Doing the work you love, still feels like work.
You’ve heard this before: “If you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work!” That’s a lie.
Each week, I have the privilege of interviewing all kinds of people who genuinely love what they do. I also have the privilege of spending the majority of my time on doing work that’s meaningful to me.
Through this, I’ve learned a number of lessons, but this has been by far the biggest: doing the work you love is fucking hard.
Becoming a freelancer doesn’t mean you get to design all day, or write all day or build cool projects every day. It means you become a business of one. You need to market your services, learn finance and accounting skills, manage clients, manage projects and get work done.
Starting a business doesn’t mean you get to call yourself an entrepreneur and go to cool parties. It means you work hard to build a business. You need to create a product enough people will care about, learn how to pitch and raise money, build a team, do successful marketing and get work done.
Landing your dream job doesn’t mean you just need to show up every day and do the things listed on your job description. It means you work hard to get better every day. You need to stay motivated, grow your skills, learn to work with a team, build your personal brand and get work done.
Doing the work you love is hard. It becomes a part of you, it takes on more meaning than any one job you’ve ever had. You care more, you’re more invested, and you work harder.
But it’s worth it.
Doing the hard work it takes to continue to do the work that you love pays off. It might take time, it might even take longer than you can stand some days, but it pays off.
It might seem like others around you have it figured out. They seemingly work less and accomplish more but that’s only because they’ve been doing it longer, they asked for help sooner, or they’ve made more mistakes faster.
It takes more out of you when you fail, but it also fills you up far more when you succeed.
Doing the work you love, still feels like work and it always will, but it’s worth it — for so many reasons.
So go and do the work.
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