Work takes a third of your life, and most jobs have something in them worth loving

The card, Erik reads it

Practice. I do my job my own way when I can, instead of copying how it's always been done. I finish what I said I'd finish. Purpose. I can say why I chose the work I do. Method. When work gets heavy, I look for what's still interesting in it instead of counting the hours. When work feels forced, I don't take my freedom back by scrolling my phone or putting things off.

Open, Erik [phone cord, snip, first engineering]

I'm five. My mom has been on the phone for what feels like hours. I notice the cord going from the handset into the wall and I wonder what happens if I cut it. Scissors. Snip. The call dies. She pulls the receiver and the loose cable comes with it. Erik, did you cut the phone wire? Yes! I'm beaming. I've learned something: signals travel through the cable.

I didn't know it, but that was the first time I did engineering. Then Lego. Then code. Then the lamps in our apartment. It was play then and it's play now. That's the claim of this video: the difference between work and play isn't effort. It's where I put my attention.

Erik, when I forgot [stomach pain, customer service, the phone rings]

I got older and forgot work could be fun. There were nights I woke up with pain in my stomach about a delivery. Unpaid overtime. Evenings worrying I'd made a mistake.

In customer service I told myself the job was beneath me. And yet, every time the phone rang, I was curious who was on the other end. I loved the complicated insurance cases. The part of me that found the work beneath me kept getting overruled by the part that found it fascinating. I just wouldn't admit it.

Nina, first question [her work as play, when it stopped]

Erik asks: You chose your work. Coaching, breathwork, dance. It's the most obviously "you" job I can imagine. Does it still feel like play? And when it stops feeling like play, when it's marketing and taxes and months without sales, what do you do to find your way back to the part that's fascinating?

[Nina answers. Follow-up: Nina tells me I breathe deeply when I'm working and lose track of time. What do you see in someone's body when their work has turned into play?]

Erik, the points system [twenty tickets, which ones]

I tried to fix work with a game. I built a ticket system that gave me points per task. I come home and say: today I did twenty tickets, five more than yesterday. Nina asks which ones. I don't remember. That bothered me all evening.

The game was never in the points. It was in the problems and the people. When I turned the work into a number, it alienated me from the work itself.

Erik, most boring person [award, going quiet, calling others boring]

One more story, because I think a lot of you carry a version of it. Seventeen, end-of-year awards, my class votes. I'm nominated for kindest and smartest. I win most boring person of the year. I go quiet for years. I speed up when I talk about what I love so we can get to what the other person wants. And then the strange part: because I believe I'm boring, I start finding everyone else boring.

What fixed it: noticing that when I call something boring, it's usually because I don't understand it yet. Politics was boring before I understood it. Programming was boring before I understood it. Both times I turned out to have the patience.

Nina, second question [freedom at work, the heaviest mask]

Erik asks: For me the job is where the mask weighs most. Show up at this time, act this way, be this kind of person. And it's also the place I have the most control over my own happiness, because every bit of freedom I claim there is a third of my life. You run your own business, so nobody hands you a role. Is that more freedom, or a different kind of pressure?

[Nina answers. Follow-up: What do you tell a client who hates their job but isn't going to leave?]

Erik, the day I chose to care [three months in the rain, I don't want to quit, so I'm here]

I spent three months dragging myself to work in the rain, hating it, wishing I were somewhere else. Then one day I ask myself what I'm doing. I could quit. I don't want to quit. So I'm here. That leaves one choice. Why not care? I start looking at what my work actually does for the company and the people in it. It gets easier. The same job.

And the method line: when work feels forced, I don't take my freedom back by scrolling. Every time I did that, it felt like reclaiming something and it kept me stuck longer, and it taught me I couldn't be trusted with freedom. Responsibility is what taught me I deserved it.

Erik, what this gives you [find the fascinating part inside the frustrating one]

Think of the task at work you complain about most. Once you're inside it, what part still holds your attention? Start there tomorrow. Do that part your own way. That's how freedom at work is earned: not by asking once, but by being trusted with the result.

Close, both [eight practices done, pre-order close]

That's the eighth practice. Life, others, yourself, your ideas, your future, the truth, those who struggle, your work.

Pre-orders for Why I Love close this Sunday, October 18, at midnight. That's the cutoff for the first printing. E-book, audiobook, paperback, hardcover, at personalitopia.com/crowdfunding. Nina, anything you want to say to the people who've watched all eight?

[Nina closes in her own words.]

Which of the eight is the hardest for you? Say it in the comments and we'll both answer.