What's Love Got to do With It?

Image shows a semi-anatomic, semi-romanticised heart, where the left ventricle has been replaced with a city skyline. The heart is coloured red, with the skyline in black outline, and is set against a light grey background, which itself is set in a black square background. The image represents 'putting the heart' in business.

Do you love your job? Do you love your life?
What would you most love to do? What's your heart's desire for your business, yourself, your family?

Other coaches talk a lot about 'love'. Every other piece of professional advice tells you to 'find a job you love.'

What do they actually mean when they use 'love' like this? Clearly, no one's suggesting you get into the same mindset around going to work Monday morning, sitting through yet another PowerPoint presentation, or organising the kids and arranging the online grocery deliveries as the thought of a hot date with someone who hits all your buttons, or a weekend spent in the company of your best mate puts you in. And we're definitely not advocating that 'married to the job' should be a literal matter of legally-validated fact.

You're not going to be serenading your office block, or sending a dozen roses to your project teams. You're not going to be inviting your new hire out for brunch, or suggesting a weekend retreat to your sales team.

No matter how often we hear - or even say - the phrase "this company is more of a family", or similar sentiments, we do not feel the same about our work environment as we do about our home (even when the two become one - we feel less relaxed working from home than we do Netflix-and-Chilling on the sofa!). We don't buy our managers Mothers' Day cards, or take our 'work spouse' out on Valentine's Day.

So, we're not talking about romancing ROI, dating your downline, or popping round to see the Director of Marketing and the Chief Financial Officer on a Sunday afternoon, taking them for a drive into the country after Songs of Praise.

What are we talking about when you use 'love' in the same sentence as anything to do with work, then?

Often when we talk about 'love', we focus on the feelings and physiology - you can't wait to be with the person or thing, or in the place, that you love. Your heart races. You only think about positive outcomes. You make plans that centre the beloved.

All of that is actually unhealthy when it comes to our approach and connection to professional pursuits. We need to look at a different aspect of 'love'.

Pessimistic Point: You will never love your job.
Your team will never see you as 'family'.

Productive CounterPoint: Love doesn't necessarily denote a bond, a sense of belonging, or even any degree of closeness.

The things we love are the things we choose to spend our time, energy, or focus on when we are relatively free to spend these things as we please.

There is no such thing as 'free will.' We have free choice within a pre-ordained remit.

Where working for money is concerned, the pre-ordained remit is that we have to earn money, there are ways which society deems unacceptable as methods of doing so, and still other ways which, for matters of temperament, logistics, or personal competence, are beyond our reach as options. We're therefore presented with a much-reduced selection of choices, across which we can exercise free will as to which we pursue. Within limits, we are free to choose how we spend our time, focus, and energy when it comes to our work.

Love directs what we choose to do.

Are you in love with what you're doing right now? Do you want to be?

Who am I to ask these kinds of questions? Am I in love with being The Productive Pessimist?

Yes, I am.

What does that feel like?

It feels like knowing I could not bother to write these posts, could not bother to promote The Productive Pessimist at all, could not bother taking or making client calls - but doing those things anyway, when I have several other things I could be doing, and not feeling any resentment or anxiety while I'm doing them.

That's what love means - that, whatever you choose because you love it, you don't think about the other things you could be doing if you hadn't made that particular choice.

Looking to make the choice that brings you the most love, but need some guidance? Email: theproductivepessimist@gmail.com

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