You gotta do what you love
Fri, 05 Jun 2026
"Don't let the AI take the fun part away from you" has become my go to advice for almost anyone asking me how to deal with the current state of our profession (via the excellent Ronny Chang.) Sometimes you can't actually act on this advice, because your boss (we're gonna call anyone who makes decisions you have to follow at work "your boss" even if they aren't your direct manager) makes you give up all the fun parts to chase a trend, impress the investors/their boss, or just to try and calm the fear they feel (and probably won't admit, even to themselves) about getting older and being made obsolete. For the last couple of years it's been "AI" but if we really stop and think about it, this isn't that new. It's a new shade of the same problem, and it's why if you're reading a lot about design, half of everyone talking is regularly claiming design is dying, or it's dead, or it will be really really soon. (no I wont link to them but you know the ones I'm talking about.)
The best piece of career advice I ever got was from a creative director turned agency owner turned product manager. This guy introduced me to Madison Ave. advertising agency people when I was still some kid making Flash movies in a suburb of Cincinnati; questioning my decisions to drop computer science for art school (worth it, it turned out.) Years later he was the first person I heard say what I had been feeling, that advertising was moving away from the work we both liked to do (which prompted me to go get a job at Microsoft Game Studios, work that I loved but that didn't love me back.) He's a guy who influenced my career possibly more than anyone else (except me, of course).
When I walked away from my first director job after just three months (because the CEO was an abusive asshole. Don't ever let people call you slurs in front of your employees and coworkers...or just ever.) he told me this:
You gotta be who you are and do the work that you love. You can't fake it. Everyone knows when you do, and if that doesn't work for them, you're working in the wrong place.
He was talking about one of his employees that he had helped find another job because this person wasn't a good fit for his agency. The former employee in question was "too much an artist for client services." Seriously, when was the last time you heard of a boss that fired someone by saying, "I don't think this is a good fit for you, I'm going to keep you on for the next month or so, but I also set up these meetings for you with people I know who run teams that are probably a better fit?"
But he was also talking about me. I was in such a hurry to climb the latter and get that shiny director title that I took a job with a bunch of Wolf of Wall St. type finance guys. It was an obviously bad fit, but I was content to "fake it 'till I make it." There are some things you can't fake, like working in a culture where it's ok to use slurs in the workplace. To be fair, I didn't know that was the case when I took the job but in hindsight there were a lot of red flags I ignored. That's a different story though.
This is a story about the value of knowing what you want from your work, and why it's more important than ever as things continue to be all * waves arms frantically around at everything. *
The fun part
"Don't let AI take away the fun part." For that matter don't let anyone or thing take away the fun part. But how do you know which part is the fun part? It's not an objective truth. The part of the work you consider fun may not be the part I consider fun. It's certainly not the part bosses forcing you to use AI tools when they don't make sense consider fun. It may not be the part that you considered fun a year ago, or five years ago. That's certainly true for me. As you learn more and grow more in your practice, there are new fun parts that you discover that are more fun than the old fun parts.
My generation, millennials (of which I am apparently an "elder." thanks for that, internet) was sold on the idea that you should "do what you love" for a job, that way "you'll always love your work." After 27 years in this career and 20 years of following that advice, I can tell you: it is absolutely terrible advice. It's an amazing way to take a thing you enjoy and ruin it for yourself by adding the the pressure of having to make money (which means you have to make compromises that often kill your fun.) You should have some things you love that you keep as far away from "work" as you can. You should build a work-proof bunker in your heart and keep at least one source of fun and joy in it. So no, I'm not talking about "do what you love for work." If you are also a recovering "do what you love for work" person, I'll see you at the next meeting.
What I am talking about is finding the parts of the thing you have decided to do for money that you actually enjoy. In every job there are parts you actually like. Maybe its the people. Maybe it's the chance to share things you make with other people regardless of what the things are. I don't know what the answer is for you, but I feel fairly confident that there is something; even if you have a horrible job you hate except the paycheck (that's called golden handcuffs!)
Before I became a "professional designer" (distinguished from my previous state as a "not professional designer" only by someone handing me money regularly for doing design, instead of just occasionally) I worked in grocery stores. I am a first generation college graduate from a lower middle class family in Southwestern Ohio, a fact I am telling you to emphasize that it seemed pretty likely that "grocery" was going to be my actual career when I was just starting out with this whole "designer" thing. So, I had to find parts of working at grocery stores that I actually liked since I was spending 30 hours a week doing it (just enough so they didn't have to provide health insurance!) and because I was pretty sure I was going to spend the next 50 years working in one. It turns out I really like stocking and facing shelves. I was even more excited when I got to reorganize how stuff was laid out in an aisle. (I'm a designer after all)
Where is the fun in your job for you? It's important to know so you can remind yourself of it every now and then. Also you can't protect that aspect of your job if you can't name it. In these times of layoffs and downsizing and trying to find one of the dwindling number of entry level jobs, it's important to be able to figure out if the jobs you're looking for are going to have the part you love.
Finding a job that lets me do the thing I love? In this economy?
I know it sounds like an amazing luxury to be able to screen out potential jobs because they aren't going to include any of the stuff you find enjoyable, and it is to some extent. You're worth a few luxuries though, right? I'm not saying you should only consider "perfect" jobs, but I am saying you deserve to spend your working hours not being totally miserable. This is not always realistic (thanks boomers), but I believe it should be everyone's goal.
But it's also just a good strategy. It's much harder to get hired for a job you're not actually excited about. That may seem like it shouldn't matter, right? "If I do the work, who cares if I'm excited about it or not?!?" you might ask, as I did before I had the responsibility of hiring people and keeping them happy enough to not quit. It turns out, most people don't want to work with someone who is unhappy the entire time they're at work. It also turns out, people who don't like at least some aspect of their job tend to start looking for another one pretty quickly, and recruiters and hiring managers know this. Hiring people generally sucks. It's hours and hours of extra work on top of your already busy job where you spend a big chunk of your time disappointing people who didn't do anything wrong. Most people don't want to risk having to do it again soon after they finish. What I'm saying is, you're not likely to get hired for a job if there isn't some aspect of it that you're excited about anyway, so you're not actually risking that much by deciding to not apply for it in the first place.
I don't have any specific advice for you on how to find the parts that you love. Sometimes it's easier to make a list of the stuff you hate and then see what's left. Sometimes you already know the answer, but you're afraid to say it because you're afraid to "close doors." (I was there for a loooooooong time.) What I can tell you is that once you figure this out, and you start applying it to your work life, things get less bad. Your portfolio and resume get sharper, because you know what you want out of a job and you can make that clear. You have fewer interviews where your brain is like "OMG can I really work with these people!??!" Answering those "tell me about a time..." interview questions everyone loves to ask become easier, because you can talk about the stuff you love doing and you know it's relevant.
It's more important than ever to take care of you, because fewer and fewer people involved in the world of "having a career" will. Knowing what you want is the first step to actually getting it. So what do you love about your work?
Odds and Ends
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