Your passion for work can position you to achieve your career your goals quicker and not having it would make your career journey less fulfilling. No wonder the great Nelson Mandela said: “there is no passion to be found playing small-in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
Passion for work is the intense enthusiasm and excitement for what you do. It can be the difference between doing it and getting done well. Being excited about your Monday’s the way many people are only thrilled about Fridays, it can be the difference between enjoying your job and struggling it.
Whether you come to it by the love of what you do or currently doing what you love, the opportunities it presents you or just a decision to be passionate. One certain thing is that passion for work makes a world of difference for your career and productivity.
The following are some of the many things your passion for work can help you achieve.
1. Passion For Work Sets Your Attitude Straight
It is usually said that what we reap, is what we have sown. Your passion for work would set your attitude at work as well as your attitude to work. This helps you align yourself with work, career goals regardless of the challenges.
A straight attitude would make you see the wins that lie beyond the challenges to be surmounted.
2. Sets You Apart and Defines Your Path
Passion for work will set you apart and aflame with an intense pursuit of your KPIs and goals. Struggling most times on a job can be linked to no definiteness of purpose. Passion sets you on a better path to building a career rather than being at a job.
Your career moves and motivation in the short term can always be linked to your bigger picture for the long term. Every job you take is a strategic move towards that path.
If you look within your organisation, identifying people with who have a burning passion for what they do for the organisation is usually not difficult. This also helps management recognise those who can hold leadership positions and grow within the organisation’s ranks with the right training.
3. Intensifies Your Personal Development
Getting the job done is largely dependent on your skills-set. The more developed they are, the more you are likely to get the job done. Your passion for work will spur you to seek personal development and training opportunities to enhance your skills which positively impacts performance and results.
4. Feeds Your Creativity and Innovative Spirit
When you are passionate about the job that you do for a company, you are bound to have loads of happy and pleasing experiences. The more passionate you are about your job, the more creative and innovative it drives you to become.
You will come up with more interesting ideas and ways to get your job done. Nothing kills creativity and innovation faster than doing a job you consider dull, boring and uninteresting. This is very crucial for career growth.
5. A Spike in Productivity
A genuine passion for what you do at work will spur you to be more productive then if you were just doing the job to earn a living and nothing more. Passion for work spurs you to do more at all times and it shouldn’t come as a surprise if this has a positive impact on your productivity.
The more productive you are at work, the more it will impact your career development and career growth.
6. You Voluntarily Put in Extra Hours
Most workers will only put in extra hours at their jobs for two reasons – The first is when they have been threatened with sanctions by a manager. The second reason is when they have a natural passion for work. For the second category of workers, you find them putting in extra hours because they are passionate about something about their job. It could be the job itself or it might even be the office design that fascinates them.
Being passionate about your work does not make you see the extra hours you put in at work as a burden of any kind and this is because you naturally find your work enjoyable.
Without passion for your work, every extra minute you spend at work is something you silently considered a prolongation of your misery. This doesn’t mean you have to work extra hours all the time but whenever duty calls, you attend to it with a smile on your face.
7. You Find Joy in What You Are Doing
The importance of this cannot be overstated. If you do not want to be in a job that constantly makes you feel that you are wasting your life away, then it is important that you have a passion for that job.
Don’t lie to yourself. The passion is either there or it isn’t. If the passion is there, you will be happy and excited to do your job and experience true joy.
8. You Will Cease Disliking Mondays
If you do not genuinely love your job, getting off your bed on a Monday morning to go to work will always leave a frown on your face and a deep-seated reluctance to go to work in your heart.
Mondays won’t be so gloomy if you have a true passion for work. Don’t be one of those whose social media updates and stories are plagued by memes and notes of how they wish they could break up with Monday and similar messages that leave a sour touch on their Mondays.
9. Overcoming Obstacles in the Workplace Becomes Easier
Not many things are as depressing as battling an obstacle at a job that you have no passion whatsoever for. The workplace is bound to throw up challenges from time to time and the more passionate about your job, the easier it will be to face and overcome these challenges.
Your passion for your work has the capacity to accelerate your abilities and the mindset you need to accept and win over all obstacles with creative solutions.
10. Putting in Extra Effort
There might be days when your job requires that you make some form of sacrifice. For instance, it might mean that you attend an official event outside your city/state of residence to lend a helping hand. If there is no real passion for your job, this sacrifice will most likely leave you unhappy and make you feel used.
The reverse is the case when you are passionate about your job and what you do. You take up those extra responsibilities with a pinch of salt. Your co-workers will see you as a reliable pillar they can always lean on when they need that extra shot of motivation or inspiration.
11. Your Positive Energy Becomes Infectious
Your passion for your job can easily rub off on some of your colleagues especially new employees who are still trying to find their feet and observing the spirit in the workplace.
The mood at work is not completely reliant on having a beautiful office or having coloured walls and plants. The mood in the workplace can be transformed by the level of passion shown by you and other employees who work in it.
12. You Feel Less Stressed
Passion takes a chunk of what would have otherwise constituted stress in the course of doing your job. When you do a job that you like, your mind and body leave you with a feeling of being pleased and happy.
The day does not end with a feeling of finally getting out of prison like some experience. Rather, you feel happy and this makes you feel less stressed.
In conclusion, passion for work is rewarding for your career. If you currently not passionate about what you do, this might be a good time to reflect on what changes you need to make.