap only goes so far). You have to take responsibility for your own happiness. When I was searching high and low for the job of my dreams, I should have been taking a hard look at the job I already had. I should have done my best to redefine it in a way that more closely aligned with my needs and skills.

Some folks much smarter than me have figured this out and even come up with a name for it. They call it job crafting. The process involves looking at the core areas of work-your tasks, your relationships, and your perception of the job-and altering some or all of them to create a more engaging and fulfilling job.

Maybe you really like writing, so you take over the company newsletter. Perhaps you can find someone to mentor with your organization, or find someone to mentor you. Instead of viewing your receptionist job as just paycheck, you could view it as helping people you really care about.

In other words, you have the power to create work you love for yourself.

Adjusting exceptions is not settling

I know it worked for Stephen Stills with that one song about just loving the one you’re with, but I think that song is kind of depressing.

To adjust your expectations does not mean you are settling. Nor does adjusting expectations mean you are lowering your standards. It simply means that you are reframing what work can and should provide. It means getting crystal clear about what it really means to love something.

Done carefully and honestly, this reframing will lead you down a much easier path to work you love. Maybe you’re already there and just need to make some changes, or maybe you do need to go somewhere else. There are lots of valid reasons to leave a job, and quitting may end up being the right choice for you.

Either way, it’s not going to come up to you in a crowded room and sweep you off your feet. You have to go find it yourself.


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Matt Tanner

Written by

Talent Strategy @Mailchimp. Previously HR @KingOfPops. Get my “52 Books to Boost Your Career” reading list here http://eepurl.com/dBP299

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