Passion Will Make You Work More

I use to firmly believe the saying; "When you love your job, you'll never work again."

When I talk to people today on the topic of passion and work, I am no longer as convinced as I use to be. Get this - in terms of the above mantra where I stand today you could say that I am living the dream. I work corporate - which doesn't make me happy at this very point, but I have my own business, work with awesome people, make great money, travel a lot and have flexibility around the clock. In other terms it is a very privileged life.

Looking at it from my perspective all of the above has been fueled by my passion for business, my passion to create awesomeness, my passion for challenges, my passion to start something. In the corporate world it took me less than a decade to go from bottom to mid-management and I have no plans to stop there yet despite my earlier statement.

Now I have a passion for many things in life and often due to multiple passions I lack consistency in certain areas which leads to some of that passion turning into failure. When I first started my own business, my passion to create and get my hands dirty was my initial intention. It was supposed to be a side project that generated some income. It then took off.

Take my corporate job as an example. I've worked for several companies with my current one being my longest in tenure to date and I plan to keep it that way for the time being. Do I need it? No. Am I passionate about my job? No. Do I work hard and make sure I deliver? Yes. I take my role as if this were my own company and every decision I make affects my bottom dollar. Ive been passionate in previous roles, but that didn't make me want to work harder. I push easy 16 hour days (and have even worked nearly 48 hours straight) fairly often, not because Im passionate. You may call it naive. You may call it stupidity. You may wonder why the hell I bare through this if I'm not passionate about it. Its a cause to get me to my personal end state of where I want to go.

However in working hard I do sacrifice many other aspects of my life. Things that I am passionate about, but need to make a decision on where to draw the line. Nonetheless I need to feed the beast called passion.

Success demands more success. While I am passionate about many things - creating my vision within the corporate world, building my business, succeeding at sports and so forth, at some point you no longer are passionate because that "job" becomes more of a job than a passion or hobby over the years. I wouldn't say that is a bad thing, but you do need to realize that even the most fanatic cupcake baker will at some point learn that making cupcakes is more of a chore than a passion day in and day out.

Now the secret to solving this is fairly simple - mix your ambition and drive with your obvious passions for certain things and you will accomplish more. You will continuously struggle to maintain passion at all times, however find the right mix and everyday will be a holiday full of smiles. There will be days where it feels like you are making a deal with the devil and other times its as if you are nurturing an amazing Bonsai. Regardless, you will be working quite a bit more as a result of that.

What's your take on this? Leave a comment below!