Passion and Purpose at Work: What Keeps Me Motivated

Originally published in Spanish on May 20, 2024.

Leer el artículo original en español

This is an essay about work—what a strange word... I don't know. I often think and talk about what I like and dislike about a job. By work, I mean the activity we do every day and get paid for. There are many reasons why we work, but we can safely say that the main one is money. We work to earn money because it is almost essential to living in our world. So, like most people, the first thing I consider in a job is how much I will earn. Some people feel uncomfortable admitting this, as if someone, somewhere, had convinced us that working for money was wrong. For God's sake! (Not that God exists.)

This is actually the easy part for me. I already have a general idea of how much I want to earn, so I can ask about it early and quickly rule out anything that doesn't match my expectations. There are details beyond that, of course, but they aren't what I want to discuss here. I'm interested in everything that isn't money: the things that make work enjoyable, make it challenging, and make me genuinely want to do what needs to be done.

I recently learned that when you're doing something with such intense focus that you lose track of time and can't stop—when nothing stands between you and the activity—that state is called flow. It is something like the elixir of concentration, and it seems to be pure happiness. We set aside the ego and do the work for the sake of the activity itself. I have felt this way many times while programming, designing interfaces, APIs, architectures, and many other things. It is a beautiful state that makes me feel powerful, creative, and completely fulfilled. I also experience it when I make music. So beyond money—and, in my case, perhaps more importantly—I want my work to create the conditions for flow.

That is easy to understand. The difficult part is knowing, before choosing where to work, whether a job has the qualities I need for that to happen. It isn't easy to list those qualities, but I'll try.

The company's work and purpose need to interest me

I have worked in this industry for more than twenty years, and I honestly don't want to work on just anything. Some subjects interest me; others simply don't. The ones that interest me include music, sound, technology, calisthenics, yoga, habits, the cannabis industry, the environment, plants, and permaculture, among many others.

Startups and small teams

I prefer working in smaller organizations. At a startup, people usually have to take on more than they would at a large company and contribute in several areas instead of doing just one narrowly defined task. I like that. It gives me more ownership of what I build, makes the work feel more like my own, and generally lets me use more of my abilities and creativity.

People

A company's highest priority must be its people. People make everything work: they get things done and make it possible for the company to succeed. For this and many other reasons, I want to work somewhere that treats its people as the most important part of the organization. In practice, that means trust—trusting people more than processes and documents.

Ruby

Ruby is my programming language—the one I enjoy most. I have worked with JavaScript, PHP, Perl, C, C++, Java, and others, but Ruby is the language that works for me. It allows me to build things quickly. I can think and program without the language getting in my way.

Plenty to build

This may be easy enough to find, but I like having many new things to do in my day-to-day work instead of only maintaining an application built by someone else.

Few meetings

Meetings are the enemy of productivity. I understand, of course, that we need to meet, talk, and agree on things, but I believe the number of meetings should be kept as low as possible. More than six meetings a week feels like a lot to me: one daily stand-up of less than fifteen minutes, plus perhaps one weekly planning meeting.

Extreme Programming culture

I am a fan of XP—Extreme Programming. I understand that not every idea can be applied to every project, but I try to bring as much of it as I can into my daily work: unit tests, refactoring, continuous design, KISS, short iterations, the simplest thing that could possibly work, pair programming, deploying to production from the beginning, and continuous feedback, among other practices.

Books related to some of the ideas in this article

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd Edition

Until next time,
Gastón Ramos

 ::: If you'd like to comment, email me: ramos.gaston AT gmail.com :::