[Source illustration: Beboy_ltd/iStock]
BY STEPHANIE VOZZA4 MINUTE READ
College commencement speeches often revolve around the common
theme: following your passion. While this sounds like great advice—who
doesn’t want to wake up excited to go to work?—there’s a downside, says
Erin A. Cech, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan
and author of The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at
Work Fosters Inequality.
“The passion principle suggests the way to avoid the drudgery of work is to
love what you do, but this concept might have a negative dark side,” she
says. “It helps culturally legitimize an underpaid and overworked whitecollar labor force while reinforcing class, race, and gender segregation, as
well as financial inequality.”
WHY PASSION IS DANGEROUS
People, especially the college-educated workforce, understand the
expectations of overwork and devotion to the company, says Cech. “They
think, ‘I better love what I do,’ but it’s problematic for number of reasons,”
she says.
First, following passion presumes access to springboards and safety nets
that give you the ability to manage long spans of un- or under-employment
or unpaid internships that get your foot in the door.
“You may need to have a social network to get connected to people in the
work that you’re passionate about—a network that only middle- and upperclass folks often have access to,” says Cech. “If we present this narrative
as something that everyone should do, regardless of their background, it
tends to reinforce the socioeconomic inequality aspect of it. But there are
wide discrepancies in who is ultimately able to parlay their passion into
stable, well-paid jobs.”
Another way following your passion perpetuates inequality is on a cultural
level. “If I’m passionate about the work that I’m doing, and I go into a field
where the likelihood of my overworking is higher, I’m playing right into
those expectations, rather than channeling a critique on the demands of the
labor force or of my employer,” says Cech.
Employers not only desire workers who are passionate about their work;
they seek them out partly because they believe that they will get more work
out of that person without a pay increase, says Cech. “This problem has
been prominent in the labor force for decades, especially for white collar
workers,” she says. “It’s an expectation for work devotion. Employers
knowingly exploit the passion of the people who work for them.”
According to Cech, becoming wrapped up in your work is especially
prominent in specific industries and occupations. “In academia, for
example, it’s particularly clear to see the dangers of having such a strong
attachment to one’s work,” she says. “Graduate students will be socialized
into their professional occupation and expected to work really long hours
and express their devotion to the work that they’re doing to their professors
and advisors. But the labor market for PhDs, especially in some
occupations, is quite limited. You often see some adjunct faculty struggling
to manage the kind of treatment that they experience within departments,
with low pay and no job security.”
PASSION AND THE PANDEMIC
The pandemic has also exasperated the drive to follow your passion, as
people become burned out and decide to do something they love. While
researching her book, Cech found that college-educated workers who lost
their employment or were furloughed during the pandemic were more likely
to believe in the passion principle than workers who had kept their jobs.
“A lot of them are thinking, ‘Life is short; why shouldn’t I go and do work
that I love?” says Cech. “I understand it. I argue that the thing you love
doesn’t only have to be your job.”
A BETTER WAY OF CHOOSING YOUR CAREER
Understanding passion’s dark side begs the question: What should you do
instead? Cech suggests striving for balance between the kinds of the kind
of effort you put into work, family and friends, and leisure activities.
“Choose work that can be contained into a footprint with a set number of
predictable hours,” she says. “That might bring better life enjoyment overall
rather than following something you’re passionate about and having very
little time for outside interests and hobbies. I call this ‘diversifying your
meaning-making portfolio.’ We should all look at our lives and find places
outside of our paid employment to find meaning. Labor should be designed
to support us in our search of our own self-expression.”
Finding meaning outside of work has the added benefit of helping you
weather change. “Someone may lose their job, their organization could get
bought out and their job could change, or maybe their industry changes in
some way,” says Cech. “A big part of your sense of identity could
evaporate when your sense of identity is so firmly in your work.”
While Cech says solving the passion principle ultimately requires an
individual-level solution, educators, parents, and employers should
consider their part. Following your passion shouldn’t be an expectation of
graduates where they are left to figure out the employment details later.
“The capitalist labor force was not designed to support employees’
personal growth and fulfillment,” she says. “It was designed to increase
profit and value for owners and stakeholders. By understanding the power
of the passion principle, we can be better equipped to envision alternatives
to it—for our organizations, for our institutions, and for ourselves.”
PARENTING ADVICE
We Need To Rethink
Encouraging Our Teens To
“Follow Your Passion”
by Annie Reneau | April 13, 2021
“Follow your passion” seems to be the career buzz phrase of the
21st century. Self-help gurus have given countless talks and written
entire books on this advice, which boils down to, “Do what you love,
and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Parents need to rethink telling their teens to follow their passions.
