“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.” -Mark Twain
Work more effectively by not letting it be work. If you enjoy everything you do, you won’t ever dread doing work. Since you’ll get excited to do your work—like you would to play a sport or see a movie—you’ll be getting more of the important stuff done in less time. No forcing yourself required.
If you don’t fully enjoy something, then partner with someone, outsource undesirable aspects, or find another line of work.
You probably noticed how long it takes you to finish something where certain steps you just didn’t look forward to doing. You also probably noticed how quick and easy it takes you to finish something that you were completely excited about. It didn’t even seem like work, did it. Find and do only stuff you completely enjoy.
Screw compromises. Life’s too short to half-ass.
Enjoy Every Aspect of What You Do
The key is to make those behind-the-scenes activities desirable – then you’ll want to do them. You won’t need to force yourself to work, and you’ll work better and faster. If you enjoy every aspect of whatever it is you do, it’ll just seem like playing. You won’t dread any part of it. No more of “it sucks I have to do this in order to get to do that.”
The best actors no doubt love to study their roles, travel to film, sit in trailers, do the promotional circuit. Their enjoyment and passion shows in their work, and they got more roles as a result. The best athletes most likely crave getting up early to train, travel to competitions, sit in locker rooms, do the interviews and sponsorships. Their love and excitement shows in their game, and they get better and become stars as a result.
This Website Is Like Playing to Me
I love creating websites, coding, and business stuff, so I don’t even consider doing these behind-the-scenes activities work, while others might them find boring. It’s only natural for me to create an online business—this website—because I get excited to install WordPress, tweak CSS, and write out a business plan.
I worked a summer job for 4 years. It was 9-5 style. I hated it. So few things excited me, and it took days to finish what could have been done in a few hours. If I was stuck in a office environment, I’d make it top priority to escape.
Work More Effectively by Not Letting It Be Work
Want to work more effectively? Don’t let it be work.
If you play instead of consciously work, you’ll get more of the important stuff done in less time – without forcing yourself. Find what you completely enjoy—including the behind-the-scenes activities—and only do that.
“You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.” -Dale Carnegie
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(Image: Nijiiro Zakura)
Useful Stuff Elsewhere
The Zero Hour Workweek – Jonathan Mead’s helpful and entertaining free ebook on how to get paid to do what you love, no compromise.
The World Needs You to Do What You Love – Jonathan Mead lists five things you can do to move towards getting paid to do what you love.
13 Comments
You are exactly right Olev. I guess the problem is finding what you love. Or maybe it is more about figuring how to making a living doing what you love. The thing I am trying to wrap my head around is their are a billion (I know I counted) people who echo your sentiments, but most will not make that move. I guess from my end, I think the opportunity lies in trying to help people bridge that gap…or initially narrow it so that it doesn’t seem like such a far leap. If it seems too far off, they won’t budge for fear they will fall (fail) and hang out where they know they are safe.
Thanks for your insightful comment Dean. I agree – the challenge comes in finding what you love and figuring out how to make a living off of it. For some, the gap is too far, and it’s up to people like you and me to help others bridge it. I started off for myself with a 3-question process:
1) Am I good at it
2) Am I passionate about it (ALL the aspects, like mentioned in this article)
3) Would people would be willing to pay for it (if not immediately, then down the line)
If I could answer all 3 questions, then I have something potentially awesome. Turns out it was this website.
Jonathan Mead’s excellent free ebook Zero Hour Workweek solidifies and expands that process. I feel it’s a great resource for people in the situation you mentioned – definitely an inspiring ebook for going out and helping others in a similar way.
Here’s to both of us loving our work even more, and then helping others do the same,
Oleg
This is such an important message because if we polled the world, I guarantee that a large percentage would express their lack of passion for the career they pursue. I have always been an advocate of doing what you love and loving what you do. Find a career which is congruent with your identity, that enables you to awake each morning with more excitement than the day before, and permits personal growth on many levels. I recently published a blog post entitled, The Missing Link, where I discuss how PASSION will be the defining characteristic that separates a life of THRIVING from a life of SURVIVING…Great work Oleg!
