Not according to a short but interesting piece Alexandra Levit recently posted to her blog, Water Cooler Wisdom. In it, she comments on a book by Richard Chang, called The Passion Plan, which draws a distinction between two kinds of passion:

The Passion Plan describes passion as both content-based (activities like writing, hosting events, or racing cars) or context-based (themes like innovation, nurturing, and risk-taking).  Chang says that we can experience both types of passion in our work, and can often find ways to weave our passions into a current job without making a drastic career change.

It’s a powerful idea for those struggling in a job they find less than enthralling. Rather than spend your time daydreaming about making a career change to another gig that suits you better, why not attempt to alter the context of your current job? You could push not only for more of the type of tasks you like best, but also more freedom in terms of where and when you work (and whom you have to interact with regularly), as well as more learning and development to ensure you feel both autonomous and nurtured. Of course, that won’t work if your boss is an inflexible ogre, but these types of changes may be a possibility in many workplaces — you won’t know until you try.

For those struggling to enjoy their jobs, changing how they work may be far more manageable than changing what they do, but the idea that context sometimes trumps content is also a powerful one for managers looking to get the most out of their teams. You may not be able to change what your employees need to get done, but by making changes to the environment in which work is accomplished, you may be able to create a more passionate, and therefore more productive, workforce.

When it comes to passion for work is context as important as content?

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In a recent Harvard Business Review blog post, Scott Barry Kaufman talks about the difference between harmonious and obsessive passion.

“Those with harmonious passion engage in their work because it brings them intrinsic joy. They have a sense of control of their work, and their work is in harmony with their other activities in life.”

… “those with obsessive passion perceive their work as representing a passion for them, and view their work as highly valued. A major difference is that they have an uncontrollable urge to engage in their work. As a result, they report feeling more conflict between their passion and the other activities in their life.”

I see a lot of both types of passion within the web worker community. I have friends who have selected a web working career because it allows them to travel the world and have the free time to have amazing experiences while others work constantly and can’t disengage from work for even an afternoon of fun without worrying about what they are missing.

Here are a few tips to help you shift your passion from obsessive to harmonious:

• Delegate. Spend some time with a coworker or employee that you trust and start training them on providing coverage for you when you aren’t available. This is the person you’ll list as the contact while you’re out, and you need to delegate the work to them while you’re out of the office. As a last resort, they can always contact you in the case of a dire emergency, but make it clear that it should be a real emergency before they call you on vacation. If you are a solo web worker, this can be more difficult, but you can usually work something out with your clients to cover some basic tasks while you are out of the office.
• Go cold turkey. Take an exotic vacation on a beach where your technology would be in danger of getting covered with sand and water. This forces you to leave that cell phone and computer up in the room safe. Just make sure to actually leave it there — don’t try to sneak up to the room to check email every five minutes.
• Buddy system. Just like in grade school, you can work with someone else and hold each other accountable. On vacation, you can give your significant other permission to help you enforce your no work time by making sure that you aren’t always checking into work. A helpful friend who can remind you to put your cell phone away can also help.
• Wean yourself off of work. Maybe the cold turkey approach won’t work for you, but you can gradually wean yourself away from work. Start with 30 minutes every evening where you read a book, go out with friends or go for a walk without checking email or other work and gradually increase the amount until you are spending a couple of hours a day — and more on weekends — away from work.

The key is to shift your obsessive work time into fun activities that you enjoy to help bring your work and life back into balance. At first, these activities may need to be fun enough to really distract you from your obsession with work, but eventually, you should be able to shift into a more harmonious balance.

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It can be too easy to slip into the daily routine of work and the rest of your life without thinking about what you love to do. The beginning of the year is a great time to reflect on what you really want to be doing.

Here are a few suggestions for finding ways to do what you love, and still pay the bills.

Reflect

Before you do anything else, consider what you are passionate about. Think back over the past few months.

• Which projects were you excited to be working on? These are the projects you wanted to work on late into the night — not because you needed to meet a deadline, but because they were so much fun and interesting that you couldn’t put them down.
• Which projects left you feeling energized and excited?
• What was it about the projects that you loved? Were you excited about the data, the technology, the writing, the analysis or some other aspect?

Once you figure out what you love, the next step is to decide how to do more such projects, and reduce the amount time you spend on work that leaves you exhausted and drained.

