Following your “passion” is often poor career advice.
Is following your passion a worthy career goal?
This has been something that has plagued me for a while. I guess when you know you are in the wrong place from a career perspective, you are always thinking that there is something else I should be doing.
After all, I want to wake up in the morning eager and excited to go to work. Is that not reasonable?
We spend 40 – 60+ hours a week at work. Why should they be a miserable 40 – 60+ hours? Nothing sadder than being part of the Thank God it’s Friday crew and then thinking on Sunday night – not another Monday!
Here are some thoughts I have heard on work:
- If work was great, it would be called fun, not work.
- Work is supposed to be miserable. You do it to earn money so you can go do the things you love.
- Follow your passion and turn it into a career.
- You are more likely to be successful if you do what comes naturally to you and that you want to do.
Should I just suck it up and be miserable?
Being miserable about work not only affects your work hours, but it also affects your home/fun hours too. And that’s not good.
Do what comes naturally for your career
But I really do agree that you are more likely to be successful if you do what comes naturally to you and that you want to do.
It’s really hard to be great at something you don’t like doing. It’s hard to find the motivation to get better when you don’t care about it.
Trying to become great at something you hate, don’t like or even just neutral about would take tremendous willpower day in day out forever to become successful. Absolutely exhausting and probably not even possible.
I also agree that your career, either as an employee, self-employed, business owner or investor, will have elements that aren’t great and that you may not like. Not every moment of every day will be sunshine and lollipops!
I imagine that if you can get between 50% – 70% of your job being quite good and the rest being tolerable, that’s pretty damn good. Anything better than that is fantastic.
Is it possible?
You must remember that the main purpose of work is to earn money to sustain your lifestyle. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
But if you have a vision of a greater future for yourself, shovelling the crap now seems just that bit easier.
You must have a vision for your future that excites you, pulls you forwards.
So, what is that greater future for yourself?
Is it your “passion” or something else?
What is Passion
Passion is:
- A strong and barely controllable emotion
- A thing arousing great enthusiasm
- An intense desire
Do you have things in your life that fit this definition of passion?
If you do, can that be turned into a successful career?
You may be passionate about your partner, your children, climate change, music and so on.
How do you turn those things into a career?
You can’t rent out your partner or kids for the day! How many struggling musicians or actors are there? Climate change could be a career avenue if you can become a problem solver.
Is “passion” the wrong thing to chase?
The word “meaningful” is also a term used in describing what people want out of their careers. Meaningful is something that is serious, important, or worthwhile.
Doing something meaningful, I believe is a better target to aim for. My interpretation of meaningful is doing something worthwhile to help others.
Wanting to become rich, wealthy or financially independent is a perfectly fine ambition in life. But if you want a meaningful life, it’s what you do with the money and your time that matters. You can make millions and give it all away if you want to. Just make sure you keep enough so that you can continue to make millions more for the good of the world.
Sure, you can enjoy life, have fine things and enjoy great holidays, but notice how much money wealthy people donate. Millions and into the billions of dollars.
The 50 biggest US donors gave or pledged nearly $28 billion in 2021.
Specific examples throughout recent history:
| Jamsetji Tata | $102.4 billion | Education, healthcare |
| Bill Gates | $35.8 billion | Healthcare, extreme poverty, education, access to information technology |
| Warren Buffett | $34 billion | Healthcare, education, AIDS-prevention, sanitation |
| George Soros | $32 billion | Healthcare, anti-fascist publications, human rights, economic, legal, and social reform |
| Azim Premji | $21 billion | Education, healthcare |
| Li Ka-shing | $10.7 billion | Education, healthcare |
| Andrew Carnegie | $9.5 billion | Libraries, education, peace |
Why do you think they do that?
To bring real meaning to their lives. At the end of their lives, they will take pride in that they tried to leave the world in a better place.
How can you bring meaning into your career?
Three of the best theories/descriptions I have found on this topic are presented below.
From Simon Sinek:
You find something you believe in and what you experience is passion.
How do you find what you believe in or your vision?
- You can create your own vision for the world, OR
- Use someone else’s vision
The key is that you don’t have to have a vision, but you need to find a vision.
You find a vision (something you believe in) and work to advance that cause.