Great comment Jared. You hit the nail on the head with what separates thriving from surviving. When we survive, we do just enough to live – if we can call it that. We breathe, we have a roof over our head, and we have nourishment, but that’s it. We don’t get excited by what’s in our life, and we look forward to the day being over.
But when we love what we do–and get paid to do it–then sleep only gets in the way. We can’t wait to wake up and THRIVE.
Appreciate you stopping by again and all the best with Brandentity,
Oleg
Thanks for this Oleg. I agree that if we can make work as playtime, we’ll be able to find it to be a breeze to go through, and we’ll also be able to produce better quality work for the world.
Thanks for reading and commenting Tristan. When we “work,” we force ourselves and can’t wait to be done with it. But when we play, we enjoy it a lot and don’t want it to end.
Here’s to making as much of our work be playtime,
Oleg
Hey Oleg:
I thought about this long and hard. Sounds pretty easy: do what you love and you will never work a day in your life. Screw compromises.
Yet, this is too far fetched from reality, which I have seen around me. I am not saying that it is not possible to do what you love and make living from. Yet, it is not possible for most people. You writing says that one just has to stop compromising, but let us explore one scenario:
Let us take a look at my dad. He was born and raised in Lithuania. Very intelligent, very hard working man. Very talented person. Somebody I definitely look up to. However, here in the United States he drives a truck. He hates every minute of it. He hates driving the truck. Period.
Yet, he does. And he cannot compromise. Why? Because his work supports the whole family: my mom, my sister, my brother and me. If he were to stop driving, the whole thing would fall like a house of cards. I know he would love doing something else, yet he cannot just drop it does what he likes for he does not speak sufficient English to get around and start a different business.
He is not afraid of taking risks. He is not afraid of starting from scratch. Yet he does many things that he does not enjoy doing at all. And yet he does them all. Because in life you have to make compromises.
Do you think there is a way for him to do what he loves and still support the family and other financial obligations that come with it?
Let me know what you think.
Best,
Tomas
Thank you for your in-depth and heartfelt comment Tom. To answer your question, yes. Absolutely.
How can I write that confidently? Because history has shown people capable of coming from almost nothing to living life to the fullest. Just three of many, many examples:
1) Famous film producer Samuel Goldwyn left Poland as a young teen and arrived to America, speaking no English and just a few bucks in his pocket. He was responsible for MGM and built a successful film company – the first independent one of its kind. I’m sure he loved film and producing.
2) Popular rapper Jay-Z was born and raised in Brooklyn poverty, pulled himself out and built a music and clothing empire, not to mention all his other entrepreneurial pursuits. He loves everything he does, and he most likely outsources/hires employees to run his companies to take care of stuff he can’t do.
3) A family friend left Belarus with his family in the late ’70s, making to LA with great difficulty. He too didn’t speak English and had less than $100 in his pocket. He worked jobs for money to support his family. But he didn’t settle and found work in electronics (what he loved). He worked hard and learned English when he could. He rose in work and now does incredibly well for himself and his family, and he absolutely loves his job because he works with his passion: electronics.
These people weren’t some super-humans but flesh and blood folks. And they didn’t have any privileges either. The point is, anyone can eventually support themselves with only “work” that they love.
But most don’t. It could be laziness, lack of motivation, being comfortable enough with their current situation, whatever (by the way, this isn’t describing your dad at all – all due respect to him). And this isn’t looking down on those people at all – just looking at the facts, which is that most don’t love what they do and there has to be a reason for that.
So can I provide a way specifically for your dad? No. I don’t know your dad and his specific situation, detailed possibilities and desires.
I just know that people in general can find a way to only do work they love. Whether they work towards achieving that life is up to them. And most people won’t for the previously mentioned reasons.
Thanks again for your awesome thought-out comment. I love having discussions like these. Feel free to add any continuing thoughts.
