Don’t Forget to Bring the Beats to Your Work

revive the zombified passion in your work

Years ago, I remember watching a Youtube video (fyi, I think I am addicted to Youtube) of a street food vendor serving corn, and I was thoroughly captivated.

Nothing extraordinary, just a man serving corn while drumming along as he stirs and beats on the equipment with his spoon. But I was strangely mesmerized like a dog in front of tennis ball. It was just corn, but it is more than just corn – the man drummed beats of magic into the corn. 

It reminded me of the few street food vendors that breathed the same magic to the banana-roti on the streets of Bangkok. The man flattening a dough of roti with precision, slicing bananas evenly, and spreading nutella. In a few min, a plate of hot, creamy banana roti was served on to my hand and the chef returns to cook the next order. It was magical.

“Isn’t it awesome to see one bringing such excitement and beats to their work?” so I thought.

Bullshit work turns you into Zombie

Looking at the jobs I’ve had over the years, I can’t say I breathe magic like this into my own work. In fact, they were often the opposite – the passion and joy were drained by some invisible vampire called bullshit work.

When I started my first job, my boss would morph from the shadows behind me and breathe down my neck fumes of terror. Years later, I find myself in high-level meetings with company leaders scheming ways to win market shares by moving boxes in PowerPoints and editing numbers in Excel. In the last tech startup, I find myself tasked with reinventing Auth0 while the company fights for its survival.

Bullshit work drained the joy and passion out of my life. Putting up with bullshit, even 1%, eventually leads to complete erosion of my passion for work.

After rage-quitting from my job and the industry, I found myself a walking husk – I don’t know what I want anymore and what brings me excitement, and no amount of digits in my bank statement can help. Neither does jolting it with drinks, loud music, nor neon lights.

Is it ever possible for me to do jobs like the man making corn? Will I ever be able to breathe magic in my work and career, like the street food vendors I experienced in Bangkok? 

Bring joy and love into the moment makes magic

In my long sabbatical from the corporate world, I started hosting dinners and cooking for my guests. Cooking was never my hobby – it came about as a necessity because I didn’t want to pay $25 for a subpar noodle in NYC. The acts of buying groceries, washing vegetables, chopping, hours of mixing and cooking, plating, and cleaning up are chores that numbs my soul. But I discovered something strange – the more I do this – hosting, cooking – the more I brought my own beats to it. Unbeknownst to me, I was dancing with some tunes I was blasting as I did the chores.

When guests munched on their first bite -- the sourness of the garlic stir fried chinese pickle, the spiciness of the sichuan tripe, tender soft chunks of beef, all mixed in a bone broth of tomato and soy sauce with the northern noodle -- they exclaimed “oh my god, this is the best beef noodle I ever had!” “the meat is melting in my mouth!," “I’m gonna add 5 stars to your apartment on Google Map.”

I delivered my magic, and everyone’s loving the taste of it.

For the first time in a long while, I can feel the passion and joy in me when I cook. Chopping vegetables became drumming on on the cutting board; cooking sauces was mixing elixir of deliciousness. Every step in the process I brought a beat to it, and with it I created a work of art. I have no aspiration to be a Michelin-starred chef, but in cooking I felt the complete joy and excitement of the art. I lost myself in the process and hours flew by like minutes.

Is this what it feels like to love what you do? 

The sages of our times have commended us to do work we love:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do” – Steve Jobs

I’ve heard these quotes many times since I graduated from college, but they were so elusive. After decades of un-inspiring jobs and shattered dreams, I couldn’t figure out how to love the work I do.

The video of the man making beats and corn, and my own venture into cooking, showed me what it is like to bring love into you work. And when I did that, I produced my best work.