Pleasure Balance
Fulfilment Anchors
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PSA: This isn't your usual vapid pep talk. This article is a warts-and-all investigation into the question that haunts many of us our whole working lives. So if you just want validation, go and look at the other Google results. If you want something helpful, stick around.
We’ve all heard it:
“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
It’s repeated so often it starts to feel less like advice and more like a moral instruction. If you’re unhappy at work, the assumption is simple: you must not have found the thing you love yet.
The pressure!
For people exploring a career change or growth path, that idea can feel intoxicating. The thought that somewhere out there is a role where the effort feels light, the energy flows, and the work never really feels like work at all.
But then the questions start to creep in:
The truth is, loving your work is not a simple yes-or-no question. It’s not determined by the activity alone. It depends on autonomy, identity, expectation and sustainability. In other words, it depends on the system the work lives inside.
So does doing what you love for work ruin it?
Not necessarily. Some people do build successful careers around the things they love. But for many others the issue isn’t the activity itself – it’s the system surrounding it: autonomy, income pressure, identity expectations and lifestyle trade‑offs. Loving the work alone rarely determines long‑term satisfaction.
And the hardest part boils down to this:
A few people will do what they love for work. And they'll do great – but they're in the minority. So should you go for it, or err on the side of practicality?
Because even elite performers have wrestled with this. Ronnie O’Sullivan has spoken openly about losing his love for snooker under pressure. Daniel Day-Lewis has retired more than once at the height of his success. Adele has stepped back from music to reconnect with it on her own terms. Not because they lacked talent or passion, of course, but because the conditions surrounding their craft changed their relationship to it.
That distinction matters – because it's where all the slogans start to unravel.
Much of this advice is really a variation of another popular idea: follow your passion.
It sounds empowering, but it assumes that passion, income, working conditions and long‑term satisfaction will naturally line up. In reality, those things often pull in different directions. When they do, the question stops being "Should I follow my passion?" and becomes "What kind of system can actually sustain the work I care about?"
This idea didn’t appear from nowhere. Career expectations have shifted dramatically over the last few decades – just speak to your parents!
Work used to be mostly about stability and security. Now it’s expected to deliver self-expression, fulfilment, meaning, impact, status, relationships… and yes, income.
We’re encouraged to seek self-actualisation through our careers. To align passion with income. To blur the line between who we are and what we do. And every time we turn on the TV, celebrity success stories seem to confirm the slogan.
On the surface, that sounds progressive. And in some ways, it is.
But it also raises the stakes.
If work is supposed to express your identity and deliver fulfilment, dissatisfaction starts to feel existential. Not just “this job isn’t great,” but “maybe I’m not living my purpose.”
Before going further, it helps to untangle a few ideas that often get lumped together.
We tend to use these interchangeably, but they’re not the same.
The difference often comes down to when they occur in our experience and what they're for.
You can enjoy something without finding it meaningful. You can find something meaningful without enjoying every part of it. You can feel fulfilled in work that isn’t your hobby.
When we collapse these into one vague idea of “loving what you do,” we set ourselves up for confusion and disappointment.
Hobbies and jobs operate under different rules.
When something is a hobby, it’s self-directed. You're in charge and you choose when to do it. How to do it. How much to do it. You can stop when it stops being fun.
So it makes sense that you should do it for work, right? But when it becomes work, the goal posts shift.
You now have clients, deadlines, stakeholders, performance metrics. You've probably got someone telling you where and how and when (and when not) to do what you love. Even if you’re self-employed, you answer to markets and money.
Research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation shows that when external rewards and pressures increase, intrinsic enjoyment can decrease. Not always, sure – but often enough to matter.
If this was “the thing you love,” there’s now an added layer of inner expectation.
When it doesn’t, the disappointment feels bigger. It’s no longer just about workload. It’s about who you thought you were becoming.
Starting over professionally also often shakes confidence – especially when identity and work are tightly linked. If you're navigating that stage, this guide on building confidence when you're starting over professionally may help.
“I get to do this” can very easily become “I have to do this.”
And once obligation enters the picture, the emotional tone changes. The activity may still interest you – but it no longer feels quite as light or freeing.
Before we answer that directly, we need to acknowledge something important.
Some people absolutely can do what they love and keep it fresh.
There are people whose interests, environment, working conditions and expectations align in a way that sustains both enjoyment and fulfilment over time. Their system supports the work.
But many people end up disappointed — not because they chose the wrong subject, but because job satisfaction and fulfilment are products of a system with many variables.
Sometimes the problem is even simpler: the things we enjoy don’t always align with the most sustainable pay points in those fields. When we treat "Can I do what I love?" as the same question as "How can I find work that’s enjoyable, fulfilling or meaningful?" we make the problem harder than it needs to be.
The question sounds simple: If I love this, won’t I love doing it for work?
In reality, the outcome depends on far more than the activity itself.
Even if you love the subject matter, things can deteriorate when:
If those conditions are misaligned, loving the activity alone may not be enough to compensate.
It can start to feel ruined when autonomy disappears, when income anxiety overwhelms enjoyment, when identity becomes fused with performance, or when that one activity is expected to carry your entire sense of meaning.
