Love for Your Work
My mom had been on the phone for what felt like hours. I grew restless, bored of waiting. I noticed the cord connecting the handset to the wall. What would happen if I cut it? Struck by sudden inspiration, I grabbed a pair of scissors. Snip. The call cut off immediately. I was five years old. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the first time I did engineering. It continued with Lego, and that same interest followed me into programming. It was play back then. It is play now.
For me, the difference between play and work has nothing to do with whether I am laughing or smiling while I do it. It comes down to whether I find it fascinating. I am playing when I give my full attention to a task and lose track of time.
Erik Thor, Why I Love
Rediscovering Craft
When I forgot that work could be fun
There were nights when I woke up with pain in my stomach because I was so stressed about work. I told myself that if I failed at work, I would lose my job, and then I wouldn’t be able to afford my rent or my food. At the same time, I was playing chess. Nobody paid me to play chess. I played it because it was fun. I enjoyed solving the problems. Programming isn’t that different.
Why the points didn’t work
I built my own ticket system that gave me points for every task I completed. To my surprise, it made me enjoy my work less. When my wife asked me which tickets I had closed, I said, ”I don’t remember.” Counting my tickets made me forget which tickets I had closed. The game was in the problems and the people, never in the number.
Freedom at Work Is Earned
Work takes up a third of my life. That is not a third I want to waste waiting for the weekend.
At no point in my life do I question my freedom as much as when it comes to my job. You probably know the small ways I tried to steal that freedom back: checking my phone, scrolling social media between tasks, or putting off an assignment. Procrastinating on my studies. Skipping class. Every one of those felt like reclaiming a piece of my freedom, and every one of them kept me stuck for longer. Worse, they left me feeling less deserving of freedom, because I had just proved to myself that I couldn’t trust myself with responsibility.
Responsibility is what taught me that I deserve freedom, and that I can trust myself with it. I have learned that my freedom at work is a currency. If I can prove to my team that I can do my job my own way, and if they trust me, I get to keep that freedom.
During those months in Barcelona when I cut my corporate hours in half, something funny happened: I didn’t stop working at all. I spent my free days making videos, studying languages, and writing on my book. That was still work, and it still took effort to do it. I didn’t need less work. I needed work I had chosen.
”When I presented that leech to my dad, I was doing what I do today when I present a new piece of code to my team. When he took the leech and threw it away, that was a code review. He gave me information about how the world worked.”
Micro-test quiz with 10 questions
Love For Your Work Match
Check off statements above to calculate your match score.
Reflection & Practice
Finding Fascinating Work
Who are you trying to impress when you sit down to work, and what changes if you focus entirely on the craft instead of the praise? What game or world could you get lost in for hours as a kid, and can you find that same enthusiasm for your work today?
Continue Your Journey
Take the Eight Practices of Love Test
See how your love for your work balances with your care for yourself, other people, and your ideas across 48 reflective questions.
Explore the Book Why I Love
Read Chapter 9 of Why I Love on how I reconnected with play, dropped chronic work stress, and earned freedom through responsibility.
Loading discussion…