(Master1305/Shutterstock)
“Follow your passion” is problematic
advice.
While following your passion sounds like an excellent idea on the
surface, like all simplistic adages, important questions lurk beneath
it:
– Is the advice to find a passion and make it a career applicable to
everyone? What about people who don’t have a distinct passion?
– Is it a well-intentioned mistake to tell our kids to follow their
passion when contemplating a professional path, regardless of
where that path leads?
– Is passion a specific personality trait rather than an innate human
reality? Does it need to be paired with other traits like drive,
determination, and discipline to lead to success truly?
– What about people who are severely limited by life
circumstances? Is having the freedom to pursue a passion as a
profession a product of privilege?
One can look at these questions both academically and anecdotally,
and I’d argue that both carry equal weight when it comes to this
topic. After all, “passion” is an entirely subjective idea. There are so
many variables in life and career choices that gathering and
analyzing objective data can be tricky.
Some researchers at Stanford have taken it on scientifically,
however. Former postdoctoral fellow Paul O’Keefe and Stanford
psychologists Carol Dweck and Gregory Walton conducted a series
of laboratory studies examining how people’s beliefs and mindsets
may lead them to succeed or fail to develop their interests. Their
results point to the idea of “passion” as potentially problematic.
According to the researchers, “following your passion” holds
implications that can hinder people from success. A common
assumption is that having a passion for something is always
enjoyable. Having a keen interest will make it easy to pursue,
leading people to give up too quickly when they encounter
inevitable difficulties or challenges.
Instead, the researchers say, people should focus on developing a
passion instead of following one. They assert that passion is built
through putting time and energy into interest, not the other way
around.
Billionaire Mark Cuban and self-made millionaire Scott
Galloway express similar sentiments. Both entrepreneurs say that
“follow your passion” is terrible advice.
Cuban wrote that effort, not passion, is the true key to successin a
blog post. When you work hard at something, you become good at
it, and being good at it helps you develop a passion for it.
Don’t follow your passions; follow your effort,”
he wrote. It will lead you to your passions and
success. However, you define it.
Galloway says that developing your talents is a better tack to take
than following your passions. “Following your passion is bullsh*t,”
he told CNBC.
Find out what you’re good at and then invest
10,000 hours in it — and become great at it.
Of course, not everyone cares about becoming financially successful
like these men. But we also don’t do kids any favors by telling them
that following their passion intently enough will automatically bring
in money or that there aren’t real drawbacks to choosing careers
that aren’t financially sustainable. We have to balance passion with
practicality.
We also need to be aware that turning a passion into a career can
backfire. When I asked people to share their thoughts and
experiences with passion-based professions, some said that making
money doing what they loved made them lose their passion for it.
For example, Morag Wehrle followed her passion for museum
studies. “It was almost ten years of heartbreak and frustration,” she
says:
I cared SO MUCH that I couldn’t leave my work
at work. I thought about it all the time and
agonized over the frustrations of non-profit
societies, the lack of funding, the constant stress
of grant writing, the unpaid overtime, and so on.
Eventually, I walked away, burnt out and jaded. I
think that sometimes ‘do what you love can be
terrible career advice. I’d rather have had a job I
was less passionate about, but I could also leave
behind at the end of the workday — and maybe
keep the museum stuff as a volunteer gig.
Several people pointed out that a career that pays well, even if it’s
not something you’re passionate about, can provide the means to
help you pursue those hobbies without worrying about how you’re
going to pay the bills. And some passions don’t lend themselves to
a career path at all.
“I hate the whole ‘follow your passion’ trend,” says Julie Morris
Jones:
What if my ‘passion’ is playing with or
homeschooling my kids? I’m not going to get
paid for that. Or what if I prefer lots of travel and
a flexible job (any job!) that will help pay for it?
Or what if I have lots of different things that I
enjoy doing, but none above all else? Am I not
understanding myself or missing out if I am not
‘passionate’ about something? It’s too much
pressure.
People often equate careers that aren’t passion-based with careers
that people hate, but that’s usually a false dichotomy. Naturally,
staying in a job that you loathe isn’t healthy, but there is plenty of
middle ground between hating your career and being passionate
about it. It’s okay to have a secure job that you don’t mind, pays
well, and allows you to live the life you want outside of it. It’s okay
to have a job you like but don’t love. Not every career needs to
come from a place of passion.
Besides, passion isn’t a reality for every person. Erin Cummisford
says,
I hate this advice because so many people
(including me!) don’t have a passion, which adds
unnecessary pressure. Like WHY don’t I have a
singular passion? Does everyone else, and
there’s something wrong with me? I think it’s
meant to be a supportive statement but can
quickly get twisted.
