Good At, Love, Worth Doing

"Do what you are good at, do what you love, and do what you believe is worth doing." - Sam Calagione, Brewing Up A Business: Adventures in Entrepreneurship

Economic climates which are not conducive to considering second careers are never the best time to start thinking about one.  There's nothing like looking at the closures and layoff in your own field, the economic mayhem around you, and then saying, in a weak and wavering voice "Well, maybe it's time to..."  From personal experience I can state that security is something that you don't really miss until it's gone.  Feelings of strength and security and a sometimes reckless you have wash away with the realization that it was too often built on assumptions - the first assumption being that the pesky job you may not be crazy about would continue to generate income.

The counterpoint to this thought is exactly what you are doing.  It's one thing to argue safety and security; it's another to argue them in the context of facing something which could just simply be boring and fruitless or at worst be destroying your physical and mental health.  In such situations, the concept of safety and security dips below the horizon, beaten down by the intense sun of reality which too often feels like a physical presence leaving you hot, drained, and desperately in need of a cool drink called "something I can look forward to".

And then I read something like the quote above - do what you are good at, do what you love, do what you believe in - and suddenly I'm thrown back into the quandary that (it seems) I've been dealing with my whole adult working life:  Do I love what I do?  Have I ever loved what I did?  Was I good at it?  Have I done anything that I believe is worth doing?

Looking at my own career history, I can pick out elements of all of those, even with jobs I didn't like all that much.  The things I loved doing didn't always pay well and maybe I wasn't that good at it.  The jobs I liked okay I may have been good at but didn't love and probably didn't believe they were worth doing.  Most unusually, the jobs that I perhaps felt were the worst all, that I didn't love but may have been good at, were some of the jobs that (on a macro level) were jobs that needed to be done.

So the question remains, is such a concept even valid?  Is it better to do something worth doing, maybe even something you're okay at if you don't love it? Does loving something overcome the need of it being worth doing?  (Being good at something is partially natural talent and partially practice; given time most people can become passably skilled at most things so I would argue it's the least of the three factors.)  I don't doubt that the combination of those three things are what brings the ultimate satisfaction and ultimate success to individuals and companies that find them.  The question is, how do you find it?

And, if you figure out what it is, how do you go about doing it?