Rework the Current Gig

If you already have a great job, but spend too much time on work that isn’t interesting, you can often redefine your job over time to end up with a job that you are passionate about. Volunteer to take on a special project that really interests you, and see if you can make it into a full-time job. I work with someone who loves organizing events. She arranged several events as side projects, and when the team grew, she was able to convince management to make events her full-time job.

You can also look for new opportunities within your company, and change jobs to do something more interesting. If you think there’s a need for a role that doesn’t exist, build a case for it based on real data. Convince management that someone needs to fill this role, and that you are the perfect person to fill it.

Have Side Projects

Side projects can be tricky to balance. On the one hand, they can give you something fun to work on that you can control. But too many of them can leave you drained, and steal your focus from other important work or relationships. For me, the best side projects are ones where I don’t care if I make money. If I need the money, such projects become more like work and less like play.

I tend to launch random, fun websites where I can practice my skills while creating something a few friends will enjoy. Over the holidays, I started working on a vegan cookbook. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I know it’s the right project because I have been working on it constantly over the past few days and looking forward to the work. Eventually, I’ll get to build another website for the book.

Make the Leap

If you’re really unhappy in your current job or freelance situation, take advantage of an economy that is starting to rebound. Now is a good time to:

• Build new skills,
• Start working on different types of projects,
• Look for another job, or
• Make the shift to consulting or freelancing.

Take a fresh look at what you really love to do, and consider all the options.

What projects ignite your passion? Share how you have been able to find work that keeps you excited and energized.

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“What makes the difference between wishing and realizing our wishes? Lots of things, of course, but the main one, I think, is whether we link our wishes to our active work. It may take months or years, but it’s far more likely to happen when we care so much that we’ll work as hard as we can to make it happen.” – Mister Rogers

Getting from Point A to Point B

We may have big ideas and hopes for our businesses, but getting from Point A to Point B is often where we run into trouble. Success, though, comes when we can connect our goals for our businesses to where we are today (and every day) through consistent action, but how can we ensure consistency each and every day?

We have to care about the work we’re doing — really care. If we love our work, we’ll be a lot more willing to stay the course and work as hard as we can (for as long as it takes) to see our vision to reality, and, in fact, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Loving the Work (to the Extreme)

I’m sure you’ve heard of Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s the author of “Crush It!” and the face of Wine Library TV, a daily video blog about wine, which took his family’s business from $4 million to $60 million annually in just a few short years.

I’ve read many times that Gary Vaynerchuk is a workaholic (he might even be a self-proclaimed workaholic). I’ve heard that he works 18-hour days, but no matter what you think about working that much, the real question is, do you love what you do so much that you are willing to put in that kind of time and effort?

From what I’ve seen of Gary Vaynerchuk, he’s one of the most passionate and enthusiastic people one could meet. Personally, I don’t know a lot of people who are all that passionate or enthusiastic about very much of anything (and they generally work far less than 18 hours a day).

Certainly, Gary takes his work to the extreme, but maybe that’s part of the reason he has been so successful. I don’t think very many people ever take anything to an extreme, opting instead to live in the middle and ending up bored to death with it. Passion and enthusiasm, though, can make you want to take your work to the extreme.

Finding Passion

Many of us are not so lucky as to know from an early age what it is that we want to do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find passion just the same, and by finding passion and enthusiasm, we’ll be much more engaged in our work, which will lead to greater contentment and success in our business endeavors (whatever they may be).

So, how do you find passion when your calling is not so obvious?

• Find a way to serve. Many times (and at probably the most rewarding times), passion comes from helping others. Teaching, sharing and offering support to someone else can bring enthusiasm for finding more and greater ways to be of service.
• Do what you enjoy. If you love writing, there’s a way to leverage that to help you build a thriving business. The same is true for speaking, entertaining, or meeting people. You can integrate any of these talents and strengths into a tool for building almost any kind of business. You can also leverage things like your love of sports or home-making or technology.
• Follow your curiosity. Gary Vaynerchuk was curious about wine, so he started exploring that interest and then decided to share his findings with an audience who wanted down-to-earth advice on the topic. If you’re curious about something, leverage that curiosity and see if there might be an audience who is also interested in learning about it.

Finding work that you truly love to do is key to being able to stick with it and put in the time and effort necessary to build a thriving business. If you can find something that ignites passion and enthusiasm within you, you’re much more likely to find true and lasting success.

No matter what your business, how do you make sure you remain excited to show up and build your business day after day?

