What you should Follow Instead of Your Passion

[Mike B 625]

When I lived in North Carolina, my family and I spent a lot of time in the mountain towns of Boone and Blowing Rock. For some reason, we would see disproportionately large numbers of vintage Volvos with hippy-esque bumper stickers saying “If it’s not fun, why do it?” and “Follow your bliss!” You know the type.

On the one hand, messages like these are helpful because they remind us to not “lose the plot” of life. After all, it’s easy to get so caught up in what we think we should do that we forget to do some of what we like to do. On the other hand, something about those messages seems a little too saccharine sweet.

When it comes to career advice, “Follow your passion!” is a little like “Follow your bliss!” Sure, passion sounds like a wonderful thing when choosing where to invest your time and effort. After all, the average person spends more than 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime. Yes, that is one-third of your entire life. So, of course it would be nice if that time was spent doing something you actually love.

But, at the same time, “Follow your passion!” is perhaps just a bit too glib to be useful. It is this exact piece of advice that leaves people damaged if they don’t find a dream job that complements their natural abilities and fills them with an intrinsic sense of joy — not to mention that passions can be ephemeral.

As a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, I’ve been studying and writing about people’s job choices and career success for 25 years. And instead of “Follow your passion” or “Follow your bliss,” my bumper-sticker career advice is “Follow your blisters.”

https://hbr.org/2020/11/what-you-should-follow-instead-of-your-passion

 

[Jason Antinori 2]

Fantastic post, thanks for sharing!!!