Who has heard the saying accredited to Confucius, “Do What You Love and You’ll Never Work Another Day In Your Life”? Everyone right? Is it true?
It is totally true that if we have followed our passion and turned it into a career or business then we will enjoy our work much more than if we are doing something we hate.
PASSION + PURPOSE = JOYFUL WORK. But it’s still WORK. And work can be tiring – when you love what you are doing you might work harder because you enjoy it so much but it’s a good kind of tired.
There will be parts of your work you don’t enjoy. Like invoicing.
There is another saying, “Work in your Flame not in your Wax” This one is an “Ivan-ism” from Dr Ivan Misner, the founder of BNI. What does this mean?
The tip of the flame is where the candle is the hottest. The wax is where it is coolest and there is no fire. When you work in your flame you are at your peak, at your best and everyone sees it. In BNI we see it during the sales pitches, feature presentations, and One to Ones, it picks us up and carries us along with them. When you are in working in your flame you become passionate, and your work energises you instead of draining you.
My flame is nearly out!
When we start our own business, like many in BNI have, one of the reasons is to do what we love, our way.
But initially, we might take in work we don’t want just to pay the bills or because we haven’t quite worked out what we love doing yet, or worse – we find what we love doing will never pay the bills, so we keep changing the business away from what we love.
Perhaps people see our passion and love it, we inspire them, they ask us to do other things that we don’t love as much but we do it because we can, we love the client and hey, we are growing our business.
Isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Suddenly we have employees, we are really really busy, and we don’t even get to do anything we enjoy doing anymore.
Keep Your Fame Burning
Do a reality check right now. Take 30 seconds and think about how much of your day do you spend doing what you love doing? Most, Some, Very Little or None?
Anyone at Most? Most is unlikely unless you are a professional puppy snuggler. Some is pretty good but if it is very little or none, what happened? Or didn’t happen? Some things you can do to get your flame burning again:
1. In your current role or business, what tasks do you enjoy most? Delegate the things you don’t enjoy to others internally or externally. You’ll quickly find you will make more money and be more successful doing tasks you enjoy.
2. In your business, what services or products do you offer that you don’t enjoy providing, you aren’t good at but have crept into your business, so you are more of one-stop shop? Consider stopping providing those services or products and keeping focussed. You will be happier and more profitable. Better still, find another business that does love providing those services but isn’t as good as you at doing what you love doing (how could they be!) and agree to collaborate. Refer to them things that aren’t in your flame and they should do the same. It’s a win-win. Bring them in to your BNI chapter to give the relationship structure.
3. Look at your clients, split them into A,B and C clients. A’s are your best clients that pay on time, match your personality, readily accept a fair price and refer you to others like them. B’s are ok, we need them, but C’s never pay on time, are difficult to deal with, and take way more time than they are worth. Fire them. Refer them to a competitor or put up your price to them where they will either become profitable and worth the pain or they leave.
4. Turn down opportunities that aren’t in your flame. Growth for growth’s sake isn’t sustainable or enjoyable.
Note, this isn’t a comprehensive, fix your life Education Nugget, just some thoughts to get you thinking and taking action.
Summary
While it’s not quite true that doing what you love means you’ll never work another day, it’s a lot better than doing what you don’t love.
If you are really busy at work in an unsustainable way or not enjoying business life, check in with yourself regularly to make sure you AND your business are working in your flame. Take action if you aren’t.
