🍣 Is it love, or fun?

The difference matters.

Hey friends,

There’s an interesting, if perhaps accidental, pattern around personal growth in today’s newsletter. Though, is it accidental? Or just the product of my subconscious as i was picking (seemingly at random) some ideas to feature today? We will never know.

Anyway, let’s crack on.

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💌 Is it love, or is it having fun?

Alex Morris, of

STRAT_SCRAPS

fame, wrote this recently:

“You don’t need to love your job, but you do need to have fun there.”

And it lit something in my brain, as it feels like an important reframe in an age where we’re all supposed to tie our identities to work. See, loving your job sounds great until you realise your job always comes with more boring or not very appealing things, and now the thing you love is also at times boring and unappealing… which feels weird?

Look, the way someone once described it to me was: say you love movies, and you want to be a movie critic, then you’re gonna end up watching a lot of really bad movies. I kinda took this to heart when i thought about my own professional preferences, so i often avoided saying i loved planning and doing this for a living. And yet, i never quite had an alternative description for it! Except now maybe i do, and maybe you do too.

I do have fun doing this planning thing. Mentoring juniors. Talking to clients. Trying to capture a wacky idea in a way that makes business sense. Playing around with data (yes, really). Reading about extremely niche things and wondering if or when they will break into the mainstream. Is it love? No, what i feel for my daughter and my partner and my family and closest friends is love. So what is it? It’s chaotic good playfulness.

Or, as Cherie Hu recently tweeted, perhaps it’s something closer to “tasteful chaos”. Feels like we could all do with a little more of it.

xoxo,

Rob

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Ps. I will always publish free slices, but if you become a paid subscriber, you’ll get an extra slice plus a funky-ass meme, because you deserve nice things. Please consider upgrading to support my work and in turn i will give you more of what my brain has to offer. Win/win!

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