We’re going to take a longer look at love; not to drag you away from the hard realities of the world of work, or to dismiss the demands and discoveries of reliable data, but instead to dive deeper into both. In doing so, we’d like to share the truth that—more than striving for balance between work and life—love-in-work matters most.

Love-in-work is less of a mouthful than eudaimonia, for sure, but it might also sound soft, idealistic, and far removed from the real-world pragmatism of the freethinking leader. If it does, then bear with us. Because love—specifically, the skill of finding love in what you do, rather than simply “doing what you love”—leads us directly to a place that is the epitome of pragmatism.

Think back for a moment on that someone you know who lived a full life. You get the sense, don’t you, that they were on to something. That they had somehow cut through all the noise, and tuned themselves into a signal only they could hear. And they didn’t do this in spite of their work. Rather, they seemed to be doing it through their work. Their loves and their work were inextricably linked.

In their telling, “work” does not simply mean “job.” It is not merely manual or knowledge labor. Instead, “work” is anything of value they created for someone else.

To love someone is to see them, all of them, the best of them, to accept what you see, and then to do everything in your power to help them be the biggest version of themselves.

Your love will challenge them, and cajole them, and never leave them be, and if, at some point, you see them heading in a direction that will hurt them, or shrink them, you will push them out of harm’s way, even if they themselves can’t yet see the love in what you’re doing. If you love someone, you do for them what is right for them, not necessarily what they want. You are demanding, your expectations are the highest of the high.

The point here is not about superhuman endurance, endless self-inflicted suffering, awe-inspiring work ethic, or even self-discipline. I’ve come to see that for individual lives it is more about feeling intrinsically compelled than about being fanatically disciplined. I used to think of myself as a disciplined person, but the more I studied these lives, the more I came to see that I never really needed discipline to keep going. If you so love what you’re doing, and you feel so well encoded for it that you simply cannot stop yourself from doing it, then how is that discipline? I love the time of bliss in the hours of transition from night to dawn, and there is nothing in the world I would rather be doing than creative work as the light changes. I still hit nearly every single day excited by the work at hand, checking my watch in the middle of the night hoping that it is far enough into the morning to justify getting up, thinking to myself, “Please, oh please, let it be at least 4 a.m., so I can get going!” That’s not discipline; that’s love.