Fall in Love with the Work

Silicon Valley is an amazing place. Miracles happen every year as innovation breaks through and long-term franchises spring forth from the earth. It’s a collaborative environment filled with sage investors, supportive mentors, and driven, hopeful founders.

However, Silicon Valley is also a place where there is a veritable circus of promotion, money and toys. It can be an incredibly difficult place to live as a mere mortal and feel the need to measure up to the apparent success of everyone around you. The question of how to navigate such an environment and how to deal with the prospect — or the reality — of failure is a great challenge. Entrepreneurs suffer high degrees of depression as Brad Feld and others have written about both bravely and eloquently. One good example is here.

At times, simply trying to stay grounded in Silicon Valley is a challenge. Fear of next quarter’s or next year’s fundraise looms. The temptation to invert priorities and equate fundraising, retweets or press attention with success diverts attention from building and selling products. Comparisons with friends or competitors are mentally toxic — whether valid or not.

Brad suggests laughter — a well documented health benefit to lower stress — to overcome these depressive episodes. In a recent diversion for me, I found an unexpected philosophical gem.

As a guest on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, President Obama asks Seinfeld how he keeps his maintained sanity in check in a “sea of phonies, madmen and bloodsuckers.” (exact scene 14:50–16:10)

Seinfeld responds from the heart, “I fell in love with the work. And the work was joyful and difficult, and interesting, and that was my focus.”

I am so grateful I found a place where I both love the substance of the work and feel like I make a difference almost every day. But making it joyful and difficult and interesting took work — the obvious path, in my case, wasn’t the one that would have led me here. Take the time to think about what you LOVE about what you do and orient your vocation around it. You might find it’s time to do a different job or be someplace new or confirm why you’re staying where you are. Then the work will be joyful, difficult and interesting, and you will be better for it.

So wherever you are and whatever you do — fall in love with your work.