It doesn’t feel ruined when the environment is sustainable, when expectations are realistic, when your work is part of your identity but not all of it, and when purpose and pride are clear without becoming oppressive.
The activity matters, but the system around it matters just as much.
There’s another subtle shift that often goes unnoticed.
Many people begin loving something because it was an escape — a source of pleasure, relief or creative freedom outside of obligation.
It was where you went to feel lighter. To recover, to play.
When that same activity becomes work, it may stop serving that function.
If your hobby used to be where you found ease and release, what replaces it once it becomes your job?
If you move your primary source of pleasure into the realm of obligation, you may need to consciously create new spaces for joy elsewhere.
Without that, it can feel as though something has been taken — even if the work itself is still meaningful.
We’ve all seen how easy it is to load one role with too much responsibility.
You expect your work to provide income, identity, meaning, pride, social connection, growth and enjoyment — all at once.
That’s a heavy burden for any single activity.
When we make one thing carry everything, disappointment becomes much more likely.
It’s tempting to assume that if you were truly talented, truly passionate, truly “meant” for something, you would never question it.
But that’s not how it plays out in real life.
Ronnie O’Sullivan, one of the greatest snooker players of all time, has repeatedly stepped back from the game – not because he stopped loving it, but because the pressure and environment changed how it felt.
Daniel Day-Lewis, widely regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation, retired at the peak of his powers. Being top of his game didn't keep him there.
Adele has spoken about needing space from music when the machinery around it became overwhelming – rediscovering her relationship to it only once the conditions changed.
And some of these people keep coming back, sure – but notice the pattern. The activity often survives; what becomes unsustainable is the system around it.
Look, you effectively have three choices. And none of them is about blindly chasing a slogan.
Some people choose to pursue what they love above almost everything else.
They accept the uncertainty, the financial risk, the long hours, and the discomfort that may come with it. The work becomes the priority — sometimes above stability, balance or income.
This is the "no matter what" path.
There is nothing inherently wrong with it. Many extraordinary careers have been built this way.
But it requires honesty with yourself about the choice you’re making and the sacrifices it may involve. Patience, too – because career change rarely unfolds quickly. When progress feels uncertain or difficult, it helps to understand how to keep going when progress feels slow.
You can absolutely pursue work you love.
But treat the thing you love as one component within a broader system.
That system includes:
The goal isn’t simply to “do what you love.”
It’s to create harmony between the activity, the conditions and the rest of your life.
Alternatively, you might decide that what you love functions better outside of monetisation.
Instead of organising your career around a single subject or passion, you focus on identifying your fulfilment anchors — the underlying elements of work that energise and sustain you over time.
One useful way to think about fulfilling work is through what we might call fulfilment anchors — the underlying elements of work that consistently energise and sustain you.
Fulfilment anchors might include things like:
Most people’s anchors are a combination of these elements rather than a single activity or subject.
Once you understand them, the powerful part is that you can carry those anchors across many different roles, industries and working conditions — including environments with different pay points, schedules or lifestyles.
This means your work doesn’t have to revolve around one specific passion to feel satisfying. Instead, you design work that consistently expresses the underlying patterns that fulfil you.
While some people do manage to do exactly what they love, get paid well for it and have everything else line up perfectly, they’re the exception.
For most people, sustainable job satisfaction comes from building their work around their fulfilment anchors rather than around a single passion.
Whether you monetise what you love or not, the real question becomes this:
Is the system around your work sustainable, aligned and humane?
If you focus only on the activity and ignore the structure around it, you’re likely to be disappointed.
If you prioritise the system – autonomy, balance, identity, energy, environment – you give yourself a far better chance of building work that is satisfying, meaningful and sustainable over time.
Doing what you love isn’t automatically naive.
Believing it’s the whole answer might be...
Not necessarily. Some people successfully build careers around work they genuinely enjoy. But problems often arise when the system around the activity changes – pressure, financial demands, long hours, or loss of autonomy can alter the emotional experience of the work. In many cases it’s not the activity itself that stops feeling enjoyable, but the conditions surrounding it.
For some people it is. But for many others, long-term work satisfaction comes less from a single passion and more from a combination of factors – environment, autonomy, relationships, lifestyle balance and meaningful outcomes. In practice, people often find fulfilment by designing work around what energises them most, rather than trying to turn one favourite activity into a full career. If you're trying to redesign your work around what actually matters to you, 1:1 career coaching can help you build a system that supports both livelihood and fulfilment.
A hobby is usually done voluntarily, in your own time and at your own pace. When the same activity becomes work, new pressures appear: deadlines, financial expectations, performance evaluation and external judgement. These pressures can change how the activity feels, even if the underlying interest remains.
This is often presented as a binary choice, but it rarely is. A more useful approach is to understand the system surrounding the work: the lifestyle it creates, the financial realities, the type of environment and the kinds of activities involved day-to-day. Some people choose to pursue what they love and accept the trade-offs. Others build satisfying careers by focusing on deeper fulfilment factors that can exist across many roles.
Research and lived experience suggest several recurring factors:
For many people, these system factors matter more for long-term satisfaction than the specific subject or activity itself.
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