Photo by Flickr user laszlo-photo, licensed under CC 2.0

Could it be that simple? In some ways it is, because passion brings with it certain gifts that make productivity a non-issue.

First, it breaks your excuses. Those who say they have no time come to realize that true passion will fuel their efforts to make time. Yes, even with five children in the house and an elderly parent to take care of. Yes, even if it’s just 15 minutes a day. Those who don’t have enough resources will also make do with what they have, or find ways to acquire what they need.

These resources may include know-how and tools. Passion, when applied wisely, gives you these things at the right time. When you’re passionate, your love is for doing the work, not for the shiny equipment, shortcuts or dental plan that comes with it. You could spend five days looking up the best collaboration tool for writing a group project or you could just pick one now and focus on the creating. Besides, if the tool ends up being the wrong one, you can always change it later. But you cannot get those five days of fiddling back.

The same applies to know-how. You could bookmark dozens of Photoshop tutorials online and subscribe to all the tutorial blogs. Or you can look up a specific tip when you need it. Given the scope of the Internet, there are tips available for almost any imaginable issue, but this doesn’t mean you have to digest all of them in one go. Since passion is fulfilled only in the act of doing something, the scouring of the web for tips you “may need someday” will seem like a waste of time.

Despite these benefits, passion is not an easy thing to come by. Even if you have it, you may not feel it all of the time. After all, few people feel passionate about creating invoices, writing reports or providing support to angry clients. Where’s the passion in that?

But these tasks — the boring, tedious ones — have their place. Those who have felt passion in their work will not settle for anything less, unless it is necessary. If they have the means, they subcontract it. If not, these tasks are automated or done as efficiently as possible so as not to interfere with the real work. In other words, the dull parts of the work are just that, parts. Not the main event.

Because if we have that kind of passion for the things we’re doing — whether it’s accounting, design, or stonemasonry — then we wouldn’t need as many “extras” to help us get through the difficult days. Passion will allow us to work when it’s hard, when it’s boring, and even when effort seems futile. We will show up and do the work because it’s what makes us feel alive.

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The first was when I interviewed eight-year-old entrepreneur Ryan Ross. During the interview, he said that running a business was easy and fun and everyone should do it. And that if we all did, we could help more people around the world.

Then I had the opportunity to ask billionaire Sir Richard Branson at a recent web conference for his thoughts on keeping his passion alive and giving something back as part of his work as an entrepreneur.

I don’t think it’s an easy feat to stay connected to our core values and who it is that we want to be. No, strike that. I think it’s easy to get so distracted by the “busy-ness” of our businesses that we forget our purpose, our mission, or our vision for our life and who we hope to be.

I want my life to be about giving back, helping others and being of service, but then the days happen. I move from one to-do item to the next, and before you know it, a month or three months or even a year has passed, and I haven’t really spent a big portion of my time encompassing or embodying the traits that I hope will make up the biggest portion of my character.

I don’t know the answer for sure, not yet at least. Maybe we figure it out with time, with age and with wisdom. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I hope there comes a time when I can focus much less on the things I hope to do and much more on the person I want to be.

Maybe instead of (or at least alongside) a to-do list, I should have a “to-be” list and then make a concerted effort to complete them both.

How do you instill more of the “being” even with all the “doing”?

Photo by Flickr user foxspain, licensed under CC 2.0

Our impulse is usually to try to do everything. Opportunities present themselves, and we think, “If I turn this away, I may not get another shot. What if there’s nothing else coming down the pike?”

Early on in our careers, especially, it’s tempting to want to take on every job, collaborate with every potential strategic alliance, and never turn down anyone for anything. Sometimes, though, the best option is in the not doing.

But, how do you know when is a good time to hold and when is a good time to fold? Here are a few clues.

