Loving your Work.

Should you do what you love or should you fall in love with what you do already?

This is one of those debatable questions I have been digging into for the last 10 years. And up until now, however, the answer keeps slipping away.

To preface this piece of contemplation I must say that the word “work”, for me personally, has always carried a negative connotation — as if, you must do something you dislike to yield results, aka “the money”.

I can’t assert that my upbringing has shaped such a worldview but it definitely planted a seed, when I witnessed my parents not being ecstatic about their jobs, coming back home exhausted and drained. Every time I saw them like that I thought to myself:

“Wow, making money must be all like that: blood and sweat and tears…”

My vision hasn’t changed much over the course of my first work experiences, either as a merchandise promoter in a supermarket, a pizza-carrier guy, or a sales’ manager selling conveyor details to engineers (usually half-drunk when picking up my cold calls).

The 5 years post-graduate stretch in my life reinforced one truth:

You gotta work your butt off to make peanuts ($$$)

At the age of 24 years old I started working as a support team member in UvoCorp — a company that dealt with English-speaking customers and I started doing just that: working my butt off, wearing myself out at night shifts, just to have a chance to enjoy a little bit of freedom with some cash in my pocket.

And then we started a business: DexDigital — the company that I created alongside my partner in 2014. The business turned out to be a seldom success story among countless start-ups that fail, and I’m forever grateful for this 4 years’ business experience that taught me so much about life and people.

The outlook on work, however, didn't change: I still felt that you gotta persevere and endure something you dislike, to make yourself feel good about something that you might (or might not) achieve somewhere down the road.

I still remember a private video recording shared by the CEO of one of the biggest IT corporations in Ukraine where he and a bunch of CEOs are agreeing on the simple idea: that you must make yourself love what you are becoming successful at. Not the other way around.

Can It go in the Opposite Direction though? Can we Do what we LOVE from the Beginning?

I am a strong believer that we can, however, it does have some pre-conditions that you, my friend, whoever is reading this piece, will have to take for data:

1. Finding something that you love and that can fit the demand is not easy. I am presently dipping my toes into blogging/digital infopreneurship and it’s honestly not a walk in the park.
2. Forget about saying “once you find what you love you don’t ever have to work again” — you still have to deliver tedious tasks — the difference though, as stated by my beloved Simon Sinek, is that doing what you feel is important will fill you up so you come back home fulfilled, knowing that you do something that matters.
3. The search can go on forever if you are not decisive about it. If you are cool feeling drained and pathetic about every single day at work, drinking a round of shots with your co-workers to ease the pain — that’s fine by me. But if you are on the mission of finding/discovering your “WHY” — then fasten the belts, it will be a long journey. Keep looking, and when you find it — you’ll know.

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To close up I want to say that there is definitely a perfect proportion between LOVE for what you DO, and the NECESSITY of DOING it.
Some of us got 20% LOVE, 80% NECESSITY.
Some got 50% LOVE, 50% NECESSITY.

I am personally at 70% LOVE and 30% NECESSITY now and counting…

I am writing this piece on Sunday because it’s the love and excitement that makes me do it. I am generating content to drive leads because it’s fun and interesting to me. But there are still % that I must do for the sake of the business, and I believe that Work-Life balance, in general, is a myth created by people, who are just not so fond of their jobs.

At the end of the day, why do you need a Life-Work balance, if your work is what balances you out?

If you’re interested to know how I can help you to take advantage of your career — visit my website.