One of the most common pieces of advice floating around the internet is also one of the most dangerous:
To be happy in life, you need to figure out what you are passionate about, and singlemindedly pursue that as your ideal job.
This is especially true for anyone who dreams of a creative career or being an entrepreneur and choosing their own destiny.
Unfortunately, many generations of experts have analysed this assumption, and have observed the following conclusion:
“Bullshit”
In fact, this dream of “following your passion to lead you to your perfect job” is actually causing a great deal of pain to many young people in the job market right now, who are becoming disillusioned with not only their future prospects for happiness, but also their sense of self-worth.
I also want to make it clear in advance that I’m not at all recommending that people should stay in jobs or get careers that they find unfulfilling, painful or make them unhappy. I’m just suggesting you should look at the evidence below which shows that the “dream jobs you think will ignite your passion” may not actually make you happy at all.] A lot of young people (millennials especially) have grown up in a world where everywhere they look, they see examples of people who have followed their passion to become a success. Movie and Music stars always say this during awards speeches (ignoring all of the other artists who followed their passion and didn’t win). The patron saint of Millennials, Steve Jobs of Apple, is also held up for one of the most famous quotes to inspire the generation, delivered in his Stanford Commencement address in 2005 Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. – Steve Jobs, 2005 [I would like to note that you need to consider the situation that Steve Jobs was in at this moment in his life. He was about to release the iPhone to the world, and had turned Apple around from an indebted hardware maker to the trendiest computer company in the world, thanks to the focus on design and simplicity of the Macs and the phenomenal success of the iPod. But more importantly, a year before this speech he was diagnosed with cancer, which would ultimately cut his life short. He was fortunate to be in a moment of amazing success doing something he loved, but still considering his own mortality, future and legacy. In my view, this speech was his “don’t lie on your deathbed and tell your family you should have spent less time at the office” moment.] Equally importantly, they have also grown up in the social media age, where everyone around them seems to have a perfect lifestyle, with pictures on Instagram of them surrounded by famous people, on holiday, eating beautiful food and partying, all the while looking amazing. This often drives them to want to experience everything in life as soon as possible, for Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) compared to their friends and strangers. So when it comes time to leave school and look for a career, they have significantly different values to the Baby Boomer and Generation X’ers who came before them. According to a 2015 poll, when asked what their primary concern was during their first job: At the same time, job security and pay is still an important factor for millennials, compared to the stereotype of them job-hopping all over the place. A 2016 survey of 19,000 21- to 36-year-olds in 25 countries suggests that millennials think job security is a vital factor in choosing a job (87%), second only to money (92%). So the younger generation entering the workplace, which is now the largest generational population group there is, craves jobs which pay them enough to live their lifestyle, but also enable them to make a difference and enjoy them. This is why so many young people want careers where they feel like they can “be creative and express themselves”, and they think that this is only possible in equally young companies like startups, or in the creative industries (music, film, TV, Youtube etc). And at the same time, the internet is literally covered with “business experts and coaches” who show you how to build a lifestyle business doing what you love, and getting paid tens of thousands of dollars a month doing it. [What most of these coaches don’t tell you is that the work they “love” doing is teaching other people how to start online businesses and making money online…] So many are thinking of what they would enjoy doing, and looking only for those jobs. And that’s where the problem lies. Cal Newport has analysed job satisfaction figures in the USA for the past few decades and found an interesting trend. In 2010, only 45% of Americans were satisfied with their jobs, and this figure had been steadily decreasing since the 61% of 1987 (first year of the survey). Additionally, roughly 64% of workers under 25 say that they are unhappy in their jobs, the highest levels of dissatisfaction measured for any age group over the twenty-two year history of the survey. Though many factors can account for workplace unhappiness, a major cause identified by the survey is that “fewer workers consider their jobs to be interesting.” Newport refers to this as the passion trap: The more emphasis you place on finding work you love, the more unhappy you become when you don’t love every minute of the work you have. Subsequent to this analysis, Cal released this video below outlining how “follow your passion” is bad advice that isn’t supported by any evidence that it will actually result in happiness. You should watch it: The more you think about it, the more that some additional traps become obvious when thinking about possible future careers to pursue, and why basing them on what you are currently passionate about is so dangerous: If it all seems like bad news, it isn’t. There is actually a completely different way of looking at this conundrum, that often results in people having both the job satisfaction and the passion they were originally after. It’s all about finding your passion, rather than having it drive you. Mike Rowe is a TV personality who goes around and meets people doing difficult work, most famously in his TV show “Dirty Jobs”. Most of the careers he talks about can be described as traditionally “blue collar” or tradesman, exactly the opposite of the sexy startups so many millennials pursue. But what he often finds is that many people who build careers and companies in these fields are not only very successful, but they have developed a passion for the work they do. It goes back to the study by Cal Newport in the previous video, where he identified the three things that help people end up loving what they do for a living: I also think there is an equally important fourth point: So it is possible to develop a passion in whichever field you work in, and it’s much more likely to help you get the satisfaction you desire rather than only looking for a career in what you think you’re passionate about. And don’t forget, just because you don’t do what you’re passionate about as a job doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy it. Whether it stays a hobby or a side activity, always try to find time doing the things that make you happy. Whatever they may be. Then sign up for your FREE account from Idea to Value to not only get great pieces of insight like this every week, but also free training on improving your creativity and company innovation capabilities from some of the world’s leading innovation experts. Do you believe in following your passion? Is that what you would tell someone you cared about? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to share and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.“Your heart already knows what it wants”
The passion trap
How to end up loving what you do and finding your passion
Do you like insights into creativity like this?
Nick Skillicorn
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Nick
You are mixing apples and bolts and that doesnt work. You give examples of entrepenurs who MUST follow their passion with people who work for others, who must fit themselves to the pattern. A entrepenuer must identify failure quickly and move on something a full time jober with a family,commitments,morgage payments, cant afford. So comparing a self-employed self made person to a wage-payed worker doesnt work.
Hi Nick,
I like what you do and this article also!
I think there is something deeper, easier and helpful.
Human attitude to wake up the passion through doing what the life insist on, even if this is not our dream job. Just like as you was child in play, but some kind more exact as subject and stretched as time, because of upgrading our ability to make something and to be… As a child.
From this point of view there is not difference between what S.Jobs say and do – both are true.
What he said was his navigation in turbulence of life and what he has done was the possible way to deal with the circumstances and to build needed skills to achieve his inner target. There comes the time where every our experience becomes meaning, when we check with the navigation system.
Yikes. Sounded to me as if it were coming from a person who didn’t have something they were passionate about.
Those who would only get encouraged by your article are those looking for someone who would pat their back to tell them they weren’t wrong about pursuing an entrepreneur job. So they would feel at ease.
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[…] good arguments against the famous dictum? And how do you follow your passion? So I stumbled upon a blog that led me to a video of Cal Newport doing just that. I listened carefully to what he was saying, […]