Work Versus Passion – Puppy and The Plough | Sid Savara

“A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means” – William Hazlitt

        

 

Imagine the last time you had to work on some dreary task – something you truly dreaded. Go on, close your eyes and do it. I bet just now, merely thinking about it changed the way you felt – your emotions. You may even have furrowed your brow, grimaced, tensed up your muscles or pursed your lips. Just thinking about it likely changed your body language.

Now close your eyes and think about a time you were doing something you loved. Perhaps a hobby, sport, or working towards a dream of yours. How does that make you feel? I bet your body language and feelings changed again.

That difference in attitude is the difference between how we approach doing something because it’s work (something that you have to do)and doing something because it’s your passion (something that you want to do) – and we’ll explore that a little in today’s post.

Note that in this case, when I say work I don’t necessarily mean your career. There are plenty of people in jobs and careers they love. I’m taking my definition of work from the general productivity sense of “stuff I don’t want to do – but have to.”

The Puppy And The Plough

I was thinking about this recently, and the best analogy I could think of is working is like pulling a plough.

The plough is cold, hard material – it has no feeling, no desire to go anywhere, and you don’t want to pull it! However, if you want to get anything accomplished, you have to muster up the motivation and determination to pull it anyway. That’s what work is like – you don’t want to do it, but you suck it up and get it done.

Passion on the other hand is like walking a puppy.

Have you ever taken a puppy out for a walk? You can barely control it! When you’re inside the house, as soon as it hears your pick up the leash it starts running in circles in anticipation. It gets excited. It starts clawing at the door trying to get out. As soon as you get outside, what happens? It tries to run up the street. It runs to the next tree. It practically pulls you behind it, and about all you can do is guide it in the general direction you want to go.

Now that’s what following your passion is like. When I”m working on an exciting piece of software, or writing a new song on guitar, or even writing new articles for this website – once I get started, the project practically does itself. I get in a zone – I forget to eat, I forget to shave, I literally will start falling asleep at the keyboard sometimes because I have to force myself to sleep!

Work Versus Passion – Energy Levels Over Time

Another way of looking at this is considering the long term impact of work. In the short term, we can put up with just about anything – but what are the long term ramifications? I think they look like this:

Work: Over time our “energy” (motivation and actual physical energy) goes down over time the longer we work on something we don’t want to do. What keeps us motivated to keep working? I think it’s small accomplishment boosts from payoffs. For example, occasionally we’ll get paid, earn a bonus, get a pat on the back – or perhaps we reach a short term goal because of the work we’re doing. Nonetheless, the general trend is downward – and without enough payoff, we’ll eventually reach a point where we can’t stand it anymore. The work in and of itself is not rewarding.

Passion on the other hand I’ve found generally increases my energy over time – almost regardless of progress. When I’m passionate about something, I go to sleep and wake up even more motivated to work on my projects than the night before. When I accomplish a small goal, it helps to further fuel my momentum – but with passion, the general trend is upward anyway – and (I didn’t show this in the graph) this helps push me through short term setbacks without losing enthusiasm. The activity itself is rewarding, and I continue doing it even without bonuses to motivate me.

Note that these are extreme examples. For me, most of my passions involve some amount of work, so it’s not always exciting. For example, I don’t especially like some aspects of software development, like tracking down frustrating bugs, but these short term instances of work don’t impact my overall passion for it.

Final Thoughts

What do you think? What are you passionate about? Share your thoughts with me in the comments, over email or over Twitter!

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5 Success Lessons I Learned From Running Ultramarathons | Michael Winterheller

1. Be consistent.

Although I’m putting this at the very top of my list, it is something I actually discovered rather late in my training (actually after having run my first ultra): Whatever you do, you need to do it consistently. This is the foundation, and it has become a crucial basic ingredient in terms of everything else that I’ve learned in this regard.

