After my last post, I thought of a few more things it’s helpful to consider when deciding whether to pursue a career that strongly interests us.  Like I said before, I’m not specifically coming out for or against seeking the work you love — that’s a decision each person must make for themselves based on their own wants and needs.  I’m pointing to questions it’s important to ask when making that choice.

Doing work we’re deeply engaged in usually goes hand in hand with being vulnerable — exposing parts of ourselves it feels risky to share.  If you’re a blogger, I’ll bet you’ve experienced this sense of vulnerability when writing on something you strongly cared about.  “Do I really want people to know I feel this way?” you may have found yourself asking.

Often, revealing these parts of ourselves feels risky because they’ve been criticized or ridiculed before, and they feel fragile.  If you were told “no one thinks you’re funny” when you were little, allowing your sense of humor to emerge in something you’re writing is likely to feel unsafe.  Someone might make a similar comment, and then you’d be forced to relive the pain of that old wound.

The Perks Of Disengaged Work

This points to a reason why many of us are doing jobs that don’t deeply engage us.  In most jobs, we don’t need to bring out tender parts of ourselves to do our tasks.  You don’t usually have to expose your sense of humor, your compassion, or some other vulnerable aspect of yourself to draft a PowerPoint, plug values into a spreadsheet, or review documents.

I know many people who prefer this approach to work.  After all, they risk getting hurt enough in their personal relationships — why bring that vulnerability into what they do for a living?  And it’s okay with them if working feels mechanical, because they find exciting things to do in their off hours.  As the saying goes, they work to live — they don’t live to work.

Can You Separate “Work” From “Life”?

Although it’s easier in some ways to “work to live,” that approach, like anything, has drawbacks.  For some of us, when we don’t bring all of ourselves to our work, we’re nagged by the worry that we aren’t giving our gifts to the world.

To take my earlier example, it’s true that, if you do work that doesn’t require you to express your sense of humor, you don’t take the risk that someone will criticize that part.  But by locking that part away, you also keep people from enjoying it — you deny people a gift.

Also, the idea of “working to live” — disengaging from your work, but showing up fully in other activities — sounds good in theory, but the reality is messier.  You can’t work for 8+ hours a day with a detached, emotionless attitude and expect that not to spill over into other parts of your life.

I know this from experience.  I took pride in the work I did as a lawyer, but I wouldn’t exactly say my most vulnerable parts shone through in it.  I spent my working days in a cool, rational headspace, which was ideal for what I did.  The trouble was, I found myself, out of habit, slipping into this mindset with friends and loved ones — relating to them like they were colleagues or adversaries.

If you do something you really care about, you’ll almost certainly have to let others see parts of you that you normally keep under wraps.  This involves a risk, but also a great reward, because offering all you have to give brings a feeling of aliveness that’s exhilarating.

Related posts:

1. Why We Don’t Really Want “Work We Love” (I’m still tweaking the Work Consciously site a bit,...
2. I’m Back And Ready To Explore I’ll start by thanking everyone who’s checked in with me...
3. Don’t Wait To Do Your “Real Work,” Part II: Finding Real Security (This is the second part of a series I began...

(I’m still tweaking the Work Consciously site a bit, so I thought I’d tide you all over with my latest musing.)

Earlier this month, as you probably heard, only 51% of the Americans surveyed in a Conference Board study reported that they find their jobs interesting — the lowest number in 22 years.  On the surface, this may seem like a problem.  But my sense, from working with clients and just talking to people I know, is that many of us actually don’t want to do profoundly interesting work.  And I think that’s perfectly okay.

Some Like It Smooth

For many people, in my experience, work offers an escape from the emotional messiness of the rest of their lives.  When they’re in the office, they don’t have to handle conflicts with family and loved ones, ponder what they’re really contributing to the world, or do anything else that requires them to feel deeply.  And when they go home, they can leave it all behind them for the evening and relax — because they aren’t very invested in the projects they’re working on, they don’t find themselves obsessing over those projects after hours.

People who find their work really meaningful and interesting, on the other hand, don’t seem to experience working this way.  When we care deeply about what we’re doing, the stakes are higher — our accomplishments are more exciting, but our failures also carry a sharper sting.

Look at artists who are seriously devoted to their craft, for example — they suffer to produce their work in a way that the typical employee does not.  When the painters and sculptors I know tell me about how they experience their work, I can easily see how the term “tortured artist” came to be.

This is one reason why, I think, we’ve seen a lot of recent writing questioning whether the common personal development idea of “finding the work you love” is really all it’s cracked up to be.  (See Lisis B.’s post, for instance.)

If you change careers or start your own business to do something that feels meaningful, you not only set yourself up for financial uncertainty — you also board an emotional rollercoaster that the average 9-to-5 job simply doesn’t entail.  It’s certainly not going to feel like “work you love” all the time — in fact, there will probably be moments when you loathe it more deeply than any “regular job” you’ve ever done.  (I’m speaking from personal experience.)

Some Prefer Extreme Sports

Obviously, pursuing “the work we love” has its drawbacks.  And, like anything else, it has its perks.  For one thing, the emotional rollercoaster we ride when we do work that we care deeply about can be a blessing as well as a curse. 

There’s something appealing about having a life full of peaks and valleys, rather than one that’s merely a stroll across flat ground.  I suspect this is why people do “extreme sports” like mountain climbing and skydiving — the fear we feel when we do such things, although it’s unpleasant, has a certain aliveness about it that I think we all crave.

So this is my take on the issue of whether to seek out the “work you love”:  it’s a choice each person needs to make for themselves, with both eyes open.  People who prefer a smoother emotional experience, and are in a job where they feel comfortable, may be better off staying where they are. 

But if, like some people, you want a richer emotional life in what you do — bigger ups and downs, and a stronger sense of aliveness — doing something that feels deeply meaningful might be for you.

Related posts:

1. “Work You Love,” Part II: How Vulnerable Are You Ready To Be? After my last post, I thought of a few...
2. Don’t Wait To Do Your “Real Work,” Part II: Finding Real Security (This is the second part of a series I began...
3. How To Stop Work From Feeling Like Work I had an interesting conversation the other night with a...