Thought for the Day (or maybe the week, or maybe this is the thought that will define my life)…

There’s no point in being good at something if you don’t enjoy doing it.

Think about that for a minute.

I had this epiphany yesterday at work. Several people were complimenting me because I had just finished (well, almost finished) this big project and had apparently aquitted myself well. And as one of my co-workers was telling me “Hey, you’re really good at that (I’m being purposefully vague here, not because my job involves super-secret spy missions or anything but because I’d rather keep my work life and my blog life as separate as I can. And overall, I love my job), I suddenly just blurted out–”And I hated every minute of doing it.”

But we do things sometimes, you know, because we have to. So I bucked up and did this thing and did it well. But I didn’t enjoy it, and I’m thankful that my job doesn’t consist solely of this type of project at which I apparently excel.

So, again, I’ll just propose that there’s no point in being good at something if you don’t enjoy doing it. And I suspect that there are a lot of unhappy people out there who are doing things just because someone says “Hey, you’re awesome at this.” I think about all the people I’ve known in my life to whom someone has said “Hey, you’re great at science. You should be a doctor.” But they don’t really enjoy science and don’t really want to be a doctor. But hey–they’re good at it and doctors make a lot of money.

Kind of makes you wonder how many unhappy doctors there are out there, huh? Well, I’m wondering that now, anyway.

So even though sometimes we have to do things that we don’t want to do, I challenge everyone to spend as much time as possible finding things that they are not only good at but also enjoy. Don’t choose a career and stay in it just because people tell you “hey, you’re really good at this.” And if you can’t just dump your career or switch jobs, try to spend your time outside the office doing as many things as possible that make you happy to help you make up for the hours during the day that you’re not. Because life is too long and too short to spend every day, day in and day out, grinding away at something that never makes you smile.