Do You Want to Love Your Job?

There is a poem called “Desiderata”, which used to be a poster on the wall of every 1970s student bedsit. One line in it says “Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.” In this time of economic downturn and depression, it’s hard to think of a job as a “real possession” – often it may seem easier to lose it than to keep it. But keeping interested in your job is still good advice, because employers will want to lay off workers who are miserable and uninvolved, but keep on workers who are enthusiastic and motivated.

Loving your job may not seem easy, but some simple rules can help. You don’t have to be Donald Trump or Alan Sugar to be successful, and you don’t have to have a career as a premiership footballer or catwalk model to get some enjoyment from what you do.

Rule 1: See the value in your work. So you spend eight hours a day making widgets for the Acme Widget Company. You get paid at the end of the week, but nobody says “Thank you” or even “You did a good job.” Why would they? One week of making widgets is the same as another. How can you possibly learn to love this? But a simple truth applies to all jobs, however tedious or repetitive: you are doing this for a reason. You’re not employed just to keep you off the streets or provide you with beer money – you are making widgets because other people need them. Whether you are making rubber feet for toasters or components for aircraft engines, whether you are sweeping floors or answering phones: someone, somewhere will benefit from your work. Your work is useful. Don’t forget it.

Rule 2: You’re a human being – and so is everyone else. It’s too easy to feel like a drone, like a mass-produced cog in a huge machine. There are two problems that come from feeling like this: firstly, drones and cogs don’t have fun (or any feelings at all); secondly, if you start to think of yourself like this, you soon start to think of other people that way too. The people you work with are a great resource to help you enjoy your job. Talk to them; find out what they like to do; tell them about yourself. There is nothing quite like connecting with other people to make a dull job bearable, or a bearable job great.

Rule 3: Keep it real. So you’re not playing for AC Milan or starring in your own reality TV show. You haven’t had a Top 10 single, been discovered as a model or written a bestseller. The fact is, neither have most of the rest of the world. If you genuinely want to be rich and famous, great: good luck with whatever you try. But if you think that you’ll only be happy if you’re rich and famous, then every day that you spend stacking shelves or selling double glazing is going to make you more miserable. Follow your dreams, but live in the real world.

Rule 4: Pursue excellence. Sadly, “Do your best” has become a horrible cliché. Often it means “Just do something – we’re not expecting much,” and “I did my best” is an excuse for failure, along with “At least I tried.” If you want to love your job, you need to rediscover what it means to do your best. You need to turn out widgets that work every time, sweep floors until they’re as clean as you can get them, answer phones promptly and be just as polite to the thousandth bad-tempered customer as you were to the first. Because the fact is that anyone can do half a job. Anyone can decide that they’re not paid enough to be thorough. Anyone can go home bored, stressed and dissatisfied. But you can finish your working day knowing that you have done a good job, to the best of your ability. That’s something you can love. That’s a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.