Way back when Apple was still making great stuff, Steve Jobs would occasionally drop a bomb line that made a hell of a lot of sense.
He was that kind of guy.
One time, he explained that you have to love what you’re doing because it’s insanely hard to be successful if you don’t.
He said, “Doing something you don’t love is so hard that any rational person would give up.”
And that’s usually what happens.
If you’re doing something that you hate, you’d be insane to want to keep on doing it every day, to go through the worry, the stress, the failure, and not get some pleasure out of it.
The problem is that most of the time, the things we’re doing are just ‘ok.’ So we bear them.
Every business I’ve started that was based around the outcome — the money — has failed because I didn’t love what I had to do to get it.
It could have been interesting to learn. Or beneficial to people.
But I didn’t enjoy doing it, and that made getting out of bed to do it that much harder.
These days, I do pretty much what I want; mostly, write. I don’t always enjoy it, but I do love the struggle.
And every morning I get up because I’m looking forward to writing.
I don’t even mind doing the other things related to writing that aren’t writing, because I know that by doing them, I get to write more.
And if just one person finds my writing interesting or useful, I’m happy.
That’s the bonus!