Marcus Buckingham’s new best-selling book is titled Love and Work. As he points out, there really is no space between those two things.
A lot of people would argue that you should’t bring your personal feelings or your loves to work. Which, of course, is just not possible. Just like it’s not possible for how you spend your days at work to impact the rest of your life.
They are impossible to separate. Which is why Buckingham wants us to dive deep into the subject, teaching us how to learn how to find love in our work, and ultimately leading a life worth living.
Part I: Signs of Love
Where Did The Love Go?
You’ve heard the stats before – only a small portion of us (16%) are fully engaged at work. Most of us are punching the clock, trading our time for a paycheck.
In some high-stress jobs – like emergency room nursing and teaching – the incidence of PTSD are higher than people in the military returning home from war.
It turns out that we’ve created a world of work that is so oblivious to our needs as human beings that we’d literally be better off working in a war zone.
Your Wyrd
The world isn’t going to change for you, so you’ll have to be the one to find your way out.
The first step to learn a new language – a love language. The first word in this language that Buckingham wants you to learn is “Wyrd.”
It’s an ancient Norse term, and it’s the idea that each of us are born with a distinct spirit. There are a few things we need to know about this spirit.
First, it’s tricky to figure out precisely what ours looks like. That’s what the rest of this summary is going to focus on.
Second, this spirit can change, but only to a certain extent. Where we’ve already shown some ability and passion will be the greatest places for us to grow in the future. Or, to be more practical about it, if you currently hate what you do, that’s not likely to change tomorrow.
Third, this spirit is your best guide and resource, and we are going to learn how to pay attention to it.
Love Is Attention
The next thing we are going to do is to start paying attention to what we find ourselves paying attention to.
What captures our attention, Buckingham argues, is not random. It’s part of a pattern that will help us to determine what our loves actually are.
Maybe it’s something that makes you laugh or intrigues you. Maybe it’s something that you can’t seem to keep out of your head when you are alone early in the morning or late at night.
This is where the journey begins.
Instinct
Next, pay attention for when that attention turns into instinct. Are there things that you instinctively yearn to do? Are there things that, if offered to you, you would instinctively raise your hand and volunteer to do?
If you were left to your own devices, what are the actives or situations that you seem to be drawn to, whether you like it or not?
In today’s always on, always hustling world, we don’t often quiet ourselves enough to listen to and nurture this spirit. But if you can take some time to block out all the other voices and demands on your attention, you’ll notice your spirit pulling you somewhere.
Flow
Another clue about where your loves lie are in what psychologists would call the flow state.
When you are doing something you love, you get so deeply connected to what you are doing, and time seems to speed up. The moments just seem to flow together.
You may have heard the maxim that your past behavior is the best predictor of your future behavior. Buckingham points out a nuance from the research on this topic – that it’s actually your frequent past behavior that is the best predictor of your frequent future behavior.
So, to help you identify how to get into a flow state predictably in the future, we’ll look to identify the frequent patterns in our past behavior.
Ask yourself…when was the last time you:
- lost track of time;
- volunteered for something instinctually?
- had to be torn away from something you were doing?
- felt in complete control of what you were up to?
- were surprised by how well you did at something?
- noticed something that nobody else seemed to notice?
- looked forward to work?
- created a new way of doing things?
- wanted the activity to keep going forever?
The answers to these questions should lead you to what Buckingham calls the three signs of love: (1) you volunteer for it instinctually; (2) it puts you in a flow state; (3) you feel mastery over the activity.
It Just Clicks
Finally, to get to the bottom of where your loves lie, take the activities you found in the previous exercise, and for each of them, ask the following questions. Does it matter:
- who you are doing it with?
- when you do it?
- why you’re doing it?
- what the focus or the subject is?
- how you are doing it?
It’s likely that it does matter, and that in the specifics is where you’ll find your true loves.
As an example, let’s say that your love is helping people. You would ask yourself…does it matter:
- who you’re helping?
- when you help them?
- why you’re helping them?
- what you’re helping them with?
- how you’re helping them?
If you do the work laid out for you so far in this summary, you’ll be on your way to identifying your true love (or loves), and will start to see a new future opening up for yourself.
Part II: The Seven Devils
It’s one thing to identify your loves, it’s another thing to try to nurture them and live them out in a world that is designed to stamp them out and make you conform.
As author Catherine Goldstein point out, the devil’s greatest power is that he doesn’t know he’s the devil. The world – including the people you know and love most – will think that they are being a force for good in your life when they try and dissuade you from following your loves.
Ultimately, this well-intentioned advice is exactly what has cornered you into a job and career that doesn’t tap into your inner spirit.
So we’ll spend the rest of this summary focusing on how the world might try to get you back on the path you are in the process of escaping, so at the very least you can see it coming and respond.
Group Think
One challenge Buckingham identifies is group think. We all need identity, and if we don’t find it in our loves, we’ll seek to find it elsewhere.
The likely thing we’ll reach of are broad symbols like race and religion, ultimately defining ourselves by those things. Which is not bad in and of itself, but if we stop there, we cut ourselves off from the strength that comes from knowing who you uniquely are.
Knowing who you uniquely are is where you’ll find love, and love is the raw material we use to turn into a contribution to the world.
Remember to find your identity in your loves in addition to the other things that society wants you to identify with.
The Excellence Curse
The next issue to watch out for is the curse of excellence. Buckingham makes a distinction between something we are very good at, and a strength.
