Well, are you?

I am a firm believer in doing what you love todo, What I mean by that is that if there is something you like todo you should try to find ways to make it a central part of your life.

It doesn’t make sense to be doing a job that you don’t like or that you are uncomfortable with and if you want to get ahead and you want to be more than average you have to do something you are passionate about. Just look around the office and see how many people you perceive to be more than average I bet all if not most of them are passionate about what they’re doing…

So the question is are you? if you ever wake up and think “I just don’t want to do it today” Then probably not, and even if you do think that, work out is it because you don’t like what you’re doing or the environment around you?

If you are not doing what you love to do you need to first work out what that is and then work out how you can spend more time doing it.
I can’t tell you what you love to do, but you will have an idea about it, what do you do in your spare time, when you’re bored of sitting in front of the tv and you really feel like doing something, for me I always end up fiddling with one of the servers I have or writing a small application or doing something a little techy.

It’s not all roses

The only reason I’m a sysadmin right now is I like knowing how things work, I like diving into the nitty gritty detail and coming out with an understanding, I also know I hate getting bogged down in the detail, I really don’t like it when I feel like I’m learning all that can be learnt about a subject so I tend to start to switch off if I sense the end is in sight. So being in IT is good for me I get to play with all sorts of interesting stuff and I get to do it to an interim level and I never have to be considered an expert in anything, if only. Some times you have to do things that are not interesting, things that are not what you find enjoyable about your work, but work is work, the good with the bad, the trick is to minimise that work so you spend more time doing what you like.

As times goes on you can start to realise that there’s many elements of even the things you like doing that are not right for you. I hate documenting, I hate long drawn out problems, I hate tickets so what do I do to stop myself doing them? Well with documentation, I relaised that I hate spending hours in one chunk writing something that is useless, but I don’t mind throwing a structured wiki together and just writing small snippets of docs, so my documentation is now light not heavy, so it’s not that i hate documentation it’s more that i hated spending all that time in one go on it. Same principle with long drawn out problems, I tend to chunk them into smaller more manageable pieces and do a little it it often.

Summary

While doing all the things you love there will of course be bits you don’t love doing but still need to do, the trick is to find ways of doing them that make it more bearable. Try and avoid the temptation of just offloading the work to others, it doesn’t make you look good, and it is good to keep your hand in.

Also while in the job you love, don’t be afraid of looking for other jobs with different challenges or opportunities, change is good and helps us provide more value to an organisation. This doesn’t mean you need to look outside of your current organisation but by being a little astute with your conversations in work you may find other opportunities arise and help you out.

Also don’t be afraid of working out what you actually love, so I started out in IT because I love the technology and the playing with things, but as I’ve been in the environment for a while thats tuff is interesting but not so much a passion, I have realised over the years that I prefer helping people, Mentoring people planning projects etc, and i’m sure when i start doing those things more I’ll find other things that I like doing and I will always move towards doing more of the stuff I Love doing and less of the stuff I dislike, it’s better for me and it’s better for the organisation.