Passion At Work
Work is something that takes from us 8 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week, which is a lot.
Now, if we don’t love our work and feel passionate about what we do, that is more than 40 hours a week of us feeling bored, frustrated, demotivated, and uninspired. This is bound to affect us, our quality of work, the company or organisation we own or work in, and the people we care about.
Many people undermine the importance of passion at work; they see work as a means to get more money, get promoted, or grow in the business hierarchy, regardless of how they feel about it.
But if you don’t love your work, feel excited to go to it everyday, or feel passionate about what you do, then you will eventually reach the “frustrated, bored, and uninspired” level at your work, no matter how long it takes you.
Passion at work is the feeling of having a purpose, the conviction you speak of about what you love, your tone of voice and body language, the spark in your eyes when you achieve a new goal; it is what enables you to dream, and to make this dream become a reality.
Whether you are an employee or a business owner, your passion is one of your most important assets; it is what keeps you going on and achieving more, regardless of the problems and challenges you may face.
The importance of passion at work includes:
More energy, less stress.
People who are passionate at work are excited to go to their jobs almost everyday; they are more energized, motivated, and inspired.
Passion helps people feel happy about their work and the results they achieve, and this, eventually, decreases feelings of stress, boredom, frustration, and demotivation.
It helps you feel satisfied at the end of a work day, which leads to the relaxation of not just your mind, but your whole body as well, and all this due to doing work that you actually like.
Creativity and Innovation.
As being passionate about your work reduces any stress you might feel, this leads to enhancing your entire mental state, which enables you to be more creative at work, coming up with innovative and out-of-the-box ideas and solutions.
Better Work Quality.
Being passionate about your work helps increase your focus and attentiveness towards it. You like what you do, it is actually interesting to you, so, you focus more on your work, work hard to minimize problems and mistakes, and are more inspired to pursue excellence and high quality in everything you do.
Passion gives you purpose.
Each one of us needs to have a purpose in life, and without it, we will just wander aimlessly with no place in mind and no goal to achieve.
Passion helps give you that purpose, it gives you something to work towards; an objective to achieve.
However, not all passion is good. Scott Barry Kaufman mention in his article “Why Your Passion for Work Could Ruin Your Career?” that there are two types of passion:
The “Harmonious Passion”, which includes the benefits and importances mentioned before. Those who have Harmonious Passion towards their work have one very important characteristic: they know when to pull the plug. They are completely engaged in their work, primarily because they do love what they do, but they have control over their work; they know when to stop and disengage from work, and engage in other life activities.
On the other hand, there is the “Obsessive Passion” at work, which shares some of the traits with the Harmonious Passion; such as: love of work, working towards a purpose, and feeling good and satisfied about accomplished tasks and achieved results. However, there is one difference as, unlike with the Harmonious Passion, those who have Obsessive Passion towards their work don’t know when to stop, when to disengage and return to other life activities, and this leads to arising conflicts between work and other life activities outside of work. They are usually always thinking of work, and are frustrated when not working; all of which has negative effects on them on the long run.
That’s why, the line between Harmonious Passion and Obsessive Passion is very fine, but it is important to always remember that passion comes from us, not from our work; it is a state of mind, an internal feeling. We create our passion and we have full control of it, so, it is completely up to us which kind of passion at work we choose to have.
Written by Yamsine Mokhtar
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