Assignment Directions

Lots of attention in our professional lives centers on the Work/Life Balance, but there's a wrinkle we don't often talk about that's just as important to explore:

The Passion/Work Balance.

This balance is about how passionate you need to be about your work in order to feel fulfilled. It's intricately related to the motivating and de-motivating factors we explored last week, but it's also different: it's about how your identity is wrapped up in your work, and how you view the importance of your mental separation from work.

For some people, they have to feel passionate about their work or else it's a huge emotional emptiness or even boredom in their lives; for others, they are able to plug in at work and do their job without being passionately involved, and then leave it to pursue their lives and passions outside of work. For many of us, it's somewhere in between.

Read through this short article about the Passion/Work balance, and then take a quick quiz that will frame some of your answers.

Here is the article:

What Would You Do If Money Were No Object?

And here is the quiz. You don't need to pay for anything here--you can take the test for free with just your email address. It'll give you results that are totally sufficient for our purposes, and you can ignore anything else here.

The Passion Profile Quiz

What's your approach to the Passion/Work balance? How passionate do you need to feel in order for work to be fulfilling? Is there a point where the passion is too high and work takes on too big of a role in your life? Is there a point where the passion is too low and work becomes boring? How is your identity related to your work?

This can be a rough and exploratory journal entry, especially if the Passion/Work balance is something you're just starting to think about. Your answer can be short, maybe 200-ish words, and it can be just some rough thoughts and ideas for you to begin thinking about this important balance.