Do What You Love or Love What You Do

Doing what you love is bad advice. Working hard, improving the skills that stand out, taking small steps forward, is what gets you to love what you do.

Should you try to do what you love (a.k.a. your passion) for a living? You get bombarded with this question over and over again in your everyday life. It is on the social media (e.g. people posting about doing what they love and getting paid for it). It is also on the TV (e.g. famous celebrities evangelizing their lifestyles and how they satisfy even their weirdest pleasures). And of course, it is also in the movies and songs (e.g. those influencers that changed the world by pursuing their dreams). In short, doing what you love is about following your passion.

In this article, I will argue against following your passion. And I will argue for another approach – adopting a different mindset, deliberately working on your habits, defining the areas where you are great, and, ultimately, learning to love what you do. In short, defining the passion as the product of your work, rather than defining work as the product of your passion.

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I Want a Promotion!

This article describes my unique way of pursuing a promotion by choosing the goals that will take me there and setting aside time to accomplish them.

I have spent more than a year on my current position as a Senior Professional. During this time, I deliberately kept my mind clear of the promotion process. There was so much to learn and grow horizontally that I did not want to miss the chance to do it by concentrating on something else. Now, I feel that it is time to take a look and architect my way to the Principal level.

This article describes how I approached my promotion by shifting my concentration from the urgent to the important. The culture of my current company praises self-driven, self-service professionals and this is why everybody has their promotion in their own hands. Nobody will take you there but rather you have to convince yourself and everybody else that you belong there. At your own pace.

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