Love What You Do

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

These words from Steve Jobs are memorialized on many posters around the world, and the general sentiment behind them has been similarly conveyed by other greats across the ages and disciplines.

The thought almost feels too obvious to share or say anything more about. Of course you have to love what you do in order to do great work. What alternative do you have? To not love what you do?

But I think that like many truths, the real insight becomes more obvious as you live it. Its fractal subtleties come to light.

I generally love what I do. I get to choose what I work on and who I work with, which allows me to stay away from things I don’t like. Like everyone, I often have to slog through things and deal with mundanities, but overall I am very grateful for my daily life.

However, even though I thought I’d escaped the rat race a long time ago, there are secret rat races everywhere. And you can fall prey to them if you don’t pay close attention.

I have found myself sometimes working on a project simply because it was opportunistic, even when I didn’t find the subject that exciting or wasn’t entirely smitten with the people involved. In those cases, I was chasing success for the sake of success.

On the choice of subject, I’ve learned that you can make many things very fun and interesting if you are working with the right people and if you are getting traction. In a way, a company can be seen as an excuse to band a bunch of great people together around a big, fast-moving opportunity.

So whom to work with matters much more.

But it’s of course always nicer to find what you’re doing interesting, fun in the moment, and important. I am involved with startups of all sorts, and it should come as no surprise that those working on continuous biological monitoring, brain repair, or cancer vaccines feel somewhat more exciting than the obscure vertical SaaS ones, which might still be great businesses. What gets me excited about some of the latter ones is the people involved—as usual.

In writing too I have been caught in the rat race. My friend called me out the other day and told me that I was probably more interested in having written a great novel than in actually writing it.

It was a blunt statement that I needed to hear, and that only a close friend could make. He was correct that I had long talked about my desire to put a book into the world that would move people and tell a unique story, but that I had for so long avoided working on it. Because to do so had become this chore that felt like a lot of hard work after a long day, and because I suspected that I would be disappointed because it wasn’t going to turn out as perfectly as I’d imagined. Hence why no progress had been made for a long time. My expectations had been too crushing and had taken away all of the pleasure.

Which is silly because I do love writing, the way it puts me in flow and shows me what I think. It is something that gives me joy when I let go and simply allow myself to enjoy doing the thing instead of imagining the result. I don’t do it because anyone asks me to and my incentive is certainly not monetary.

As I think of the coming year, my wish is to more often do things for their own sake, to enjoy the activity, whether it’s building the product or writing the book, and to not be too much in a rush in doing so, despite my ambitions. It’s also my wish for those around me.

Great ambition is a strength, but you cannot let it take away from taking pleasure in actually doing the thing that leads to the outcome you so want.

Because doing it is where all the magic lives.