Running a few intervals or doing long runs every once in a while won’t really improve your fitness (for all non-runners, these are the parts of your training that really make you sweat), and likewise stretching once won’t improve your flexibility. You need to do these things as a consistent part of your training, again and again.

I’ve found that it is very similar in the business world: To achieve extraordinary results and be successful, you need to put in the work on a very consistent basis, almost to the point that improvement itself becomes a habit for you. Stop wasting your time with one-off efforts to change things all at once, and instead focus on weekly or maybe even daily accomplishments that will deliver consistent improvement.

2. Do the right work at the right time.

The simple act of doing work is actually pretty easy—the same is true for running. When I first started training, I basically just put on my running shoes and ran. Speed, distance and elevation gain were more or less a product of my mood and motivation on that day. While I did improve at the beginning of my training, I soon hit a wall where improvement became almost nonexistent. I only started to improve again when I started to follow a training plan and developed a better understanding of what I was actually trying to achieve.

It’s the same in your professional life: Just doing work won’t get you very far. It is doing the right work at the right time that will propel you toward success and the achievement of your goals. Create a daily list of the things you need to do that day and arrange it according to importance and overall benefit in terms of moving you forward. Moreover, get started with tasks on that list first thing in the morning. Once you have checked off the top five items, you can start to combine the other tasks on your list with whatever comes up as part of your workday.

3. Rest days boost your workday efficiency.

Rest days are a must if you want to improve your running form, and also if you want to improve consistently. In the world of sports and fitness, the need for rest and time off is well-known. Every article on improving your race time warns about the dangers of overtraining or going into a race tired.

Yet for some reason in the business world, working late, working on weekends and being online 24/7 seems like the right thing to do. Working without sufficient rest might work for a while, but it won’t take you very far in the long run. You will become tired, you will lose your creativity and your productivity will certainly fall. This is true in the business world just as it is in the world of fitness. Stop trying to be superhuman all the time and enjoy some well-deserved rest; you’ll end up being more productive and creative—more successful—than before.

4. Challenges are an integral part of getting better

During my first ultramarathon, I reached a point where I thought I just could not take another step. I sat down on the side of the dusty trail and was ready to throw in the towel. The only problem was that I was in the middle of nowhere, there was no mobile phone reception and there were no roads even remotely nearby. Anxiety almost got the better of me when another racer came by who stopped and asked me how I was doing. When I told him that I was ready to drop out of the race, he replied that this was his 19th time doing the race and he came to the exact same conclusion almost every time. But he learned to get through the rough times and was able to finish. He offered me his hand, pulled me up and told me to keep going. I was so bewildered and inspired that I just did what he told me to do: I kept running and I finished the race.

This moment is one of my top inspirations whenever I encounter difficulties in my role as a CEO. I learned to not only deal with challenges in a much more productive way, but now I actually find inspiration in them. It might sound strange, but for me challenges offer reinsurance that I am doing something new, something big, something out of the ordinary. 
So next time you find yourself facing an obstacle, keep going and then give yourself a pat on the back. Why? Because chances are that you are on the way to achieving something great.

5. Surround yourself with people who inspire you and keep you moving forward.

Training for an ultramarathon can be a pretty lonely experience. You spend most of your time running through the woods or scrambling up mountains, accompanied only by your own thoughts and inner dialogue. While I did really enjoy this time on the trails, I also learned that you can become trapped within your own limits without realizing it. This dawned on me when I started doing some of my workouts at the local running track. All of a sudden I was able to compare my speed and endurance with other runners, and I was baffled by how fast some people can actually run. It’s not that I didn’t read about fast runners or see their video clips online, but that’s a very different thing from going full out and being passed by other runners who seemed to not be struggling at all. Now I love doing my workout on the track because it helps me to surpass my own limits, and also to gain inspiration to train harder and at the same time improve my pace.

Relatedly, whenever you have the chance to meet someone successful or learn something from your competition, make it count. Stop being intimidated and instead be inspired. Use their stories as encouragement in terms of questioning your own limits. Chances are good that you will be able to think bigger, be bolder and go further than ever before.

