What Do I Really Love to Do? (HBR Podcast)

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self.

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0:51I'm Alison Beard and this is a special series of the HBR IdeaCast that looks at how to find joy in our work.

1:03At a time when lots of people are feeling burnt out, disengaged, and unhappy in their professional lives, we're explaining, with the help of author Marcus Buckingham, how to change our jobs for the better. In the last episode, we looked at what's not working. Today, we're discussing how to identify the tasks and roles that do leave us feeling fulfilled. The things that make me feel most excited about the work I do are things like coaching, mentoring, developing people in general, really helping them reach their full potential. I get most excited when I'm working with a group of people to try and improve a process that will make things better for all the other members of the team.

1:40I like writing proposals and scoping activities of the project where I need to set up the scope.

1:46Marcus Buckingham:I have been a landscape designer for over 35 years. I love seeing that space and developing something that people can enjoy to see and grow and live and entertain in. I genuinely love the opportunity to help people see what they previously thought was impossible as possible. Anytime we launch a new product, anytime we launch a new menu item that our customers love, gets me powered up. The things that really, really make me excited at my job are seeing the satisfaction on my patient's face when they've made progress with the skills we've given them to help make them better. I really love being creative, taking a clean slate and creating something out of it for customers.

2:38What I genuinely love about my job is knowing that every day I'm making a difference in people's lives. The first step to finding more joy at work isn't quitting. It's figuring out what specifically energizes us and what we excel at in our current roles. Marcus Buckingham is the author of the book Love and Work, and we're excited to have him back.

2:58Marcus Buckingham:I'm so happy to be here, Alison.

3:05So the first most obvious question, is it really possible to find things that you love? in any job?

3:16Marcus Buckingham:Well, let's admit that there are a lot of boring jobs that have been designed by people who basically assumed that there's no love to be found in that job. Whether it's warehouse jobs, where there's no bathroom breaks, or whether it's white collar jobs, where you've got surveillance software on your computer, you can design jobs in a really loveless way. When people then find no love in them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we can design really bad jobs. But if you flip that around and you begin by going, well, first of all, let's just start interviewing people who really, really, really love their work.

3:50Marcus Buckingham:I mean, that's what I've spent 25 years doing, is doing qualitative focus groups, qualitative interviews, quantitative surveys and assessments of people that are, for whatever reason, love what they do. And the things that leap out to me, we talked last time about housekeepers, but how about boron miners? Rio Tinto Borax is boron mine in Northern California. You think, well, that's just a job where you've just got to suck it up. But you interview these people who love that work and the vividness of what they love is just sort of mind-blowing. Somebody will go, I give every single machine that I work with a name and every one of these darn machines got a personality.

4:28Marcus Buckingham:And I love every day walking in, I try to figure out which machine is going to choose to break down today. And I'm listening and I'm going, because I'm not very handy at all. And I'm going, choose to, what do you mean choose to break? This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense?

5:00There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes.

5:23Marcus Buckingham:And this person, for whatever reason, had just figured out that every one of his machines that he was working on in the mine was a character. Somebody else talked about the fact that his thrill, his absolute thrill is going, and he measures it, how many days without a safety incident? He comes alive when he starts talking about that. Any job that you wouldn't love is loveless in your opinion. But it doesn't mean it's loveless to everybody. And we need to be super careful that we don't assume that just because we hate it, it's hateful. That's not so. And again, that doesn't mean that we can't design boring jobs that don't trust people and that's super constraining and wrong.

6:03Marcus Buckingham:We can and we often do and we shouldn't. But there's love to be found everywhere. So it seems like you're saying it's very much about matching the personality to the job. So there needs to be a lot of soul searching to start with to make sure that you're on the right path and that there's even a possibility of finding these moments of joy or pathways to find love. Yes. I mean, that's, if we could rewrite everything, what we would say to the nine-year-old is, hey, you don't have to be afraid of life. I know you wake up, dear nine-year-old, and sort of try to get through the day. There's probably stuff that you didn't get done at school yesterday, and you probably woke up today thinking about when you were going to get it done.

6:49Marcus Buckingham:And life is something to withstand. And then, of course, as grownups, we have that same feeling, don't we? You wake up, you're like, oh, shoot, my to-do list ran over from yesterday, and how do I get through today. But one of the things that we can teach people is that actually life isn't something to be withstood. Life's actually putting on a show for you. Every single day, life comes at you with thousands of situations, moments, contexts, people. And it's almost like your day is a fabric made up of many different threads. Some of those threads for you are black or grey or white or yellow. They lift you up a little bit, bring you down a little bit.

7:31Marcus Buckingham:Not much to move the needle. But some of those are red threads. Some of those threads every day are red. And what that Mayo Clinic research shows that the most resilient doctors and nurses do 20 % of their activities that they love, the metaphor there is that they haven't got a red quilt. It's not as though every single darn day is a total red quilt. They've just found red threads every day and woven them deliberately, intentionally, if you look for it and you find it, you can weave that into the fabric of every darn day. And by the way, Alison, the everyday part seems to be really important. When you do the research and you take the word every day out of the question, I have a chance to do what I love.

8:13Marcus Buckingham:If you just leave it as, I have a chance to do what I love. And then you start correlating that question to performance, to engagement, to likelihood to sue, to accidents on the job, to turnover, all the correlations go away. The everydayness, the frequency of it seems to be really important, more than the intensity of it. It's not like you could say to someone, hey, have a terrible month, but at least one day a month, you're going to do something you really love. Okay, we have no data that shows that works. So yeah, this begins actually with some soul searching going, hey, look for red threads today.

8:50Marcus Buckingham:don't judge them. Don't assume yours are the same as everyone else's. Don't assume that they have anything to do with your race or your gender or your age, because you're different, frankly, than your brother and your sister. The people you grew up in the same house with, their red threads weren't yours. Even at nine, you knew that. So yes, for all of us, it does start by taking your loves, for want of a better word, seriously. For a long time, you're told your loves aren't real. There's nothing in there. You're an empty vessel, and learning for you is information transfer and then confirmation through standardized testing.

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10:03Marcus Buckingham:That's what school is. And we do have a bit of unlearning to do if we're going to find joy and love in our work. So when we're talking about looking for these threads, do we mean specific tasks? Do we mean special projects? Do we mean interactions with coworkers? You know, what types of things should we be looking for? Well, all of the above is everything you just said is real. You'd start off by going, first of all, pay attention. Pay attention to what every day brings you. Sounds like an obvious thing to say, but as I mentioned before, often we seem to think that life is the enemy and then we've got to keep it at bay.

10:47Marcus Buckingham:So first of all, try to change your relationship to what's hitting you every day and start paying attention to the show that your life is putting on. Second, look for the first obvious three clues to your red threads. And those first three clues would be, number one, what do you find yourself instinctively volunteering for? What particular activity or moment? It could be writing an email. It could be dealing with a guest complaint. It could be redesigning a workflow schedule. What do you find yourself instinctively volunteering for and looking forward to? So positive anticipation is a great first clue.

11:24Marcus Buckingham:Second clue, time flies by. It's the idea that when you're in the middle of some activities, the steps fall away. And it's almost like you vanish inside the thing. And maybe, by the way, some of those things you have been procrastinating. So the first clue isn't a thing you should look for because you've been pushing it off. But boy, when you start doing it, oh, my word, it's like time speeds up. It's a bit like when you're in love with someone, right? Before you're with them, time drags on and it slouches up the hill. And then suddenly, finally, you're with the person you love. And then the whole bloody day seems to speed by in 15 minutes.

11:59That's 100 % me writing an article. I will put it off and put it off and put it off. And finally, I'll sit down and start writing. And I won't be able to stop. Like my kids will come home. I'll say, make yourself dinner. Like my husband will say, hey, do you want to watch TV tonight? I'm like, nope, nope. I'm finishing this piece.

12:16Marcus Buckingham:And it's so, so yes, those two signs don't necessarily correlate. I mean, sometimes they do. But to your point, sometimes you're like, ah, push it off, push it off, push it off. And then you're in it. I think you have to be good at it too, right? You know, so not that I'm tooting my own horn, but you know, it's my profession. I've been doing it for 25 years. So that's partially why I can lose myself in it. Well, yes. Although there's a relationship between love leading to appetite, appetite leading to practice, practice leading to performance. So unquestionably, people do seem to get better at things they practice.

12:50Marcus Buckingham:But the really interesting thing is figuring out what it is that you love that gives you an appetite to practice. Because when you look at practice through the lens of love, it's not a discipline. Practice is an obsession. and so you've gotten good at it because probably a long time ago sorry i don't mean a lot i don't know how old you are alison it was a long time ago a long time ago um but probably you wrote something and somebody way back when and i bet you could i bet you could even sum 100 seventh grade mrs sussman english i had to write a piece on haste makes waste i had to write a short story about it.

13:29And I got an A plus and I had to read it in front of the class. And I like, I'll never forget it. And then I was like, I'm going to be a writer, obviously.

