By Derek Sivers

We’ve all heard that the career we should be pursuing is the one that doesn’t feel like work.

Someone today asked me, “But of course there are times when you really have to do a lot of hard work to get a new business going, right?”

I thought about it for a long time.

I can’t remember anything, in my last 20 years of running my own business, that really felt like hard work!

Was it hard work finding band members, scheduling rehearsals, or trying to book gigs? Not really. It felt like an extension of the creative process of making music.

Was it hard work building then launching my website, and answering customer service emails? Not really. It was good to hear what people were thinking, what problems they were having, and felt great to solve them all.

I could see how these things would seem like hard work, but when it’s your company or you’re so filled with love for what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like work.

Then I realized a good comparison:

Cleaning someone else’s baby feels like work.

Cleaning your own baby doesn’t feel like work.

On the other hand, they say women often remember childbirth as less painful than it really was. So maybe my brain is wired to forget the hard work, otherwise I’d never do it again.