It’s a tale as old as time—people have often found themselves in jobs they hated. We’ve all found ourselves at the proverbial cocktail party, listening to yet another anecdote of a life-sapping job, and (hopefully) been able to say “Sure glad that’s not my situation!” The counsel most offered these days is that you should, at a minimum, like whatever you do, and better yet, find a job you’re truly passionate about. In almost no cases will someone say that you need to just stick with it when it’s not going well.
I’ve come to believe that this dichotomy between a job and a passion is a false one. Look, we call it work for a reason. It’s hard. It’s not play, and it is undoubtedly not all pleasure. While there can be times when it’s really fun, some of it is about facing problems and solving them. However, the fulfillment, the joy, usually comes from working together on a team to tackle problems and capitalize on opportunities. (Of course, this is less true if you hate people, but that discussion is for another day…with a trained professional).
While everything you do at work shouldn’t be a struggle, it’s also not only about breakfast tacos, free beer, or other work perks, either. Sometimes, to accomplish what we’re setting out to do is hard work, and that’s ok.
Sitting back in his dorm room doing the initial work that would eventually become the social media giant Facebook, I would imagine Mark Zuckerberg was having fun. Fast forward to today, and now he has every government in the free world breathing down his neck and an army of unhappy people who use his platform to yell at each other. Yes, he can look at the “silver lining”—he’s a pretty wealthy guy! —but at this point, it’s clear that whatever his initial enthusiasm may have been, running Facebook has become, at the end of the day, hard work.
For me, this is where the rubber meets the road. I see way too many people expecting to find something that gives them great joy and passion all day, every day. If they fail to experience that level of ecstasy on a given day, they quit and try to find a new job/passion that will fulfill them. I promise you that if this is your expectation—a job that provides nothing but joy and feeds your passion every hour of the day, this will be a never-ending quest. That old adage that if you find the work you love, you’ll never “work” a day in your life just isn’t true. If you find yourself doing exactly what you are best suited to do, you will still have days that kind of suck. That’s just real life.
Accepting that life and work, while fulfilling, can sometimes be difficult, is a fact we all face sooner or later. And, pursuing your passion, while working through “hard” things at your job, means experiencing life fully—the good and the bad. Work won’t be fun all the time—but it can (and should!) be a lot of fun—if you work with great people on interesting problems—which sounds like something I could get passionate about.
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