Loving Your Work vs. a J-O-B

September 16, 2009 | Comments 0

Ask anybody if it is important that a person love their work. It their answer is yes, most likely that person has a positive attitude on life, and is a high achiever. But if they answer no, most likely they hate their work and are only there because they feel trapped by their reliance on their paycheck.

Loving your work is absolutely vital for success, both at work and at life in general. We already described the difference between a kollel yungerman who loves to learn – he comes at 9:30 every day and makes it to the end of the zman. It adds up to hundreds of extra hours a year in learning, besides the higher quality of all the learning that he does.

The same thing applies to work. It takes tremendous discipline to arrive on time every day to a job that you hate, unless of course you face substantial penalties for coming late. It is almost impossible to get yourself to go above and beyond for your job when you hate it. It then follows that you won’t get a promotion or a better career opportunity if you have nothing special to show for yourself and the work you do.

One who operates his own business has to love his work by definition. Imagine a chef who won’t take pride in his work – would his restaurant have any customers? An artist who hates to paint – can he possibly sell any paintings. A business can only succeed if its products are treated as pieces of art by the person running the business, and that is with tender love and care for the products/serivces that are produced by the business.

If you are just looking for J-O-B, take my advice. Don’t make that your lifetime career. Life is too short to be mediocre. Aim for success – love what you do!

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