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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
Lessons on Thinking Big, Chasing Dreams, and Building Community
Make No Small Plans (2022) is the inside story of how a group of young entrepreneurs created one of the world’s most exciting platforms for global events and conferences – the Summit Series. This isn’t just a chance for them to recount their company’s history, though. Packed with actionable takeaways and business wisdom, this is a book designed to inspire readers on their own entrepreneurial journeys.
People say, do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s an idea that’s been knocking around so long it’s virtually become conventional wisdom.
Thing is, though, it’s not quite right.
The thinking here is that the things you care about – call them passions, or hobbies – are easy because you want to do them. Work, by contrast, is a chore. A slog. Something you have to do which you’d rather not. Time flies when you’re having fun but the office clock turns unbearably slowly. If doing something you loved also earned you money, it follows, it wouldn’t really be work.
But there’s another way of looking at things. The thing about passion projects is that they make you want to keep going deeper. You keep discovering more complexity. More room for improvement. You also become more critical and more attuned to shortcomings. In short, they turn you into a perfectionist.
It’s the same whatever the activity. Tennis. Playing the guitar. Writing code. You want to get better, but improvement is painful. Playing scales a thousand times sucks. Spending hours practicing your backhand is a chore. Building the 100th basic website is boring.
But you persevere. Put in the hard yards. Complete the drills. It’s precisely because you care that you’re capable of doing the work. Put differently, if you do something you love, you’ll work every single day of your life. And that’s a good thing! Because you’ll be doing something that matters. That expresses your values. That moves you toward your authentic goals.
It’s not a question of work versus passion, then – that’s a false dichotomy. It’s care and interest. If you care, you’ll do the work; if it connects with who you are, if it interests you, the hard and boring parts of the process mean something. That’s what sees you through. That’s what keeps you pushing.
This idea isn’t neatly packaged in Make No Small Plans – it isn’t given a chapter or section of its own. But it shines through on every page and in every story the authors tell. Of course, on its own, that caring isn’t enough for success – there’s so much more that goes into something as complex and big as building a global company. But it’s absolutely foundational. Everything else gets built on top of this commitment.
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Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 5,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trialBlink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma