Attend enough startup conferences or listen to enough motivational speakers and you’ll hear one piece of advice repeated over and over again: You’ve got to love what you do! If you don’t love what you do, you might as well stay home. No less a giant than Steve Jobs famously told Stanford’s 2005 graduating class, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
I don’t buy it.
There’s nothing wrong with loving what you do, of course – I just don’t think it’s a prerequisite for starting a business or building a fulfilling career, let alone doing great work. In fact, I think it’s disingenuous for really successful people to put so much of the focus on love, just as it’s disingenuous for really rich people to say money doesn’t matter. People tend to romanticize their own motivations and histories. They value what matters to them now, and forget what really mattered to them when they started. It’s human nature, so it’s an easy thing to do.
The way I see it, many great businesses and important innovations are actually born out of frustration or even hate. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, the co-founders of Uber, didn’t start their ride-sharing service because they loved transportation or logistics. They started it because they were pissed off that they couldn’t get a cab in San Francisco. Kalanick may love running Uber today, but he really hated not having a way to get home. A random brainstorming session one night in Paris turned that frustration into the seed of a multibillion-dollar company.
I talk to other entrepreneurs all the time, and many of their companies sprang into existence for similar reasons—because the founder wanted something that didn’t exist or scoped out an opportunity to do something better than it had been done before. Love for their subject matter may or may not play a role in their stories, but hate for the existing options, along with strong opinions about how things could work, does and is a much better predictor of success.
My own career is no exception. Back in the mid-’90s, I was looking for a simple tool to keep track of my music collection, and all of the available programs seemed bloated and unnecessarily complex. Those are two things I hate, so I set out to make my own tool and eventually released it under the name Audiofile. I didn’t love music collecting. I didn’t even love software development. (I was just learning it at the time.) And I didn’t have any aspirations to run a software business – I just saw a need, and I filled it. Nothing wrong with that. A similar situation led me to start my current company, Basecamp.
Truth be told, even today I don’t always love what I do. The paperwork, the reporting, the day-to-day minutiae that come along with responsibility for a large and growing company – none of those things make me swoon. Yet I’d still rather be running Basecamp than doing anything else. I think I’m good at it, every day I get to do challenging, creative work, and I continue to find making better project-management tools a worthy and rewarding cause. It’s also a real pleasure to work with such amazing people as I do every day of the week.
If I were giving a motivational speech, I’d say that, if you want to be successful and make a real contribution to the world, you have to be intrinsically motivated by the work you do, and you have to feel good about spending your days on it. Love might grow – and it’s a wonderful thing if it does—but you don’t need it up front. You can succeed just by wanting something to exist that doesn’t already.
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Printed in the February issue of Inc Magazine
River
on 19 Jan 15I think you make a great point about how doing great work requires us to do a lot of things we don’t love. But I also think you’re missing an important distinction: Steve Jobs didn’t say, “do what you love”, he said “the only way to do great work is to love what you do”. So I don’t hear a call to just follow whatever feels fun and great and easy, but that there has to be some love in there in order for greatness to come out.
Also, there’s a big difference between the specific thing we make or work on, and what we do. I think you’re conflating the two. You don’t have to love programming or project management to build a company like Basecamp, but if it’s going to result in something great, you better love solving problems and improving people’s lives, even in a small way.
So in a case where someone comes up against a frustration, and they see an opportunity to solve a problem or improve something and they create something great, it’s not because they said to themselves, “I love logistics/transportation/project management/online shopping/time tracking/whatever”, it’s because they said, “I’d love to solve this problem and make this easier for everyone else”. That’s loving what you do.
Jason Fried
on 19 Jan 15“the only way to do great work is to love what you do”
I just don’t think that’s true. I think it may be true for some people (a small minority), but I don’t think it’s a requirement. “Only” in his statement makes it a requirement. And I think “only” and “must” and “you have to” are words tossed around in connection with love and work too freely.
I know plenty of people who do great work because it’s challenging, interesting, and stimulating, but they’d never say they love it. They like it, the problem solving is something they enjoy, but love – no, they don’t love it. But they take pride in their job, and in themselves, so they do it well.
The thrust of my article was that love isn’t a prerequisite for doing a job well, or doing a great job.
Anon
on 19 Jan 15Drivers are a funny ol thing.
My partner and I are splitting up (currently in limbo) and when we have an argument, I start swinging my kettlebell. It makes me want to work out.
Drivers vary. They vary from person to person and situation to situation. You can love to fix the things you hate. You can love to do a job that pays you well.
Elise Ramsay
on 19 Jan 15My word, thank you for writing this. There’s also something to be said for keeping the things you really like doing separate from your paying job, and finding fulfillment after leaving the office. Reminds me of this piece on the business implications of caring to one’s personal life: https://hbr.org/2015/01/prevent-your-star-performers-from-losing-passion-in-their-work Again, thanks!
Martini
on 19 Jan 15Jason, thank you for this post. I have been asking myself this question for a very long time: “Should all my employees love what they do? Why? Would “this love” make them better?”
To be honest I could not answer this question with 100% “Yes!”
I was strugguling with the question “Should I hire only people who are “in love” with what they do?” or maybe I am missing the whole point of creating a great team and I should focus on creating the company they will “love to work for”?
I would like to know your opinion about it. How do you see “the love to what ones do” in terms of creating a great team?
