Are you enjoying your daily work? Why should you care?

During the middle of May of 2020, I was sharing my career lessons with 40+ team-members on a virtual call. The pandemic had started and no one knew clearly about what kind of future we were going to face. I was trying to encourage my team to take charge of what they can control, focus on their health, take care of their families and connect with the joy of work. I was sharing that when things are very uncertain, we can get paralyzed by lack of control and we can gradually take our control back by focusing on small things in the moment and taking small actions in the positive direction.

?The job market was in turmoil. Most of the team members were concerned because of the uncertainty and the fear of missing out. Someone they knew who was no smarter than them, just got an offer with a much higher salary. I shared with them that most of us get that feeling often and unless we adopt a strategy to manage the feeling, we can get into a perpetual cycle of “Compare and Despair”. ?I continued that no matter how much money they would make, there will always be someone making more money than them. We should definitely try to maximize our compensation but should not be fixated by it. As Herzberg found from his valuable research that money is a hygienic factor but not a motivating factor. This means that absence of good compensation can increase your job-dissatisfaction, but presence of good compensation does not necessarily increase your job-satisfaction.

I shared what had worked in my life that if we pursue passion and money will follow.?After the call got over, I was pretty happy with myself as I felt energized by the conversation. However, when I looked at the anonymous feedback from the talk, it seemed that the message did not go through as well as I had anticipated. One of the feedback said that passion can’t pay the bills and hence Rajeev has no clue about what he was talking about.

I sat down, nursing my injured ego and started contemplating on the feedback received. ?I realized that there are distinctly two camps with opposing views on the topic. Steve Jobs was a strong proponent of the “Passion is King” mantra. ?Mike Rowe from the show “Dirty Jobs” has exactly the opposite view. According to Mike, searching for passion in your job can lead to a life-long search with no results to show for.

In the next couple of paragraphs, I’d like to share why finding passion and enjoyment in our daily job can lead to great rewards.

What is work? Is your work an avenue for you to express your identity? Or is it just a part of your life that gives you the ability to live your life the way you want to? Is it a means to an end or an end in itself?

We spend a significant part of our life (40-60% of our waking life) working and hence it is important to enjoy it.

The compensation that comes from good work is primarily because it adds value to the life of others. The degree of your financial rewards is directly proportional to the value generated by your work and relative superiority of your work over your competitors.

However, the superiority of your skills and the resultant value of your work can only be achieved after years of focused attention and improvement. Passion for your work can make this journey much more fun.

If you want to become a person who is always creating great work product, you have to start loving the process and you can only start loving the process when you drive satisfaction from the actual act of working and not just from the results that come from it.

As you move further on your journey, as your work starts to get more interesting, you start practicing more because of your enjoyment. As you practice more you get better and better at it. As you improve even further someday, the market realizes that you're really good compared to others and it starts rewarding you more. As you become better, you can start about how you can leverage your enhanced skill to multiply the value provided to the world, by packaging and working with others who are equally good at what they do. This results in networks of excellence, working together to create valuable partnerships that maximize market value even further. This accelerates as you move further on your path. Michael Jordan is the best basketball player, the world has ever seen, but his businesses make more money now than when he was a basketball star. He was able to create partnerships based upon strengths, thereby reaping great dividends much longer than his basketball glory days. Mohammad Ali was a great boxer, but his success outside the ring was even bigger than inside the ring.

Furthermore, if you really enjoy your work you can reap the benefits of great mental and physical health. Stress is the biggest challenge of 20th century and the most common time for heart attacks are Monday mornings, when people are ready to go to work that they hate, to pay the bills that they hate for the things that they buy to forget the pain from their work

But, everyone is not lucky to have a job that they love. Some still have to do whatever it takes to get food on the table and roof over their head to support their family. What are the options for them? I’d recommend the suggestion from Dale Carnegie, suggested in his book, “How to stop worrying and start living”. According to him, if you act as if you truly like what you're doing then very soon you start liking it. As you continue to work with interest, you develop new skills and you go deeper and start excelling at your work and the returns of excellence follows.

I have found another strategy that can help to start on days that are really tough. You start with gratitude for a job that pays the bills. Every morning, write down 5 things great about your work. The focus on gratitude can also generate passion and interest in your daily work and get into the virtuous cycle of growth.

What if you are young and you have not started your career yet? I suggest spending a lot of time understanding your strengths, your interests and your purpose. It would be good to get feedback from the people close to you on what they think your strengths are. Once you identify your strengths and weaknesses, it would be advisable to try different options to leverage your strengths and where your weaknesses don’t hamper your growth. Be willing to try different experiences, before choosing what you think is best for you.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that we need to pursue our passion, dream big and believe in our ability. Whether we succeed or fail, we need to give it our best shot.

I would love to know what your thoughts and comments are. Please share your comments below.?