Do What You Love, Love What You Do

[Guest ajc]

Elites embrace the “do what you love” mantra. But it devalues work and hurts workers.

 

“Do what you love. Love what you do.”

 

The command is framed and perched in a living room that can only be described as “well-curated.” A picture of this room appeared first on a popular design blog and has been pinned, tumbl’d, and liked thousands of times. Though it introduces exhortations to labor into a space of leisure, the “do what you love” living room is the place all those pinners and likers long to be.

 

There’s little doubt that “do what you love” (DWYL) is now the unofficial work mantra for our time. The problem with DWYL, however, is that it leads not to salvation but to the devaluation of actual work—and more importantly, the dehumanization of the vast majority of laborers.

 

Superficially, DWYL is an uplifting piece of advice, urging us to ponder what it is we most enjoy doing and then turn that activity into a wage-generating enterprise. But why should our pleasure be for profit? And who is the audience for this dictum?

 

DWYL is a secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment. According to this way of thinking, labor is not something one does for compensation but is an act of love. If profit doesn’t happen to follow, presumably it is because the worker’s passion and determination were insufficient. Its real achievement is making workers believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.

 

Aphorisms usually have numerous origins and reincarnations, but the nature of DWYL confounds precise attribution. Oxford Reference links the phrase and variants of it to Martina Navratilova and François Rabelais, among others. The Internet frequently attributes it to Confucius, locating it in a misty, orientalized past. Oprah Winfrey and other peddlers of positivity have included the notion in their repertoires for decades. Even the world of finance has gotten in on DWYL: “If you love what you do, it’s not ‘work,’” as the co-CEO of the private equity firm Carlyle Group put it to CNBC this week...

 

http://tinyurl.com/kwxkcyn

[LC]

Good topic.

 

IMHO reality falls somewhere in the middle. The true greats don't get there doing something they can only tolerate. But, like you quote, for 99% it is not reality.

 

Invert: under what circumstances would you do something you truly hated? I've worked in despicable environments before, I would never do so again, I'd rather starve and go homeless. I think for most people, there is a middle path.

[yadayada]

http://www.amazon.com/Flow-P-S-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi-ebook/dp/B000W94FE6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1390045283&sr=8-4&keywords=flow

 

Thought this was a good read. How a factory worker gets satisfaction out of seemingly monotonous work.

[Guest deepValue]

Anyone who is not in debt and has no family to take care of can do just about anything they want. It is not difficult to earn enough to support one person and have money left over for savings. The problem is that remarkably few people know what they want, particularly those in the lower class (who may not have had exposure to a wide variety of activities/interests).

 

The DWYL mantra is misleading, as the article suggests. It makes people think that work should feel as good as watching a good movie or going on vacation. In reality, nearly everything that is generally accepted as an accomplishment requires work that is not always enjoyable. Rewarding work is more accurately phrased as "having meaningful goals." If you're working toward a legitimate accomplishment, you don't mind working 80-hour weeks for a year straight even if it involves menial tasks. The work is not always fun, but it feels good because you're getting somewhere. DWYL, in this sense, isn't be terrible advice for the day laborer.

 

But perhaps I just don't know anything about the working class. It's hard to fathom why there are 60-year-olds working the cash register at the grocery store. You'd think there would be teenagers doing that job and all of the older folks would have moved up by then. You don't need a degree to move up if you know how the business works. I've never understood this and have always just assumed that they don't have any goals.

 

In any case, DWYL is not terrible advice as long as the true meaning is conveyed.

[Orange]

"DWYL (do what you love) is a secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment"

 

 

Striving to get a job that you actually like is now an elitist privilege? This is insane. I half expected the article to end by lambasting the feeling of happiness, calling it the "bounty of the oppressor" or something.

 

"Yet another damaging consequence of DWYL is how ruthlessly it works to extract female labor for little or no compensation"

 

You have got to be kidding me with this. Who could possibly hear somebody say "try to find a job that you actually like doing" and believe what they are actually trying to do is oppress poor women. The kind of pathetic PC victim culture that Slate feeds off is why I am reticent to call myself a liberal anymore.

[yadayada]

Anyone who is not in debt and has no family to take care of can do just about anything they want. It is not difficult to earn enough to support one person and have money left over for savings. The problem is that remarkably few people know what they want, particularly those in the lower class (who may not have had exposure to a wide variety of activities/interests).

 

The DWYL mantra is misleading, as the article suggests. It makes people think that work should feel as good as watching a good movie or going on vacation. In reality, nearly everything that is generally accepted as an accomplishment requires work that is not always enjoyable. Rewarding work is more accurately phrased as "having meaningful goals." If you're working toward a legitimate accomplishment, you don't mind working 80-hour weeks for a year straight even if it involves menial tasks. The work is not always fun, but it feels good because you're getting somewhere. DWYL, in this sense, isn't be terrible advice for the day laborer.

 

But perhaps I just don't know anything about the working class. It's hard to fathom why there are 60-year-olds working the cash register at the grocery store. You'd think there would be teenagers doing that job and all of the older folks would have moved up by then. You don't need a degree to move up if you know how the business works. I've never understood this and have always just assumed that they don't have any goals.

 

In any case, DWYL is not terrible advice as long as the true meaning is conveyed.

There are people who live to work, and people who work to live. Everyone gets their satisfaction from something different.

[twacowfca]

Work is the curse of the drinking class, to turn a quote by the grumpy Marx on its head.

 

For everyone else, in a diverse and open culture, there is opportunity to find a job in an organization that one enjoys for the most part where one's abilities can be maximized for the benefit of all.