How to Actually Love Your Work

(gentle music) I get really anxious when I have a long to-do list. Oh my God, I need to get through all this work by the end of the day, and it truly sucks the joy out of it. No matter how much you love your job, some part of it is going to be lacking in motivation for you. That is just a part of working, being alive. Just like seeing this as a task that needs to be done and instead seeing it as what would be the funnest version of this? What would be the work, the version of this that I could put out that I'd be most proud of? (upbeat music) There are four main reasons why you might be lacking motivation at work. You don't have control over your work, you're lacking meaning in your work, you're not conceptualizing work as a place of learning, or you don't like your coworkers. One thing that I think a lot of us don't realize is that finding your own motivation is actually part of your job. And you can learn how to do it, but expecting the external environment or your boss to continually provide that motivation is never gonna be enough. According to LinkedIn data, almost half of current workers think about leaving their job at least once a week. (contemplative music) Think about within the environment that you're in, what are the things that you do have control over? If you're working on a project plan, your manager could define when the project plan needs to be delivered, but you get to decide how you plan the project and how you think about it. (lively music) We get pretty accustomized to what we're doing and it no longer feels new and exciting, and we forget about why we're doing it pretty quickly. It's about finding the tools to reconnect with that motivation. You can actively shift your job towards the things you enjoy through a process called job crafting, which we'll cover in the next activity. (bright music) People with friends at work find their jobs more satisfying and are less affected by stress. Motivation comes from working with people we care about. To make friends at work, don't rely on social events. Instead, try to have more casual time with people. So have lunch, go for a walk, or if you're working remotely, have a one-on-one on Zoom about a mutual interest. (upbeat music) As adults, we often think, "Oh, I'm not gonna feel motivated unless I am perfect at this thing in a week." And we forget that actually, no, we're gonna feel great even just learning the small sub skill sets along the way. Even just learning how to turn something red in Photoshop that you didn't know how to do before is a big motivator, and that goes back to this idea of mastery. When we feel like we're making small progress on things, we feel a sense of mastery....