1. It’s not your passion. I’ve talked with a lot of successful entrepreneurs, and one common trait among them is that they follow their passion. They know what lights them up and what wears them down, and they stay true to themselves and their mission at all times.
2. Your gut is telling you something. Intuition is often a big influencing factor for successful entrepreneurs and small business owners. If they feel a strong pull one way or another, they learn to trust that instinct, and it rarely leads them astray.
3. It’s not in the plan. Although passion and gut instinct weigh heavily on the decision-making of those who are successful, it’s still important to have a vision and a plan. Goals and intentions should be a driving force behind your daily actions, which will help you stay the course when distractions and obstacles get in your way.
4. It’s draining you. There are clients and tasks that simply don’t match well with your own personality, strengths, weaknesses and working style. Instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, accept that (for whatever reason) you just aren’t the right fit for each other and move on.
5. You’re spinning your wheels. There are situations where no matter what you do, you just can’t make it work. For instance, you might have a client who never takes your advice, does things his own way, and then comes back to you to fix it after the fact. It can be frustrating and wastes your valuable time on someone who will probably never change.
6. You’re overextended. The more your business grows, the more selective you have to become with how you spend your time and energy. Although that should be the case from the very start, it’s not until things become increasingly demanding that you begin to feel the crunch and understand the importance of being so selective.
7. You’ve hit a plateau or are floundering. Most successful people know that failed attempts, ruts and slumps are part of the game, but they also know when to say enough. Doing more of the wrong thing isn’t going to make things right, so they learn to ask tough questions and get down to the truth of a situation, rather than have it continually wear away at their energy and progress.
8. You’re being undervalued. There are times when a client or a partner doesn’t acknowledge or appreciate the value you bring to the table, and when that’s the case, you simply have to get out of a toxic relationship. It’s not always easy, but is very necessary for your own success and peace of mind.

In business, there are times when you have to be willing to walk away or risk paying an even bigger price down the line — your success and ultimate satisfaction with your life and work. While it’s not the easiest thing to do, it’s just as important to turn away the wrong opportunities as it is to jump on the right ones.

What criteria do you use to weigh prospective opportunities and avoid taking on clients and work that isn’t well-suited for you, or that holds you back from success?

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Each of us has our own unique makeup, a combination of genetic predisposition, life experiences, personality, interests, etc. If you think about it, that’s very helpful for creating a “new category” for our lives, businesses, and (ultimately) our success.

Take people like Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess), Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss. They’ve each built incredible success around a combination of unique personality and passion. That combination represents their self-created categories, something that each of us has the power to create for ourselves.

Michael Port says, “The greatest strategy for personal and business development on the planet is bold self-expression.” Power that with your passion, whatever it may be, and you have the potential to build something that not only thrives in its own right, but also brings you personal fulfillment.

Where do you start? There are a few steps you can take to help you develop your own unique category.

Have Fewer Outgoing Filters
Many times, we make the mistake of filtering who we are. People like Lawson, Vaynerchuk, and Ferriss do not filter themselves. Lawson says that her blog was created so that she had “an uncensored space to say the f-word and talk about ninjas.” Pretty unfiltered, and she does it without apology. Vaynerchuk drinks wine with Cap’n Crunch, no apology. Ferriss challenges the “deferred-life plan” with his 4-hour workweek and, again, no apology. Do they appeal to everyone? No. Do they care? No. By not filtering themselves, they’re definitely going to turn some people off. But they’re not trying to accommodate the masses, and that’s what makes them so successful.

Have More Incoming Filters
Don’t try to appeal to everyone, and don’t try to work with everyone. In fact, become very selective about who you serve and refer everyone else out. By better filtering what’s coming into your life and business, you’re able to provide a service or product that’s highly suited for your client or customer. In turn, those customers will sing your praises and refer more work that’s well-suited for you.

Be Narrow
Not narrow-minded — be narrowly focused, and the more laser-focused you can be, the more likely you are to actually create a new category for yourself, and when you do, you’ll own it. Do you know another energetic and opinionated wine guy who calls it like he sees it and makes wine approachable for everyday people? No. Gary Vaynerchuk is now in a class by himself, which would be a great place for you to be, too!

Figure Out What Lights You Up
Just because you’re a virtual assistant doesn’t mean you have to do everything a virtual assistant is expected to do. What do you love to do?  What do you have fun and enjoy doing? What could you talk about for hours on end? Somewhere in all that is a passion for work you were meant to do, and if you’ll clearly identify it and then boldly say it and own it, you’ll have the second part of the category-creating combo down.

Build the Framework to Support Your Unique Voice
Once you know who you uniquely are, who you ideally serve, and what you passionately do, every profile, web page, and piece of media you put out there should represent that. “Boldly express it,” as Michael Port would say, and you’ll start attracting the right kind of following, a following of true fans.

Personality + Passion = Your Very Own Category
Your Very Own Category = Success + Excitement for You

What lessons have you learned in “bold self-expression” and how it relates to your success in life and business? In what ways can you start to create your own unique category for your business?

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