This might be history’s most counterintuitive quote: “If you love something, set it free.”
As adages go, that one isn’t always the most helpful. Why give up something you love, especially if its replacement is not something
you love as much? But what about when you love something too much or too hard? That kind of pressure can damage everyone or everything involved.
There’s a bit in an old Seinfeld episode that I’ve always identified with about Jerry’s favorite T-shirt: Golden Boy. Golden Boy is Jerry’s best shirt, the first one he always wears out of the wash. But Golden Boy is, in Jerry’s own words,
a “tragic figure.”
“Look at the collar,” Jerry tells Elaine. “It’s fraying. Golden Boy is slowly dying. Each wash brings him one step closer.” Jerry has loved this one shirt so much over all of the others that his love is causing it to “die” prematurely (though he also mentions that he’s had the shirt for six years, which is just a drop in the bucket for how long the love affairs last between most men and their favorite articles of clothing).
This is a meandering way of talking about how being passionate about our jobs can actually be leading us closer to burnout if we let ourselves become too passionate.
But hold on, you say. Weren’t most of us told at an early age to find something we’re passionate about and make a career out of it? That’s another adage: “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Not true, says Jennifer Moss, a workplace expert and award-winning journalist who is the author of Unlocking Happiness at Work and the forthcoming book The Burnout Epidemic. “When we equate work we love with ‘not really working,’ it propagates a belief that if we love it so much, we should do more of it — all of the time, actually,” explains Moss. “Who needs a day off when you’re not really working?! There’s a whole cottage industry committed to proliferating this mindset — from books, to talks, and even kitsch stores selling piles of ‘Work is Bliss’ quotes on merchandise. This type of mentality leads to burnout, and the consequences can be both dire and hard to detect.
“While burnout can affect anyone, at any age, in any industry, it’s important to note that there are certain sectors and roles that are at increased risk, and purpose-driven work — that is work people love and feel passionately about — is one of them,” continues Moss. “According to a study published in the Journal of Personality, this type of labor can breed obsessive — versus harmonious — passion, which predicts an increase of conflict, and thus burnout. On The Mayo Clinic’s list of burnout risks, two out of six are related to this mindset: ‘You identify so strongly with work that you lack balance between your work life and your personal life’ and/or ‘You work in a helping profession.’”
None of this is to say we should become dispassionate about our work. But it is a healthy reminder that setting boundaries should remain a priority. Work-life balance is not a first-world problem, and knowing when to turn work off — or as leaders, proactively telling your employees to do so and then modeling that behavior yourself — is a big component of ensuring we continue to love what we do.
The last thing we want is to fall prey to another adage. This one’s based on a quote, often erroneously attributed to the late poet Charles Bukowski: “Find what you love and let it kill you.”
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