GregT
on 19 Jan 15Check out Paul Graham’s essay ‘How to Do What You Love’. I don’t think I’m allowed to post links here, or I would.
‘Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn’t think he meant work could literally be fun—fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that.’
BS
on 19 Jan 15As Howard Jones once said… “What is love… anyway?” Alright, anyone born in the 80s, tell me that song isn’t stuck in their head now.
Devan
on 20 Jan 15I’ve avoided turning a few things I love into a business, because I didn’t want to turn certain things I am passionate about into a ‘job’.
But having said that, I think deep at the core of what I do, there has to be some modicum of ‘love’. As a software developer, it is not really the love of cutting code, but perhaps the love of solving a seemingly unsolvable problem. It could be the look of wonderment in someones eyes when they fire up an app that I wrote. Or it could just be the approving smile of my wife who believes I am a good provider.
Intrinsic motivation is an elusive thing to pin down, but I always remember that everyone has their own ‘driver’, especially when I see pictures of coal miners or sewerage pipe cleaners working away. They ALL must find something positive to drive them along…
Chad Hall
on 20 Jan 15I think what people mean when they say “love” is “purpose.” Love is a strong motivator but a narrowed slice of a larger pie.
Money is a secondary motivator. Every successful company has a stronger primary motivator, a driving purpose or as Simon Sinek refers to it, a WHY.
True, Uber wasn’t created out of love. It wasn’t created by a desire for money either. It was driven by the desire to reinvent the taxi industry. It was driven by the desire for no one else to go through the frustrating situation they went through.
It’s import to have a driving purpose and for it be something that others can easily understand. Success doesn’t happen the moment you pick up a flag, it happens the moment that others are to march behind you. It happens when your belief becomes someone else’s belief.
Rebecca
on 20 Jan 15The cynic in me says that companies will use this as an excuse to not try and keep their workers happy. “You don’t have to love or enjoy your job, just do the work.”
Ted Pearlman
on 20 Jan 15“There’s nothing wrong with loving what you do, of course – I just don’t think it’s a prerequisite for starting a business or building a fulfilling career, let alone doing great work.”
True. But I think it’s important not to dismiss love as an important factor in one’s work life. Because precisely what you love about your work is what defines the character of the thing you make.
Uber is winning the battle with its competitors. And I’d argue that’s because what Kalanick loves is winning. What he doesn’t love is fostering human relationships and that comes through clearly in the sterility of the service and the way Uber treats its employees.
The taste and presentation of the food at Alinea are without peer. And I’d argue that’s because Grant Aschatz loves experimenting with those things. What he doesn’t love is making a personal connection with his diners and that comes through in Alinea’s lack of warmth.
This might be a bit presumptuous, Jason, but I think Basecamp is successful precisely because you love what you do. You love making elegant things. And you love being able to communicate with others without it jeopardizing the sanctity of your own personal space (both physical and temporal). I’d argue that those those two things are among the keys to why Basecamp has the character it does and why the company has been so successful.
Don’t discount the love.
Ted
http://ahsugarmaples.com
Karama Adam
on 20 Jan 15“Loving what you do” is simply another way of saying be passionate about your undertakings. I think passion plays a big role in ventures esp. artistic types of ventures: music, art, architecture etc but on the entrepreneurial or business side, to me, what is most important is interest. Interest is the state of wanting to know or learn about something or someone. Interest is what will make you ask yourself the million questions about the market you want to pursue and most importantly, interest is what will make you figure out innovative ways to both expand your business and set yourself apart from competitors. Im a Multi-interested person myself so Im always curious about ways to expand my electronics business. In a nutshell, loving whatyou do/passion can make you vulnerable to overconfidence and unrealistic about a venture, interest on the other hand will letyou perform due diligence before venturing into any investment.
Jace Perry
on 21 Jan 15I LOVE what I do…. I LOVE the problem I am solving. I LOVE the challenges of being a Founder/CEO of a software startup. I LOVE that my expertise contributes to solving our problem. I LOVE the hard times that continue to build my character as an effective leader.
The result = Great Work
Before this. I was getting paid loads of money for my expertise (something I LOVE to do) for a big company in but did not enjoy it one bit.
The result = Not So Great Work
Gregor McKelvie
on 21 Jan 15Well said Jason. There is not enough of this stuff written.
Seth Godin has a good book called The Dip – it’s about deciding ahead of time if you have enough motivation to make your way through the hard stuff when it comes. Doesn’t matter what you are doing: starting a business, training to become an olympian, learning piano – what you need to have is what it takes to push through the hard times (the dip).
Simply having passion or love for the subject area is not enough. A lot of start up advice seems to suggest the opposite, which I think is complete BS.
wally
on 22 Jan 15It’s elitist for a guy like Jobs – sitting at the pinnacle of the wealth pyramid – to people to ‘not settle’. That’s true also of anybody espousing the ‘love what you do’ meme. Work is work. It’s what has to be done to survive and thrive, whether you like it or not. The option of choice in the manner and means is handed only to a fortunate few.
susan
on 24 Jan 15I do think people are more confused than ever about “work” and “love”. Work is a means to an end. It is called “work.” We all know what that means. “Love” is an emotion, hard to find, harder to divine, almost impossible to sustain.
The important message is don’t work at something if it “pains” you or causes you to question your core values. You don’t have to love your work you just need to be okay with the means(earning a living) outweighing any deeper questioning.
Do good and you will be good….enough.
This discussion is closed.