Love your work?

Do you love your work? How do you know you love your work? Do you say it enough times and eventually believe it? People tell you, you have the best job, so you must love it. Do you love the people you work with or the money that comes with the job. If you don't love all of your job, do you love 40% of it? The questions about loving your job are often not asked and seldom answered with people not wanting to admit, should they be attempting something else more aligned with their passions in life? The obvious retort is work is work and most passions, I want to be a rock star dude, don't pay the mortgage so get off the couch, grow some, go to work and stop whining.

Throw out those compromises and think about reasons people love a job, jump out of bed every morning with anticipation and make a difference. If you are lucky enough to work from home and your work is your lifestyle, then it likely won't feel like work at all. No amount of sitting around in your pyjamas doing creative things ever feels like work. The lines will blur between what you do for a living and living, aligning your work passions to the enthusiasm you have for life. Everything you do becomes an extension of your life and you question whether you are really working when it doesn't feel like work? The ideal workplace should feel like home and it's the reason so many companies are providing office fit outs without the ubiquitous pods and including open spaces, more natural light, daily distractions and building a culture around family.

The corporate mantra of excessive hours and always on game leaves little room to love your job if you can't see over the pod walls but if work gives you the opportunity to make room for the rest of your life, you have a reason to love it as a provider, a means to an end. Work can give you the resources to be complete, to engage, to enjoy and to become immersed in life outside the confines of public transport and office buildings. The winners in this case, are companies encouraging sensible work hours mixed with recreation and social interaction who then end up in the higher productivity surveys.

It's rare to not have something dear to your heart at work and if that ends up being the 40% you love, then it requires your ultimate conviction. No one ever got sacked for doing a great job on passionate projects, bringing in new ideas, developing initiatives and being a lynchpin. You need to find the corners you are comfortable in, where the work brings out your best, where you can develop a passion that spreads.

It's never about the money as countless research has indicated, it's always the softer things that people love about their work, the people, the culture, the family. These are the staple items of happiness for most of us, helping work blur the lines between the front door and the office elevator. Studies by luminaries such as the National Academy of Sciences have found people who reported being happiest, had a 35% reduced risk of dying and isn't that what employers want, staff for life?