I have been as usual been reading through some of the blogs that I am subscribing to an Seth Godin's Blog entry on workaholics captured my attention.
I have been branded as a workaholic by my ex-colleagues. And if I indeed look at the number of hours that I was putting in at that time, I was working 12-14 hour days - braving the early morning rush to get into the office by 9.00am and braving the absence of air-conditioning (and the recollection of stories of ghosts and spirits supposedly haunting the office) to finish some reports by 12mn.
And at first, I did agree with them.
Until I realized that I really didn't mind what I was doing - I was doing something beyond merely churning reports, Excel(R) and PowerPoint(R) files, and analytics. I was doing something that I was passionate about - and something that I believed to be of value to my clients' businesses.
And Seth Godin in his latest blog entry captured it:
A workaholic lives on fear. It's fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.
A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.
The passionate worker doesn't show up because she's afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it's a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation... because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it's a lot more fun than watching TV.
Passion and curiosity. Not Fear. I like that.
Showing up because it's something that one likes doing and it pays.
Going the extra 10% - the extra mile - the extra kilometer - the extra hour - knowing that the returns of these efforts are exponential.