Best,
Oleg
Hey Oleg:
I am glad that you took me on this challenge. I can say that you are doing quiet well
. I do know that there are a ton of examples of people going from something to nothing. I appreciate the in depth reply.
Maybe the real answer is this. After reading your article, it felt like you were looking down on people who were doing something they did not like. I might have misinterpreted that.
Another, point that I got is that you are supposed to be doing something that you love from the start. However, now I realize that just having the awareness that one actually can do what they love and still provide for a great living is something that most people are missing.
It goes back to what you said about giving yourself permission to be awesome. I think a lot of people are blind to that and that is why they suffer.
Going back to my dad example. I think that he was just socially conditioned that great things can be achieved only by hard work and sacrifice. After all, he grew up in Soviet Lithuania, which definitely did not provide for the best grounds for positivity.
I guess what I am trying to say he might not see a different way of doing things. He might be a prisoner of his making. Which is sad, but that’ s the reality. Undoing the conditioning of 40 years is no easy task.
Another thing that I have to mention is that I think it is important to emphasize that people will rarely ever find their passion right away. It might take more or less time to get there or to get the point where you understand that you actually have a choice of doing thins differently where you do not have to compromise. But it all takes time and hard and smart work.
Thanks for the answer.
Best,
Tomas
I don’t understand why, but any kind of working or what I am doing, painful of pleas1nt seems effortless. It may be this way because I love helping others and not working for money or some kind of reward. I know it may sound a bet weird, but I love life and try to do my best in everything I do. It’s not that I am better or cleaver than someone, but I feel I earned somehow my way to understanding life for what it is and give more, expect nothing.
all the best to you guys
Thanks for your comment Florin. That’s so awesome you feel that way about your work. It’s how I feel about technical website things, for example: most would dread having to code, but I get great enjoyment for some weird reason.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems your attitude of wanting to help people is what makes you love anything you do. Even if you don’t immediately enjoy the activity itself, the fact that you’re helping someone makes you focus on that. And because you strive to do what you love, the money will follow sooner or later, as the saying goes.
So glad to have you as a reader, and all the best with your awesome work,
Oleg
Firstly I would like to say thank you for nice post, I loved it, i want to add few more steps i.e.
Timebox, set small deadlines of 60-90 minutes to work on a specific task. After the time is up we finish. This cuts procrastinating and forces we to use your time wisely.
Reminders, it means our deadlines everywhere. Creating a sense of urgency with our deadlines is necessary to keep them from getting pushed aside by distractions.
Forward planning, not mutually exclusive with backwards planning, this involves planning the details of a project out before setting a deadline. Great for achieving clarity about what we are trying to accomplish before making arbitrary time limits.
Set a timer means get one that beeps. Somehow the countdown of a timer appears more realistic for a ninety minute timebox than just glancing at our clock.
Write them down any deadline over a few hours needs to be written down. Otherwise it is an inclination not a goal. Having written deadlines makes them more tangible than internal decisions alone.
So what’s your suggestion!
Thanks for reading and your great comment Chris. Timeboxes are a great idea – when you set yourself a short chunk of time to finish a task, you’ll find a way to get it done.
It reminds me of college, and how I’d always wait until the last day to really write an essay. And I’d always finish and email right before the deadline. Eventually, I set my own deadlines to get schoolwork done ahead of time but still keep that intense and productive chunk of time, so that I’m not dragging out the work over days and days.
If you give someone a month to get something done, that’s how long it’ll take. But give them 2 hours, and that’s how long the same task’ll take.
I try to block in my work periods when I can. I know I could get a task done that day in under an hour, so why drag it out throughout the day? Just focus and get it done to move on with the rest of my day.
Interesting suggestion with the timer. I’ve never tried it, but what you say makes a lot of sense; when you see a countdown, it lights the fire under your butt rather than simply looking at a clock, which is open-ended with no clear finish. I recall Tim Ferriss mentioning something along these lines too. Thanks Chris – I’ll have to try this out.
Best,
Oleg