A Wall Street Journal bestseller World-renowned researcher and New York Times bestselling author Marcus Buckingham helps us discover where we're at our best—both at work and in life. You've long been told to "Do what you love." Sounds simple, but the real challenge is how to do this in a world not set up to help you. Most of us actually don't know the real truth of what we love—what engages us and makes us thrive—and our workplaces, jobs, schools, even our parents, are focused instead on making us conform. Sadly, no person or system is dedicated to discovering the crucial intersection between what you love to do and how you contribute it to others. In this eye-opening, uplifting book, Buckingham shows you how to break free from this conformity—how to decode your own loves, turn them into their most powerful expression, and do the same for those you lead and those you love. How can you use love to reveal your unique gifts? How can you pinpoint what makes you stand out from anyone else? How can you choose roles in which you'll excel? Love and Work unlocks answers to these questions and others, so you can: Choose the right role on the team. Describe yourself compellingly in job interviews. Mold your existing role so that it calls upon the very best of you. Position yourself as a leader in such a way that your followers quickly come to trust in you. Make lasting change for your team, your company, your family, or your students. Love, the most powerful of human emotions, the source of all creativity, collaboration, insight, and excellence, has been systematically drained from our lives—our work, teams, and classrooms. It's time we brought love back in. Love and Work shows you how.

A deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives. You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor treatment in the name of "being part of the family," all employees are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do what we love. In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth—the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. Told through the lives and experiences of workers in various industries—from the unpaid intern, to the overworked teacher, to the nonprofit worker and even the professional athlete—Jaffe reveals how all of us have been tricked into buying into a new tyranny of work. As Jaffe argues, understanding the trap of the labor of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.

Is your career all it could be? Henry David Thoreau famously said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Does this describe your current work situation? Whether you’re just starting out, looking for a change, or experiencing unwanted change, there’s a way forward. Love Your Work is about pivoting step-by-step to a more satisfying career. It will help you: Dream up bigger goals than you have now—and meet them Search out new careers or niches within your industry Pursue work and success in the holistic sense Maybe the new economy feels daunting to you. Maybe you’re not sure how to break out of your industry. Maybe you’re struggling to move up in rank. Wherever you are, if you don’t find your work meaningful and engaging, it’s time for a change, and Love Your Work will prepare you to make it. Robert Dickie III is a career advisor and CEO passionate about helping people find their best work. And it shows. He offers motivating stories, insights into today’s market, and dozens of resources for growing in your career. By the end of Love Your Work, you won’t just be equipped for the next move, you’ll be inspired for it. You’ll see work differently, and you’ll want to pursue it like you never have before.

Do your employees jump out of bed in the morning and look forward to going to work, or do they have to hit the snooze button five times and chug a 20-ounce latte just to face the day? The sad truth is, most people live in the second category. When it comes to work, 70 percent of Americans are disengaged, and this scourge of nonproductive ¿undertime¿ is dragging down everybody¿s performance. Chuck Runyon and Dave Mortensen have made it their life¿s mission to change this. Successful entrepreneurs who could have cashed out after seven years at the fitness franchise they co-founded, they instead decided to roll the dice, roll up their sleeves, and reinvent the culture of work. For two blue-collar guys with high school educations, it was a bold move and a huge financial risk. But it has paid off in multiple ways¿not only for them but also for their employees, franchisees, and members.Anytime Fitness is now the world¿s largest co-ed fitness club franchise, arguably reaching a bigger international market penetration more quickly than any franchise in history. More impressively, the Anytime Fitness logo has been tattooed on the bodies of more than 3,000 employees, franchisees, and gym members¿a passion most brands can only dream of.By shooting high, working hard, and trusting their gut, Chuck and Dave have inspired individuals, families, and entire communities to become healthier, happier, and more successful. Now they share their secrets for the first time. Their hope is that leaders of all stripes can follow the roadmap outlined in this book to create more purposeful, profitable, and playful work environments¿and to inspire others to love work as much as they do.

Love’s Work is at once a memoir and a work of philosophy. Written by the English philosopher Gillian Rose as she was dying of cancer, it is a book about both the fallibility and the endurance of love, love that becomes real and lasting through an ongoing reckoning with its own limitations. Rose looks back on her childhood, the complications of her parents’ divorce and her dyslexia, and her deep and divided feelings about what it means to be Jewish. She tells the stories of several friends also laboring under the sentence of death. From the sometimes conflicting vantage points of her own and her friends’ tales, she seeks to work out (seeks, because the work can never be complete—to be alive means to be incomplete) a distinctive outlook on life, one that will do justice to our yearning both for autonomy and for connection to others. With droll self-knowledge (“I am highly qualified in unhappy love affairs,” Rose writes, “My earliest unhappy love affair was with Roy Rogers”) and with unsettling wisdom (“To live, to love, is to be failed”), Rose has written a beautiful, tender, tough, and intricately wrought survival kit packed with necessary but unanswerable questions.

Learn how to discover your unique talents, establish a clear focus, and then find—or create—the appropriate application for purposeful and profitable work. 48 Days to the Work and Life You Love offers plenty of smart ideas for thriving in today’s changing workforce. This revised edition also includes fresh tips on career search and resume tools, interview skills, negotiating salaries, and more. According to financial expert Dave Ramsey, “Few categories of our lives define us and grow us spiritually, emotionally, relationally, and as people. Our work is one of those defining areas. Sadly, a ‘j-o-b’ is what most people settle for. But as Dan Miller so powerfully points out in 48 Days to the Work You Love, a calling lights up your life.” As a leading vocational thinker, New York Times–bestselling author Dan Miller helps readers better understand and organize their God-given skills, personality traits, values, dreams, and passions. In turn, they’ll see clear patterns form that point them toward successful career decisions. 48 Days to the Work and Life You Love is packed with modern insight and timeless wisdom and provides a step-by-step process for creating a Life Plan and translating it into meaningful, satisfying daily work. “Dan Miller was the catalyst for me finally starting the business that I had dreamed about for years. His coaching went far beyond what would normally be expected. I will be forever indebted to him!” —Patricia Smith, former executive vice president of Wyndham International and founder of The Smith Factor