There's more than one good reason to do work that you love. Besides the obvious — it's more fun to go to a job you like — if you don't love what you do, you probably won't work hard enough to get very good at it. And that's no fun either.

That is one conclusion of the so-called Expert Performance Movement and its ringleader, Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor at Florida State University, as reported in the New York Times Magazine.

At the heart of this research is the question: When someone is very good at a given thing, what is it that actually makes him or her good? To find out, Ericsson and his colleagues studied expert performers in all kinds of endeavors from piano playing to software design.

They conclude in their "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" that no matter who the expert performers are, they are nearly always made, not born. They practiced, set goals, got feedback and concentrated as much on technique as on outcomes, says the article. They were motivated to do well.

They were willing to set goals, practice, ask for feedback and focus on their technique because they liked what they did. They enjoyed the work and what they were required to practice over and over again.

In my unscientific research I find most people aren't very motivated to do that if they don't like what they're doing. Those who enjoy their work, are also very good at it. And those who don't like the work resent the effort it takes to become more expert at their craft.

I've also found that most people don't like to do things they aren't good at. As a result, as the article says, they give up, figuring they don't have talent for that particular thing. "But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better."

One of my clients was a dentist for more than 30 years. Although he was quite competent at drilling and extracting teeth, he wasn't motivated to be really great because he didn't like the work. He was required to complete hours of continuing education and he'd sit in the back of the room daydreaming and reading books on psychology.

What he did enjoy was talking to patients, hearing about their lives and the issues they dealt with. He was itching to spend his days doing just that.

At 62 he set a new goal — to become a therapist. This required him to go back to college and learn new skills. He was becoming a good therapist — in part because he was motivated to do well. He wasn't born to be a therapist. But he had the desire to be good and to undertake the process it required to make himself into one.

Ericsson says a lot of people believe there are inherent limits they were born with, but "that there's surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it."

But if it's something you enjoy and has meaning for you, you'll be inspired to do well and work to get better. And that's a fun way to spend a day.

Reach Andrea Kay at andrea@andreakay.com.