How to Grow to Love Work

Love of work needs some work to do — on yourself

I know two routes that are the variations of the same road:

1. Give your work a meaning. 2. Change your personal philosophy.

#1. A meaning

The notion of ‘loving your work’ is inflated nowadays. Because so many people can do today the work they love and it feels really awesome, they have this false notion, that everyone else can do that too. Yeah, maybe, but not instantaneously.

This attitude means that instead of loving their work, people start to seek other work they can fall in love with.

So, in fact, they do something opposite than what you’ve asked about. Instead of loving their current job and appreciating their effort, they despise it and look for a holy grail of awesome-to-be-beloved-job.

You can love anything you do if you give a meaning to what you do. I work in my day job to provide for my family. There is very little love in that statement for the job, but there is a lot for my family. I don’t feel that my day job is making any significant contribution to the world even though I earn over three average salaries. The fact that I feel underappreciated by my wife doesn’t contribute much warm feelings about my job either.

But I can still give a meaning to my work. It truly satisfies all our basic needs and that’s awesome. It also contributes to fulfilling my dreams. I want to be a full-time author who helps individuals to transform their lives. Thanks to my day job (or rather the compensation I get there) I have money to invest into my writing, to buy tools and software and to pay contractors for the things I cannot do on my own like editing or cover designs.

I can happily slog in my day job, because I know that it provides for my dreams and it’s temporary. I’m doing it only as long as it’s necessary to build my author business.

Connect your work with a meaning

When I studied at university, I worked in a factory as a manual worker during the last summer vacation. Adam was a guy in our team. He did exactly the same job as everybody else in our production line, but you could sense he was different. He did everything with extraordinary care and precision. He did the same things, but he did them SO much better.

What is more, he was not only focused on the work, but also gentle and humble. He had every bragging right; everybody knew he was the best among us, but he didn’t brag at all. In fact he was the quiet guy, always respectful, always attentive.

Once I got a chance to ask a colleague, who had worked in the factory for a year or two, about Adam. He told me Adam was the sole breadwinner for his family. His mother was very sick and he was doing all he could to support her.

For Adam, his work was a very serious business, a life-death situation, that’s why he was able to dedicate his 100% to his very mundane job. He didn’t love his job per se, he loved his mother. But by attaching this meaning to his job, the end result was indistinguishable.

Expert says…

By the way, Victor Frankl, a creator of a new psychology school called Logotherapy who was famous for his book “A Man’s Search for Meaning” stated that work can be one of three sources of meaning in human’s life.

When you attach the meaning of your life to what you do, you value (or even love) your work. I feel this about my writing. I feel I was born to write and uplift other people through my words.

Appreciation comes anyway

So, I confessed I don’t give much love to my day job. I consider is as a vehicle that is taking me to fulfill my more significant dreams.

But it doesn’t kill all the satisfaction. This week we finished a big project. It started in October and dragged on for months. I remember that we weren’t even sure if we will be able to handle the problem. A crucial operational database (24/7 database in business that runs 24/7) in a client’s production environment needed a serious tuning. For the first three months we were auditing the database and writing recommendations, then we were implementing them one by one. I was at least 10 times at client’s site implementing upgrades.

In the end we exceeded the initial requirements. The main operation runs twice as fast as before. It really won’t change the world for good. Crimes still will be committed, the poor still will be hungry. In the grand scheme of things this project means very little.

In my career it won’t make much difference either. I won’t get a promotion or bonus. Still, it feels really good to finish this monster off.

#2. Personal philosophy

You’ve mentioned growing up to love your work. That’s relatively easy when you use the normal human adapting mechanism. You shape your personal philosophy-your system for conduct in life- via three ways:

-your self-talk that gives a meaning to everything that happens -your input sources -people that surround you

Change those three factors in regard to your work and I guarantee your attitude toward work will change.

Input sources

Change what you consume mentally — what you read, listen to and watch. For example, I’ve got the idea that my day job is just the vehicle for better things in my life from the book “The Science of Getting Rich.” This concept allows me to focus on my tasks even though I don’t appreciate them for their own sake.

People

We mimic people around us. We mimic everything — gestures, speech patterns and… attitudes. We do it involuntarily, that’s our adapting mechanism. That’s how kids are learning life, they mimic their parents and siblings.

Spend more time around people who can appreciate their effort, who love their work and you will automatically absorb the same attitude. It is as simple as that.

Self-talk

When it comes to self-talk, at the beginning all you need to do is to watch it doesn’t sabotage your efforts in the two other areas. I mean, if you read a book or watch a TED talk about value of work and them diminish it in your mind: “Oh, that’s just a piece of rubbish to motivate average workers to spend their lives on providing for their employers,” the effect of your new input sources will be nullified.

If you will be among hard-working people, but come up with excuses: “Yeah, they work, because they love this”, “They work, because they had to feed their kids”, “They work because they are freaks who love sweat” — their influence on you will be limited.

All you need to do is find a new inputs and new people and keep your mind open. The shift in your philosophy will be imperceptibly slow, but sure. What is more it will be as imperceptibly effortless, it will happen “on its own.”

Originally published in Quora.com.