Two years ago, I decided to teach myself computer programming. It seemed like an obvious path for me, a fitting convergence of my personal and career interests. So I bought a $40 book, spent $250 on online courses, and listened to hours and hours of a popular programming podcast. Plus, I had the time — five or six hours after work each day — to do with as I pleased. Sure, I was tired after hour-long commutes to and from my day job, but I didn’t have children, or a sick relative, or any other commitments that life assigns without consent. All I had to do was study.

Which is why, naturally, it didn’t happen. I spent more time wanting to study and regretting not studying than actually doing the thing. The problem, it seemed to me, was laziness. Perhaps I wasn’t working hard enough, I thought. Or maybe I was too comfortable. Whatever it was, I was to blame, and so I persisted, struggling to work harder and work better, to no avail. Whenever I reflected on my progress (or, more accurately, my lack of it), I felt guilty and ashamed and frustrated, resolving to do better next time, next time, next time, until I simply got used to the inertia and became as unmoved by my lack of progress as I was unmotivated to make any.

And then, I fell in love.

My friend Vicki owns and runs a successful restaurant in Chicago. During my first-ever trip to Chicago last October, she told me about one of her former cooks who, although he is good at what he does, couldn’t seem to take it to the next level. No matter how hard he tried, everything he cooked was good, but not great, despite wanting so badly to be great.

“After this guy left, one of my other cooks made a comment that really stuck with me,” Vicki said. “He said that the guy’s problem is that he lusts to love cooking, but doesn’t love it.”

I thought of programming, something I lusted to love, and how I didn’t end up learning how to program because, for whatever reason, I didn’t love the process of learning it. What I did love, enough to hold on to this goal for two years without making any progress toward it, was the lifestyle I imagined it could provide — physical, financial, and artistic independence.

I don’t think you necessarily have to love everything about something to be compelled to stick with it. (There is, after all, a reason why people stay in shitty relationships.) You just need to find something to love about your goal that will make you do the damn thing. If I loved formal education environments, I could’ve taken a programming class. If I loved video games, I could’ve found one about programming, or tried to make a game as my first programming project, or turned my self-education into a game. Or imagine if I fell in love with a girl who programs.

Maybe I could’ve been a great programmer, or a decent one that managed to pull off some great work. Or maybe, no matter how hard I worked, I was inevitably going to discover that I’m terrible at it or just don’t enjoy it. Who knows? But one thing’s for sure: you can’t make yourself fall in love. It’s discovered, not created. It’s involuntary, something you’re compelled to do.

Last year, I fell in love with two things: the stock market and fantasy football. On trading days and game days (which, on occasion, are every day of the week), I wake up just in time to check the market or to watch Fantasy Football Now on ESPN. I wake up immediately, without setting an alarm and sometimes without getting enough sleep at night, and this blows my mind because I’m a deep sleeper who, prior to this, couldn’t wake up until I got at least six hours of sleep. And yet now I do, because I love these things that much. I spend hours a day studying and researching and planning, and I don’t have to choose to do anything. I just do it. And that’s how it should be.

There’s an element of luck to all this. You’re lucky every time you encounter things or people, goals or activities, that you fall in love with. But you’re luckiest when what you fall in love with is actually worthy of it.

Steve Jobs, in his 2005 Stanford Commencement address, said it best:

[T]he only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

You’ll know it when you find it. Don’t settle.