Knowing What You Enjoy
It’s a mistake to assume you know what you’re going to enjoy doing.
In fact – it’s surprisingly hard to capture this as there’s a lot of assumptions around it. The ‘do what you love’ advice is quite unhelpful here.
Because it’s HOW you do something that has more impact on whether you enjoy it or not. The author of ‘Flow’ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi posits that enjoying a task means you enter into a state of flow. It’s a task that’s challenging enough to stretch you – but not impossible.
And while you’re in flow – time disappears and you become truly present in your work. Or play – or whatever it is you’re doing.
That’s why designing your work habits to promote flow is more important than finding that ‘perfect’ job – if you’re aiming for work that fulfills you and leaves you contented at the end of the day.