13:38Marcus Buckingham:Gosh, that just gives me chills because how lovely to have a person, in this case, a teacher. I mean, talk about people develop in response to another human being. You're so close to your own loves. And at the age of, you know, in seventh grade, you haven't really individuated yet. You haven't really figured out whether you should fit in or stand out. And so somebody coming in from the outside and going, hey, hey.

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14:47Marcus Buckingham:want to read like how beautiful is that and of course that doesn't mean you can't get better this isn't like a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset and you were fixed in seventh grade It's just that thing that you did, we saw and it resonated with us and your appetite for it grew. And it becomes a self-reinforcing thing where you get somebody helps you get better at it. You learn which particular sentences really seem to work and which don't. You turned your love into contribution, which is awesome. So that is the second clue. The third clue, by the way, is just there are some things when you start to do them, you don't need the steps.

15:26People often break down skills into steps, but there are some activities when you do them,

15:31Marcus Buckingham:it's like you don't need them. The learning was already there inside you. Some nurses can give painless injections and they have exactly the same technique as the same steps as a nurse right next door. But when you ask the patient to rate the pain, same patient, different nurse, same steps for the injection. One patient, one nurse gets high pain ratings and the other one doesn't. And it's not the steps. It's almost like there's some sort of natural understanding of empathy inside the nurse already. They don't need the steps. So one of the other clues to a red thread is when you're trying something new, it's almost like you've done it before.

16:12Marcus Buckingham:And not to get too mystical, but the Norse had a lovely idea of this. They said that inside of you is a weird, not W-E-I-R-D, but W-Y-R-D. It's a noun. You have a weird. You were born with like a daimon inside you that knows things. And I realize this now begins to sound a little spiritual and weird, but it means that you've seen this, I bet, with your kids where one of them, you try to get them to do something and it's like, oh my word, I've got to mechanize that because that kid has no idea how to do that. And then another kid, you're like, how did you know that? Like my daughter didn't speak until she was three, which got us really worried.

16:55But when she did speak, it was

16:58Marcus Buckingham:whole sentences. And one of the first ones, when her mom was leaning over the crib at three, her mom's necklace kind of hung down so that my daughter could see it. And she looks up at the necklace. And one of the first utterances she ever said was, that's a lovely necklace, mummy. And I went, why did you, you don't want that necklace. You've at three understood the concept of reciprocal altruism. Who taught you that if you so goodwill with your mother now, she'll repay you somehow later. Who taught you that? Who taught you to give compliments. Yes. Well, she'd obviously, it's funny, she came back from school when she was five years old and she'd been asked to write goals for the semester.

17:45Marcus Buckingham:One of the goals was like learn to, I don't know, learn to read better. But the second goal, unprompted, was stop fooling the teachers. and I laughed because I was like where's that coming from I went back to my son and was like hey this is funny you see what your sister wrote as a goal she wrote stop fooling the teachers and I thought he was going to laugh because I was laughing because obviously I'm an amazing parent um and he didn't laugh he just looked at me with this completely blank stare he was like seven years old he looked at me and he was like wait you can fool the teachers he had no concept had no idea that people could be fooled and so some part of red threads is that it's an immediate almost rapid learning of mastery so so those are the first three things and that gosh we could teach it we could teach this to nine-year-olds we should certainly teach it this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new.

18:51It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes.

19:25The 39-year-olds. And so just practically, you know, you're looking for these clues. Do you, you know, brainstorm and write down a list? Do you think about things both in inside work and outside work, things from your childhood? Should people, once they're starting this process come away with that sort of list of five things that they really do love doing, they do naturally, they get into a state of flow with?

19:53Marcus Buckingham:Yeah. So the first and simplest way to do this is just to, which probably no one's done, but it's very easy to do. Just take a blank pad around with you for a week. Keep those three clues in mind, but take a blank pad around with you, draw a line down the middle of it, put loved it at the top of one column, loathed it at the top of the other, and take the pad around with you for a week. Anytime you see one of the signs, scribble it down in the Loved It column. And if you happen to see one of the inverses of the signs of love, you are procrastinating it or time seems to drag on and it feels like you've been doing it for an hour, but it's just been five minutes or it feels stilted and disjointed and you feel alienated, scribble that down in the Loved It column.

20:31Marcus Buckingham:That's a really good way to inventory a week. And then look at what's in the Loved It column. And then once you see what's in the Loved It column, what you're trying to get to, I mean, really what you're trying to get to is you have to try to write for yourself three, I'll call them for want of a better term, love notes, which start with a sentence, I love it when, and then you've got to just try to finish the sentence. And of course, today, because no one teaches us any of this, most of us are completely inarticulate, are disfluent in our own love language. And so we say generic things like, I love helping people.