Find and Do the Things You Love

“People do what they want to do.” –Daryl Wizelman

When we do what we love we are happy and inspired. This applies to our personal life and our professional life. When we do things we are obligated to do but don’t want to do it creates resentment, and we tend to procrastinate. In some cases we avoid doing these things even though we know we should and even if we know they will benefit us. On the other hand, when we do things that we enjoy we will do those things happily. In addition to being happy doing the things we enjoy, we will also act with more discipline and consistency, thus making these actions into habits.

There are two areas of life to consider: One is doing what we love in our personal life and the other is doing what we love in our professional life. I will start with finding that passion/hobby on the personal side because often our passions/hobbies outside of our vocation are what drive us to thrive and succeed at work. I will refer to this as purpose. 

There are a lot of hobbies we can try in order to find the one(s) we love. It is a matter of keeping our eyes and ears open and seeing if what other people are doing is interesting enough for us to try it. Being “open” to trying things opens up the possibility of us liking or loving that hobby and thus making it our passion. 

Personal Life

Here are some thoughts about creating a plan to find your passion/hobby.

1. Make a list of the things you enjoy doing.
2. Make a list of the people you enjoy being with.
3. Utilize social meetings to observe what your “friends” are doing.
4. Give each potential hobby a try until you find the one(s) that you can’t wait to engage in again and again.
5. Once you find your passion, plan time to do it on a regular basis.
6. Don’t allow other things to prevent you from spending time on your passion/hobby. We need this to fuel our life at work.

There are a lot of ways to skin a cat. There are a lot of tasks we can perform to increase our business. The key here is that the tasks we perform on the vocational side must make the cash register ring. We have free will to choose the tasks that we enjoy doing consistently and that bring the most value to our business.

Professional Life

Here are some thoughts about creating a plan to find the things you love to do at work.

1. Make a list of every task or action you can think of that will move your business forward. The list should include categories like Marketing and Networking.
2. Go through your list and categorize the tasks into three categories;
   • Things I enjoy doing
   • Things I don’t enjoy doing
   • Things I won’t do (Throw these in the trash later.)
3. Are there enough actions on your ‘things I enjoy doing’ list to enable you to grow your business 10% or more, year over year?
4. If the answer is yes, you have your list.
5. If the answer is no, what items on the ‘things I don’t enjoy’ list could you grin and bear to move your business forward? Add those items to your list.
6. Create a time block of when (what day and time) you are going to perform each task.
7. Perform each task with consistency and discipline.
8. Measure your growth through what results come as a result of what tasks.
9. Repeat! Repeat! Repeat!

We only have so much time. Thus we have to make choices about how we are going to spend our time. Ultimately we will spend our time doing the things we want and love to do. Find the things that inspire you both professionally and personally and JUST DO IT!

Daryl Wizelman is a race car hobbyist and Executive Vice President of California Production for Draper and Kramer Mortgage Corporation. He retains 25 years of experience in the mortgage industry. Read more of Daryl’s thought leadership here.