So can you relate to this?  Please let me know below!

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Tips On Changing The Way You Feel | Tony Robbins

"Most people want to be happy but their habit is to be worried or frustrated or stressed," says motivational speaker Tony Robbins.

But changing that habit isn't as hard as you might think.

“We all want to be able to change the way we feel. Emotion is created by motion. The way you move determines the way you feel. I have this deal with myself called ‘priming.’ It’s ten minutes, I put music on , I do this massive change in my breathing and then I do this 3-step process,” said Robbins.

1. 3-minutes of gratitude—Think about 3 things I’m really greatful for.
2. 3-minute prayer for family and friends.
3. 3-minute process of the top 3 things I want to accomplish.

“My deal is 10 so there is no excuse not to do it,” said Robbins.

Let me know what you think below!

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6 Ways to Make Getting Up Early Work for You | Stephanie Vozza

To accomplish a big goal, such as launching a new business, writing a novel or starting an exercise regime, productivity experts will often suggest getting up early. You can get a lot done in a quiet house with no distractions or interruptions. While this is sound advice, it’s easier said than done.

“You might think getting up earlier is just a matter of discipline, but it actually takes much more than that,” says Julie Morgenstern, time management expert and author of Never Check Email in the Morning(Touchstone; 2005). “The truth is, your entire ecosystem has been built around sleeping later.”

When you try to change your morning routine, several obstacles will stand in your way. It’s possible to overcome them, however; the key is to start the night before. Morgenstern offers six strategies to make getting up early work for you:

1. Change your mindset. Many people fight going to sleep because they want to get more done – they have separation anxiety from the day. But Morgenstern teaches her clients to think differently.

“Consider sleep the beginning of the next day,” she says, adding that this mind shift can change the way you look at sleep and make it exciting. “Sleep becomes an active element; you’re charging up your battery.”

                       

2. Adjust your bedtime. Many of us are already sleep deprived, and stealing another hour of sleep will just set you up for failure. The only way to be successful is to go to bed earlier. Determine how many hours of sleep your body requires and count backwards from there.

“Getting up earlier requires a fundamental shift in your neuro-pathways,” she says. “While the change makes total sense to you the day before, actually doing it the next morning is hard work and requires you to break a lot of patterns.”

3. Adjust other nighttime activities. You’ll also have to adjust the time you eat dinner as well as after-dinner decompression activities, such as reading, says Morgenstern.

“You’re not being realistic if you say you’ll get up early but then don’t build everything else into your day" accordingly, she says. Also, eat dinner no less than two to three hours before bed, which is optimal for being able to fall asleep and sleep well.

4. Prepare for your morning activity. Sometimes what keeps us in bed isn’t fatigue, but the fact the morning task we’ve planned is overwhelming. To make these activities less daunting, prep the night before and organize your equipment. Set out your gym clothes, yoga mat or running shoes, if you’re planning to exercise. If you’re going to be on your computer, tidy your home office, and preprogram your coffee maker.

“Starting something new can feel complicated,” says Morgenstern. “Take the time to prepare and you’ll increase your chances for success.”

5. Turn off electronics. At least 90 minutes before bed pull the plug on electronic activities, such as watching television, checking email or social media or reading on an e-reader.

"Science says it’s a source of energy and over-stimulates us,” she says. “It’s like drinking a Red Bull before bed – there’s no way you’ll fall asleep.”

She suggests replacing it with something relaxing, such as listening to music, drawing, or prepping meals for next day.

6. Create a pre-bedtime routine. Give yourself peace of mind and time to unwind by creating a calming pre-bedtime routine. For example, make a ritual of checking the windows and locks. Dim the lights and stretch. Or take a leisurely walk.

“This routine will help you fall asleep quickly and easily,” she says. “It will also significantly increase your chances of getting up in morning.

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