'Choose a Job You Love': The Quote's Real Origin and a Workday Joke

It's all about perspective.

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life" is usually credited to Confucius, but there is no good evidence he said it. The earliest known version appears in 1982, quoted by a Princeton philosophy professor who credited an unnamed "old-timer." Below you will find the saying's real history, a newspaper joke that has cheered up many people on a bad workday, and what research says about loving your job.

The "I hate my job" day joke

The three newspaper clippings below form one joke told in three parts. It is a long-circulating gag that has been passed around by email and social media for years; the paper it was clipped from is not identified.

A Workday Humor Gallery and a Quote Worth Questioning

The setup: on a day when you hate your job, go to the pharmacy and buy a rectal thermometer from a well-known brand. The instructions are deliberately oddly specific, which is how the joke builds curiosity.

The second clipping drags the ritual out: go home, lock the doors, draw the curtains, unplug the phone, change into something comfortable and settle into your favourite chair. Then unpack the thermometer and set it down carefully so it does not break.

The punchline arrives in the small print. The leaflet claims every thermometer is personally tested and then sanitised, and the reader is told to repeat five times how glad they are not to work in that quality-control department. The joke works because it reframes your own job by imagining a worse one, the same "it could be worse" trick people have used to cope with bad days for generations.

Who really said "Choose a job you love"?

Quote Investigator, a site that traces sayings back to their earliest printed sources, looked into this one in 2014. Its findings:

1982: the Princeton Alumni Weekly quoted philosophy professor Arthur Szathmary repeating the advice and crediting it to an unnamed "old-timer." This is the earliest match found.
1985: the computer magazine Computerworld printed the familiar wording as an epigraph credited to Confucius. That is the first known link to the Chinese philosopher.
Late 1980s: the line spread through business writing and newspapers, and the author and speaker Harvey Mackay used it widely, helping to popularise it.

Quote Investigator found nothing in the Analects that matches it. The closest passage deals with rulers choosing suitable labour for the people, which is a very different idea. The fairest way to cite the line is as an anonymous modern proverb that is often attributed to Confucius.

Is the advice true?

As encouragement, the saying has a point: work that feels meaningful is easier to keep doing. Taken literally, though, it promises something no job delivers. Even people who adore their field still face deadlines, dull admin, difficult colleagues and days when nothing goes right.

Research suggests the literal version can even backfire. In a 2018 study in Psychological Science, psychologists Paul O'Keefe, Carol Dweck and Gregory Walton compared people who see interests as fixed, waiting to be discovered, with people who see interests as something you develop. Those with the "find your passion" view were more likely to expect a true passion to provide endless motivation, showed less interest in topics outside their existing ones, and lost interest faster when a new subject became difficult. The authors warn that telling people to find their passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket, then drop that basket when it gets heavy.

When a bad day is more than a bad day

Everybody has days when they hate their job. A joke, a walk or a good night's sleep is often enough to reset. It is worth noticing, though, when bad days stop being occasional.

The World Health Organization describes burn-out in its ICD-11 classification as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It lists three signs: feeling drained or exhausted, growing mental distance or cynicism about your job, and a reduced sense that you are effective at work. WHO stresses that burn-out is an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition, and that the term applies only to work. If those signs sound familiar and persist, talking to a doctor, and to someone you trust at work, is a sensible step.

Practical ways to like your work more

Separate the purpose from the hours. Ask which part of the job actually matters to you, and which routine tasks make that part possible.
Shape the job you have. Small changes to tasks, relationships or how you think about your role, which psychologists call job crafting, can make the same job feel different.
Treat interest as something you grow. In line with the 2018 study, expect new skills to feel hard before they feel rewarding.
Keep perspective. Humour like the thermometer joke is not a solution, but a laugh can make a frustrating day easier to get through.

Loving your work does not mean it stops being work. It usually means the effort feels worth it, which is a more realistic goal and a more achievable one.

Sources: Images via Why Don't You Try This; Quote Investigator: Choose a Job You Love; O'Keefe, Dweck & Walton (2018), Implicit Theories of Interest, Psychological Science; World Health Organization: Burn-out an occupational phenomenon.

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