Additionally, says Kelly Byrd, following your passion can lead you to
pigeonhole yourself unnecessarily. “The truth is you can follow your
passion, work your ass off to achieve it, but still never quite be
successful at it, and because you have spent so much time following
your passion, there is no plan B,” she says:
When I was younger, I was told that you could
achieve anything if you worked hard enough.
Unfortunately, this isn’t true. So when you are
unable to achieve success in your passion, it can
lead to feelings of failure and depression
because you failed to accomplish that one goal.
People’s passions can also change, and our kids need to know that
that’s normal. “In our society, I think there’s far too much emphasis
on the construct of success,” says Jennifer Rosen Heinz:
You are ‘meant’ to find ONE purpose in life (or
one true love, etc.) For most people, we may
have one overriding passion, or we may have
many passions. We may be obsessed with one
thing for a certain period and then move on to
another. That isn’t a failing. Changing and
growing is a feature, not a bug.
Finally, it may be more helpful to our kids to reframe the idea of
following your passion into more noble-yet-applicable language.
Some parents say they encourage their kids to think about
meaningful work or how they can be of service to humanity in their
careers instead. This framing keeps the door open to changing
interests and removes the pressure of searching for an elusive
feeling of passion while still helping kids think beyond a paycheck.
People who have the innate desire and drive to pursue their passion
will probably do that regardless of what people tell them. Let’s think
long and hard for the masses who don’t fit that bill before handing
out the “follow your passion” advice. There is much more practical
wisdom we can offer that can help them find success and
satisfaction in their professional and personal lives.
You Might Also Want to Read:
Dear Mom and Dad, Please Stick With Me
‘Follow Your Passion’ Is The Worst
Career Advice—Here’s Why
Julia Korn
Contributor
I empower leaders to embody authenticity in their careers.
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May 19, 2021,12:46pm EDT
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Julia Wuench
JULIA WUENCH, THE AUTHENTICITY GUIDE
It’s a cliché as old as time: When it comes to your career, people often say to
“follow your passion.” While this slogan is splashed across self-help books,
heard in graduation speeches and even touted by career coaches, it may not
be very sound advice. Ultimately, this message could be holding you back in
your future career. According to three Stanford researchers’ findings, the
“follow your passion” advice can be detrimental to an individual’s success
due to narrowmindedness and dedication to a single passion.
Here’s why “follow your passion” is bad career advice:
1. It assumes we will only have one passion in life. People
are dynamic and have more than one specific life interest. It
can be limiting to select merely one passion, as it leaves zero
space for other passions yet to be uncovered.
2. It assumes passions don’t change with time. Humans
continually evolve in every stage of our lives. What we once
loved may now be a fond (or not so fond) memory. We are in
constant flux and that means our passions are likely to be too.
3. It assumes we already know what our passion is. Many
people are not able to confidently state a specific passion and
how it can tie to a career. If this is you, you’re not alone. Most
people need time, education and exposure to different jobs and
companies before they’re able to hone in on a passion. Not
knowing your passion can be a source of tremendous stress and
anxiety. For those who have yet to find it, this advice can make
us think there’s something innately wrong with us (there isn’t).
4. It gives the impression that passion should come with
ease, organically, or a magical “dream job” is waiting
in the wings. When looking for a career, it is helpful to be
aware of your strengths and the things that come more easily to
you. You may then consider the types of professional positions
where you can utilize those skills. But if you don’t know your
strengths yet, it’s okay to try different things and see what
makes you happiest. Passions should be developed in their own
right, not chased after.
5. Just because you have a passion for something,
doesn’t mean that you are good at it. American talent
shows are a great example of this concept. If you aren’t good at
your chosen passion, you’re unlikely to rise quickly in the
professional rankings. In the long run, you may ultimately be
hindering yourself.
6. Once you shift your life’s passion into a job, it becomes
just that, a task you must do. If you’re doing something
habitually and for monetary gain, your passion may lose the
luster it once held. A passion can be a hobby instead of a
profession.
7. It’s a privileged message not afforded to all. Perhaps
money is not a necessity for you. However, for a vast majority
of the working force, money drives what profession you choose
until you can establish yourself enough to make alternative
decisions. Focus on what you deem valuable in the present,
such as remote work, unlimited paid time off, flexible hours,
etc. Through these benefits, you may be able to free up some
time for your passions on the side.
Let’s flip the worn-out script of “following your passion.” Instead, heed this
more attainable career advice:
Commit to learning and re-learning what energizes and drains you. By
dedicating yourself to what sparks your interests and what doesn’t, you
can more easily align with a successful career path that highlights your
true talents.
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