Love What You Do

The passion myth, the critical voice, and the economics of belonging

So Reader,

There is a lie printed on millions of shit bag coffee mugs that says: "Do what you love."

It is a great slogan if you have a trust fund. It is a terrible operating manual for a Tuesday morning when you are trying to build a micro-business from your kitchen table.

I'm not the only one saying this. In The Practice, Seth Godin wrote: "do what you love is for amateurs; love what you do is the mantra for professionals." Cal Newport dedicated an entire book (So Good They Can't Ignore You) to dismantling the follow your passion myth.

Anybody who has actually built something from nothing knows the work is brutal.

And if you happen to care about it deeply, it gets worse.

The Critical Voice

Here is what the passion myth leaves out. It assumes your internal voice is on your side.

For a lot of us, it isn't.

In October 2025, I finally found someone to fill in the form and book me an appointment for an ADHD diagnosis. I passed with flying colours and got the answer to the mysterious force that has haunted me all my life.

What took longer to understand is how it secretly and invisibly disables you. You don't even realise it's happening. Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is the compound interest of micro failures and rejections that ends up fuelling your internal monologue. 

Also known as the critical voice, it looks at a project you love and whispers: You're doing this wrong. This isn't perfect yet. They are going to see right through you.

This is why "do what you love" can be actively destructive. The more you care about something, the louder the voice that says you're failing at it. RSD weaponises what you love against you.

Each session with Helen Lindop, my ADHD coach, feels like bloodletting the critical voice. It's an exhausting process of draining it out so I can actually see and hear it, rather than just blindly reacting to it.

For a long time, I thought the fix was to try harder. Take another course. Read another book. Fix myself so I could fit neatly into the productive entrepreneur box.

But the pattern is always the same. Just when I think I've outrun it, it comes back for another assault. The things I care about most trigger the loudest internal resistance. Not because I'm broken. Because that's how RSD works.

Learning to spot it doesn't make it stop. But it takes away some of its power.

Information vs Knowledge

This is also why the environment you work in matters more than most people admit.

Stacey Sheppard from The Tribe Coworking connected me with Dr Felicia Fai, a researcher from the University of Bath whose work sits at the intersection of coworking spaces and local economic development. When we were recording last week, she drew a sharp distinction between information and knowledge.

Formal business courses give you information. You sit through a six-week crash course — and then you are on your own. There is no support afterwards. (I'd add: the local authority probably brought in someone who came sixth on Dragons' Den to deliver it, but that's my editorial, not Felicia's.)

Knowledge is different. Knowledge happens when you take information and apply it in the real world, through the daily friction of sitting next to other people who are also trying to figure it out.

My favourite example of this is the two years I spent sitting next to Nils Millahn, a developer, in Mainyard Studios in Hackney.

At least once a week, he would look over at my screen as I was trying to Google something to do with WordPress. He would lean over and say, "Press that button in the theme menu." And I'd be back on my way, even though half the time I didn't actually know what I was looking for in the first place.

I didn't get a certificate. I didn't have to join a Mastermind group.

Those moments were the most valuable learning of my career.

People talk a lot about "community" in coworking, but I often feel like it's simpler than that. For a few months at a time, the people who form the current membership in a space become an unofficial cohort. They all happen to turn up in the same place at the same time. Membership ebbs and flows. But while that cohort is together, the proximity is everything.

Safety, Not Tea Bags

Which brings us to the question of who that proximity is actually built for.

Gislene Haubrich studies how people actually behave in shared workspaces. "People go to coworking spaces to work." Not for the kombucha. Not for the ping-pong table. For the work.

I remember a LinkedIn post during COVID where a woman said she just wanted to go to her desk and get her work done, without joining in all the group hugs and "community" stuff. I know exactly what she meant.

Coworking spaces overcompensate. It's like going to a hotel when you just want to lie down and read a book, but you are forced to join in the knobbly knees contest and do Harry Potter fancy dress for dinner.

Researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), Leuphana University of Lüneburg, and the University of Graz spent time in coworking spaces across the Netherlands and documented what they called "assumptions about ideal members." 

Despite the industry's proclamation that these spaces are "for everyone," the data showed a consistent image of who the ideal member actually is: male, white, middle-class, knowledge worker. Anyone outside that picture either didn't get in, or got in and felt it.

The researchers also attended the Coworking Europe conference. They documented a session titled "The Business Case for Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility." They watched the industry discuss inclusion as a commercial strategy — how diversity could be used to attract more paying members.

I know that session. I was one of the people who hosted it, in Amsterdam, in 2018. And I encouraged calling it that, because I knew that framing would get people in the room. If you called it "why we keep excluding people," nobody would show up.

That still annoys me. That we had to package basic human decency as a revenue strategy to get a conference audience to sit down for an hour.

