Loving the Work You Do

Every so often a quote sneaks up on me and refuses to leave. This one has been sitting on my desk for weeks:

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do." — Steve Jobs

It's the kind of line that's easy to nod at and scroll past. But the more I've sat with it, the more I realise it's quietly been the operating principle behind every meaningful decision I've made.

The Kitchen Test

When I left kitchens for code, the deciding factor wasn't pay or hours or prospects. It was a much simpler question: which one do I still want to be doing at 11pm on a Tuesday?

Chef life has a romance to it that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't done it. The pressure, the team, the moment a plate finally lands the way you imagined. But after a few years I noticed the love was fading in one direction and growing in another. The bad-weather days in France, when I'd shut the kitchen down and lose myself in a coding tutorial, were the days I felt most alive.

That's the test, I think. Not which thing you're good at. Not which thing pays. Which thing pulls you back even when nothing is forcing you to show up.

Love Isn't the Easy Bit

Here's the part of the Jobs quote that gets misread: loving your work doesn't mean enjoying every minute of it.

I love what I do. I also have days where the code refuses to compile, the deploy goes sideways, and I want to throw the laptop into the sea. I've written before about it never being enough and how perfection is a moving target. Both still apply.

The love isn't a permanent good mood. It's the thing that makes you willing to stay at the problem long after a normal person would walk away. It's why I'll spend a Saturday morning going down a prompt-injection rabbit hole instead of putting my feet up — not because anyone asked me to, but because the puzzle is genuinely more interesting than the alternative.

If the work doesn't pull you through the hard bits, you'll quietly start avoiding them. And avoiding the hard bits is where great work goes to die.

The Engine Behind the Craft

I think this is what Jobs was really pointing at. Great work is almost never the product of pure talent. It's the product of caring enough about something to keep showing up, keep iterating, keep noticing the small details that everyone else stopped noticing months ago.

A chef who loves cooking will taste the sauce one more time. A developer who loves their craft will rename the variable, refactor the function, add the test nobody asked for. That extra pass isn't discipline. It's affection.

This is also why I've leaned so heavily into being a jack of many trades. When the love is for the work itself — for building, for problem-solving, for the feeling of figuring something out — the medium becomes negotiable. Kitchens, code, AI assistants, admin systems: it's all the same instinct in different clothes.

When the Love Goes Quiet

The flip side is worth saying out loud, because Jobs's quote can feel like a gut-punch if you're in a job you don't love.

I don't think the answer is to torch your life and chase passion at the expense of everything else. The healthier read, in my experience, is more practical: pay attention to where the love is, and steer towards it slowly.

For me that meant years of coding on the side before I ever called myself a developer. It meant sharing things before I felt ready, taking the breaks I needed, and staying curious about whatever the next interesting thing turned out to be. None of it was a clean pivot. It was a long, scrappy redirection.

If the work you're in right now feels flat, that's information. Not a verdict. Not a crisis. Just a signal that the next interesting thing is probably somewhere you haven't looked yet.

The Bottom Line

Jobs's line lasts, I think, because it works in both directions.

If you already love what you do, it's a reminder that the love is the engine — protect it, lean into it, and let it carry you through the bad Tuesdays.

If you don't, it's a quiet nudge to start paying attention to what does pull you in. Not as a grand life plan. Just as a small experiment, a side project, a Saturday morning rabbit hole. Loving the work tends to start the same way every time: with one thing you keep coming back to when you don't have to.

I'm a long way from the chalet kitchens now. But the through-line is the same. I love what I do. And on the days I don't, I trust that the love will be back in the morning — because it always has been.

What's the work that pulls you back when nothing is forcing you to show up? I'd genuinely love to hear it — come and tell me on LinkedIn or Twitter.