What happens when something we are excellent at is boring, frustrating, or doesn’t bring us any fulfillment? Much of the world would tell you that this is a strength, and you should focus on whatever you are best at.
We cannot live a fulfilling life doing something that doesn’t light us up, no matter how good we are at it.
Don’t fall into the trap of mistaking excellence in an area for a strength. Your strengths are only going to be found in your loves.
Mis-Instinct
Just like you can make the mistake of only pursuing the things you are excellent at, you can also make the mistake of pursuing activities that you love doing, but are not very good at.
In our Love + Work journey, we are looking for things that we both love to do and that we find mastery in. Things that you love to do but aren’t good at are what we call hobbies.
This will become obvious to you as you explore your loves. Just because you are not good at them doesn’t mean you should stop doing them. Quite the opposite. Hobbies are precious activities that bring love into our life, even if we can’t justify turning them into our actual work.
Feedbacking
Now let’s discuss the feedback you are going to get from the people you love and respect. Parents, teachers, friends, and other well-intentioned people.
At some point, some or all of these people are going to give you the “benefit” of their advice.
As Buckingham points out, this can sometimes be useful, but only in particular circumstances. Like when you get a fact wrong, or when you aren’t following a predefined sequence of steps correctly.
But when it comes to what your loves are, and how you live them out, their advice is worse than useless – it’s harmful.
Stay true to yourself, and listen to the only person who can correctly give you guidance on your loves – you.
Fighting Fears
One of the things you’ll certainly face as you pursue your loves is fear.
Like it or not, fear is one of life’s companions. We bring it with us everywhere we go. The trick that most people never learn is to pay attention to it, and use it as it’s intended – a clue that there’s something we should dig deeper into and start asking questions.
The first thing you learn if you dig into your fears is that a lot of them are focused on what other people think of you. This is normal, because the only people that don’t care what others think of them are sociopaths. The issue here is to pay attention to their actual reactions, not what you think their reactions might be. And even then, treat it for what it is – their reaction. Nothing more, nothing less.
The second thing you’ll learn is that fear itself is not the thing to be afraid of. Fear isn’t at the root of your problems in life. Ignoring fear is. Consider this: analgesia, the inability to feel pain, is a condition that can kill you if left unaddressed.
Change your relationship to your fears. Face them down instead of running from them.
Rate-Me-Rank-Me
The world we live in loves to rate and rank people. At school, at work, in social media – you can’t get away from it. It’s toxic to compare yourself to other people, because it can very easily drag you away from your loves and right back into what the world expects you to do – to chase what everybody else seems to be chasing, even though it’s making all of us miserable.
Here are three ways you can protect yourself.
First, hold onto your loves for dear life. You know better than anybody what they are and how they make you feel. Remember that when you start to question your path.
Second, be careful who you surround yourself with. The people that are closest to you have a profound impact on you, whether you like it or not.
Third, direct your natural tendency to compare yourself to others and focus it on the contribution you are making.
Suckitup
The scariest devil of them all, Buckingham says, is the one that tells you that most jobs suck, and that you just need to put your head down and suck it up, just like everybody else.
Work is meant to be endured, not enjoyed. The only place that has room for love is with your friends and family. But love is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. For all of us.
Ignore the voices (especially the ones in your head) that try and tell you otherwise.
Part III: Make Love + Work Come Alive
There are many ways you can carve out a career focused on your loves. But it will boil down to 3 choices – becoming and entrepreneur, working for a company, or doing both. Plenty of other books focus on how to become an entrepreneur, so this book focuses on how to find a company that will nurture your loves rather than try to eliminate them.
In particular, Buckingham gives us eleven questions we can ask during an interview to figure out the likelihood of the company you are considering joining will do that for you.
Questions 1 – 5 are the minimum requirements.
- What is the organization’s mission? Listen for vivid examples of people living it out, not empty platitudes.
- How many direct reports does the CEO have? Look for something below 10. More than that and it’s clear the organization doesn’t value high levels of human connection.
- What kind of formal team-joining program do you offer? It’s a bad sign if they have no idea what you are talking about.
- How frequently will I meet with my team leader to discuss priorities and performance one-one-one? Ideally they’ll tell you “every single week.”
- Does the organization support ongoing education? Obviously, you are looking for a yes here.
Questions 6-11 are higher order ideals, and the more of these that get met, the more the workplace is set up for everybody to thrive.
- What does the organization do to build more teams like its best teams? If this is a focus at all, this hurdle is crossed.
- Do you have career paths defined by required competencies? You are looking for no here. Jobs should be defined by outcomes, not competencies.
- Do you have a peer-feedback system? You are looking for no here too.
- Will I have an HR generalist dedicated to me/people in the same role? You are looking for a resounding yes.
- Does the organization have an alumni program of any kind? A Love + Work organization will look at things from your point of view, which includes what happens to you when you leave.
- How do you off boardteam members? You are looking for how the organization cares for people who are about to move on.
Conclusion
Finding your loves and living it out is no easy journey. The world and even the people you love will conspire against you, hoping you’ll fall into line, strive for what everybody else is striving for, and suck it up in a job you don’t like, just like them.
But it can be different. If you are willing to pay attention to the thing you love doing, keep searching for the combination of love and mastery, and have the courage to keep moving forward in a world that prefers conformity, you can actually find work and a live a life you love.
It’s harder than most personal development books will try and make you believe, but it’s worth it.