You may believe in:
- Curing cancer
- Improving the lives of people in pain (physical or emotional)
- Combatting climate change
- Getting people to Mars
- Helping people get out of poverty
- Ensuring your children grow up to be great adults
- Getting rich
- Wanting to build fantastic young people to then go on a build a better world for everyone (thank you to your teachers).
In the beginning, you must accept that you won’t instantly be riding shotgun with the creator of the vision you are working for. Like everyone else, you will need to do the hard yards. But with every one of those hard yards, you will know that you are doing something meaningful.
How do you find someone else’s vision or create your own? – get your head out of Tik Tok, Instagram, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Snapchat, or whatever and explore.
First explore your values.
Your values are the fundamental beliefs that direct your decisions and actions. They are the things that you feel are important to you and guide you in your decision making. The compass of your life.
What are the things that are important to you?
Once you’ve articulated your values, go and explore what is out there in the world that aligns with your values.
Look for what fires you up? What do you care about? What do you want to dedicate your life to?
It may take you seconds, or it may take you years to find something that you believe in. I don’t know.
I believe in helping me 30 years ago – that is you. If what I know now, I applied when I was 17, my life would be vastly different.
From Cal Newstead:
If your goal is to be passionate about what you do
- Following your “passion” will reduce the probability of succeeding with the goal of being passionate about what you do.
How do you build a career that is fulfilling, motivating, satisfying and generate a true source of passion?
- You need to craft a meaningful career.
What makes people enjoy an activity (hobby) vs a career is very different.
These lead people to say they are passionate about their job.
- Autonomy (working independence)
- Mastery
- Respect from others regarding your skills
- Impact on the world (doing something that is meaningful)
- Connection to others
What can we do to end up with a job we are passionate about?
You need to get the above traits as quickly as possible.
How?
- Skills are your currency
- Do an intense apprenticeship to build rare and valuable skills.
- Invest those skills to try and gain more control over your career.
If I’m not passionate about my job?
Ask yourself – What can I do to better serve this job so that I can build leverage and create a job that will give me autonomy, mastery and the things that truly lead to a passionate life?
#1 get career capital FIRST (that is, skills, knowledge and experience)
#2 then use the leverage of your rare and valuable skills to change your situation that resonates within you. (This is where the passion will eventually come into it)
There are many different paths to create a career to be passionate about.
And finally – Ikigai:
If you are at the beginning of your career, this is not something to achieve any time soon. You will need to shovel shit for potentially quite a few years before you can progress closer to Ikigai. But the elements of …
- What you love
- What you are good at
- What you can get paid for, and
- What the world needs
… can guide you on your career/business journey.
Imagine doing something that you love doing, you are good at it, you get paid well for it AND the world needs it.
There are a lot of moving parts to this equation with some unknowns.
For example, the concept of love is developed over time. Something you don’t do now could become a love in your future. Don’t limit yourself to just the things you love now.
Becoming good at something takes time, sometimes decades.
It seems in today’s society, people can paid for just about anything. No matter how stupid it is! The only question is whether you have created a stream of income that is enduring or are you riding a fad?
To gain ultimate value, the world must need a lot of it. The world always needs doctors and nurses, engineers and scientists, great educators, problem solvers, entertainers and so on. The level of your pay will be determined by the value you bring to the world’s marketplace.
The wrap
More thoughts on following your passion can be found here.
The big question is – what do you want from following your passion – wealth, contentment, success or something else?
Have there been people that have followed their passion and been successful – yes.
Have there been people that have followed their passion and have failed miserably – yes.
Have there been people that have followed their passion and ruined their passion – yes.
“Use the weekend to build the life you want instead of trying to escape the life you have.”
Unknown
Use your spare time wisely and test your ideas on a casual/part-time basis. Build it steadily and see if you can make money from it. When the income from your passion project equals your employment income then you can consider quitting.
Often, however, passions are best left as hobbies. They provide a great escape from normal life. It’s that small dose of joy regularly received that makes a hobby so enjoyable.
This is a tough topic.
Before you embark on any major life change, do your research. Does it make sense to take the leap? Or just baby steps?
Maybe you can develop passion where you are right now. Sometimes it’s just a matter of reframing how you see your work.
I hope I have provided you with some useful points to consider in building a career you will love and achieve great satisfaction in, and hopefully financial success.
Go to the Apple App Store and play My Fortune: Race to Financial Freedom (search “my fortune race”)