That is exactly the designer tea bag version of inclusion.

I'm one of a massive percentage of neurodivergent freelancers, creators, and independent economic agents who work for themselves because they don't fit into mainstream work. 

At one end of the scale, if you're called Steve, Jeff, Elon, or Richard, you're worshipped for being neurodivergent. At my end, you're just weird and inconvenient.

When I walk into a coworking space, I am not dazzled by the brand activation co-lab on hand lotion, the designer tea bags, or the lure of three free months on Spotify if I sign up.

I am not exaggerating — I am looking to stay alive. I am looking to feel safe. I am looking for an environment where my brain can settle.

When a space makes me feel at home in my soul, I am fiercely loyal to it. And I've spoken to so many people who say the exact same thing. Good design is great. Gimmicks suck.

Rosie Sherry has been building communities for twenty years and is neurodivergent herself. She's been on the podcast more than once, and she always shares generously. Last time we recorded, she said:

"It normally takes me about five years to realise I need to just give myself permission, rather than find someone to give me it."

I know exactly how that feels. And I know at least five people who have said that exact thing to me in the last couple of weeks, who are reading this right now.

The Serious Bit - Contact Your MP 

Accommodating neurodivergent people is not a heroic act. It is a low-effort, high-return decision that most spaces already have the capacity to make. And the reason it matters goes way beyond being nice.

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That is 95.3% of the entire private sector. These are the people in your coworking spaces. These are the people in your neighbourhoods.

But the independent operators who hold the roof up for all those people? They are getting screwed.

Right now, neighbourhood coworking spaces are being crushed by a business rates system designed for massive corporations with floors of lawyers and tax accountants. The government talks about local entrepreneurship like it's a cute lifestyle choice, while actively taxing the civic infrastructure that makes it possible.

If your MP hasn't visited your coworking space, they don't understand what happens there. And if they don't understand what happens there, they can't fight for fairer business rates, or argue that your space is essential local infrastructure rather than just another commercial lease.

Contacting your MP about business rates and showing up for your local economy are the exact same act. One proves the other. If you want to hear what this fight actually sounds like, listen to Jane Sartinchampioning business rates on Caleb Parker's Friday Five.

What Happens Next - Get Involved!

I'm not just writing about this and hoping someone else figures it out. I'm going to be in the rooms. Four events. Three weeks. Two countries.

I live in Vigo, so this Wednesday, May 6th, European Coworking Day is on my doorstep — hanging out with our Galipreneur pop-up crew at LiveGalicia . The day after, I'm at The Way Startup Summit. 

Then I'm off to London. On May 12th, I'll be at the Flexible Space Association Conference. I'm hosting a panel called "Embedding Flexible Workspace in Local Communities" with Karen Tait, Tom Ball, and Adam Sandford. 

Then, May 13th to 15th, I'm down in Poole for Creator Day with You Are The Media. Mark Masters runs this, and Jon Alexander is speaking. There are no afternoon keynotes. Instead, everyone sits down in small groups and actually works on their own projects together, backed up by the Cowork Crew and FOUNDRY. 

(And yes, I am terrified but fully committed to the Friday sunrise sea swim with the YATM squad.) 

Finally, on May 19th: Unreasonable Connection at SPACE4 in Finsbury Park.

This is our London Coworking Assembly event. Built strictly for operators and community managers who want to unpick the actual, gritty mechanics of running spaces. Tilley Harris and the team at Akou are co-facilitating, alongside the legendary Urban MBA.

There are no keynotes. You don't sit and politely nod. You bring the specific friction you are facing right now, and we spend the day working on it together.

It's two weeks away. Everyone who registers gets a message from us — one question: what matters most to you right now? That's how we build the room. We'll also send you an invite to the event WhatsApp group, so you walk in knowing faces, not just finding them.

The rooms already exist. You just need permission to walk in.

The Monday Domino

This week, tell one person what the voice is actually saying.

Not "I'm finding it hard." Not "I'm struggling with motivation." The actual words it uses. This isn't good enough yet. They're going to see right through you. You've left it too late.

I have said this out loud to writers, podcasters, and independent economic agents more times than I can count. Not one of them has ever said: I don't have that.

You don't have to fix it. You don't have to explain it. Just say the sentence out loud to someone who won't immediately try to solve it.

That's the whole thing.

Bernie's Picks

🤖 Matthew Jones and Tom Wright are answering questions about AI and SEO at the Drive the Collaborative Network online event this Thursday, May 7th. If that's keeping you up at night, this is the place to be. Register here.

📚Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino - I was talking with Mina Sadat Orooje about cities and coworking this week and it reminded me of this book.

🛠️ Eden - where I gather research and ideas and concoct them into articles.