If You Find Work Painful, Here's Why

Work is often mistaken for pain, but they are not the same thing.

We go to school, go to work, yet most of the things we do don't have as much meaning as we would like.

Often, we spend our time working on someone else's vision, having done it for decades while growing up.

But what if there is a difference?

What is work?

It is the activity involving mental or physical effort done to achieve a purpose or result.

Activity. Purpose. Results.

Most of the things we do do not cover all three.

• What is the activity? It could be reading, speaking, talking, building, programming, etc.

• What is the purpose? To add value, to realize our potential, to help people, or to help ourselves.

• What are the results? It could be three pages, one building, ten happy people, or ten more customers.

That is a complete picture of work.

Before diving into work, we should ask ourselves these questions:

1. What activity am I doing?

2. What is the purpose of this activity?

3. And what result am I trying to accomplish?

We should focus 1000 percent of our time doing the work that we can define for ourselves.

Everything else, is secondary.