actually enjoying work?
does anyone actually enjoy work??? everyone complains of the lifestyle but still stay in it for one reason or another.
Trending Content - Off Topic Forum
Career Resources
WSO Free Modeling Series - Now Open Through
June 30, 2026
9 Free Financial Modeling Lessons
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
High Finance Applications
Guaranteed
Get at least one offer GUARANTEED
- 1:1 support
- 92% success rate
- 2,000+ mentor network
- Unlimited Live bootcamps
- AI for resume + LinkedIn
- Networking automation tools
- HireVue simulation tool
- Full course library
- Private Slack community
- 20hrs of mocks
- + much more...
Shock, intern with no real responsibilities has “work isn’t that bad” mentality.
Wait until you’re one year in on your full time role. That goes for any industry: finance, IT, consulting, etc.
vs staying in a toxic home, people dying in other parts of the world etc., i'd say yes work isn't that bad (given company culture isn't terrible)
Well of course a day-to-day career isn’t remotely as bad as comparing it to a physically abusive dad or a contagious disease, but let’s not go down the false equivalency route shall we? It’s a bit ridiculous.
I’m not slating you, I’m telling you to keep your expectations in check. You will likely be working for 50-60 years. Don’t count your chickens in the first two months.
You’re in accounting. Fuck off
Am I?
That's news to me
I happen to love what I do and find it really interesting and intellectually challenging, but having some time for some other stuff is also great. There is a word in German, Fachidiot, which means a really good specialist in one field but otherwise an idiot. Don't want to become something like that.
P.S. Yes, "work isn't that bad".
I have never truly "enjoyed" work. Those who do are fortunate.
You work at a job so you can afford your hobbies.
i enjoy my work. i just don't enjoy the volume of it.
first 60-70 hours or so of the week, i'm basically fine.
when it starts to tick past that, i get grumpy.
When I was an Excel monkey in corporate finance roles, I generally enjoyed the work. I was responsible for all of my financial models and I was OCD about every cell and value across roughly 20-30 models going on at one time. I was usually right, projected everything pretty close, and made few mistakes. I prided myself in that work and innovated in my group to create some more sophisticated models for our utilization percentages (consulting).
But, I generally felt underappreciated after all the models I created for the group and also then made the mistake of not managing up enough for about a year. It hurt me when I thought that my work was so excellent that it was visible to the team and managers, but I should have highlighted my successes in a subtle way a little bit more often.
Then I left corporate to be a large scale abstract artist in NYC and genuinely enjoyed work, but got way less commissions than planned. I failed greatly in sales. I just assumed sales.
I did sell a piece to 2 HBS grads, which was one of the highlights of my time in this role (9ft wide oil 3 panel tryptch).
That's pretty cool! How much do you sell them for?
Haha this is such an interesting question. There are times when I am really digging what I do, and then a day later my boss decides to shit all over some work I did. At which point I think crap, how many more years of this do I have to take. I think the better way to phrase this would be, what % of work do you enjoy, what is meh and what do you dislike. For me it is probably 60% enjoy / 20% meh / 20% dislike. The 20% I dislike is just admin work / when my boss shits on my work even though it really doesn't matter much for the research...
I suspect the only ones that "enjoy work" 80+% of the time are owners / autonomous. So owning a flourishing company or being a wealthy author, where you have high control in setting the pace.
I haven't done it so just me speculation but I figure if I get to the point where I have 100k passive income coming in while my net worth continues to scale at marginally above inflation, I can do something far more autonomous. Not to say I'm miserable now, but think that on the balance would be much happier at that point. It's far away but I'm confident I can get there
I enjoy my work from 9am to about 3pm Monday - Thursday.
My dream is a 4 day workweek, 8 hours per day (I’ll suck up working beyond 3pm lol). Obviously this will never happen in my lifetime and sounds ridiculous, but it’s telling that if you told people in the year 19xx that people in 2020 only worked 32 hours a week, they probably would have said “that makes sense”.
Any man who tells you he enjoys his work is either a liar, on drugs, an artist or an artist on drugs. The world was built by people who hated waking up in the morning. Hell, even Marky Mark Goldboi, the fucking Emperor of Rome, needed to motivate himself to wake up - that´s how we got Meditations.
Quo enim commodi qui nisi magnam. Labore dolores mollitia itaque. Dicta sunt recusandae ipsa nostrum adipisci consequuntur quia. Voluptatem reiciendis ea enim maxime voluptatem ab omnis dolorem. Omnis occaecati molestiae hic quis vel.
Consequuntur in qui sapiente maiores aut aut in. Sit dolor assumenda aperiam quas veniam. Velit voluptates dolorum rerum molestias ut quod.
Sequi error expedita et perferendis aut ut. Odit eaque debitis quisquam modi nisi sapiente perferendis tempore.
Rerum soluta ad ut assumenda. Est alias quod est nihil et iure ad.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...