82% aren’t passionate about their work

http://blog.rypple.com/2010/10/82-arent-passionate-about-their-work/

by jsatok • 16 years ago

33 29 16 years ago

blog.rypple.com

This makes me consider:

1. Being able (or expected) to enjoy your work is a relatively new thing in human society.

2. There's a set amount of people who will be passionate (or not) about their work no matter what, and for these people it's more about personalities or culture. I am thrilled to do software development, but I would also be thrilled to work in a coffee store. I'd also be thrilled to make pizzas all day, every day, or to push carts around a parking lot all day and help old people load their groceries. I've loved every job I've ever had, from landscaping to tutoring. How do the "Me's" factor in to this percent?

So I wonder two things:

How many people would say they are passionate about their work 100 years ago? 200? 300?

What are the bounds that it can reasonably be? In other words, whats the least and most it could reasonably be in a population? Even if everyone were farming serfs, whats the % going to look like? Will it be around 82%? More? Less?

I have a strong suspicion (cultural?) attitude and economic conditions (are you being taken care of? good food/healthcare/places to go?) has a lot more to do with it than anything else.

cmurphycode• 16 years ago

The historical question is very interesting, and I'm going to have to look into that more. But I suspect that artisans (a class that has changed a lot, if not died out completely) were very passionate about their work.

With the huge amount of hours that a knowledge worker spends at his day job, I personally feel that it's almost never worth it to have a job you don't enjoy. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do enough exciting things, once you subtract a healthy amount of sleep, maintenance tasks, and the day job. It certainly isn't worth it at the typically small compensation differences between jobs.

hnote• 16 years ago

you may find Lev Gumilev's book "Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere" interesting, in particular the fifth chapter, Drive in Ethnogenesis - http://bit.ly/cSnuEN

Homunculiheaded• 16 years ago

>1. Being able (or expected) to enjoy your work is a relatively new thing in human society.

I don't know how true this is, one of Marx's key criticism of Capitalism was the idea that, under capitalism, workers were alienated from their work, because they were unable to find true autonomy and determinism in what they did, nor reap the true value of what they produced. So I don't think the concept that work should also be fulfilling is entirely new, if Marx was lamenting its demise over 100 years ago.

zasz2• 16 years ago

100 years is very recent in human history. And enjoying your work seems to be a very Western idea. My Chinese immigrant father is resigned to finding his career as an electrical engineer boring and meaningless, for example.

mast• 16 years ago

I tend to think that its the concept of work (outside the home) is relatively new in human society. Years ago, people generally just had to survive by doing whatever it was that provided for their families. They grew crops, raised animals or hunted, and some were craftsmen. They were (mostly) able to do these things from home, with their families, on their own terms, and feel a sense of accomplishment. Did they think about enjoying their work? Work was life, and if times were good they were happy.

These days, we have two different lives. We have our family life, and we have our work life. The two are disconnected. We endure our daily commutes and work for big corporations. We have no voice in the way things are done, and a lot of the time it can be hard to see any meaning in our work even in good times.

Sorry for rambling...

Dove• 16 years ago

Being able (or expected) to enjoy your work is a relatively new thing in human society.

I can't make a claim about the broader state of the history of ideas, but I do know the idea is found in the Bible.

   I have seen personally what is the only beneficial 
   and appropriate course of action for people: to eat 
   and drink, and find enjoyment in all their hard work
   on earth during the few days of their life which God
   has given them, for this is their reward. 
      Ecclesiastes 5:18

So the idea is at least a couple millenia old. I'd expect it to be popular wisdom as well, independent of its inclusion in the Bible. It's pretty sound advice.

mjfern• 16 years ago

Sorry for the self promotion, but I wrote a blog post that is related to this discussion about passion for work. The post is a reflection on my own thought process, as I transitioned from academia to starting my own company (and creating a custom career that I would be passionate about). For convenience, here is some relevant text from my post:

"The way that we choose careers is strange. We often choose a career based on opportunism (e.g., expected salary) or fear (e.g., what family may think). The result is that we end up in a place that’s not fully satisfying. That we pick careers in a haphazard manner is stunning given the fact that we spend nearly 100,000 hours working over our lifetimes.

So if opportunism or fear are not the best ways to choose a career, then what’s a better approach? I believe three main factors should drive a choice of career. The first factor is goals. What are your short-, medium- and long-term goals in life? And it’s very important to think about goals beyond just your career. The second factor is pleasure. What activities do you derive real enjoyment from? The third and final factor is skill or expertise. Where do your innate and learned skills and talents lie?

Consider a Venn diagram comprised of these three factors — goals, pleasures, and skills — and a fulfilling career likely resides at the center.

Finding a career at the center of this Venn diagram is simple in theory, but difficult in practice. The first challenge is to overcome inertia, moving beyond opportunism or fear as your selection criteria. The second challenge is managing and balancing other commitments in your life, such as financial or family obligations. The third challenge is to know yourself deeply. It’s surprising how few people take the time to truly understand their goals, pleasures, and skills. The fourth challenge is to identify a career that aligns to these three factors. Many careers will satisfy one factor, some two, but few will satisfy all three. For some people there may be no established career path that aligns to all three factors, which means you have to create a “custom” career.

How does one learn about their goals, pleasures, and skills, and a matching career? Through a process of contemplation, trial and error, and growth. You must contemplate and be deliberate in your actions, but allow your perspective to evolve over time, as you attain more experience in work and life. You must try a lot of different things to learn about yourself and how you respond to different activities and settings. As you hone your understanding of yourself, you must undertake deliberate practice within a specific domain for an extended period to advance your expertise and skill. Imagine starting your working life at the top of a funnel, and as you contemplate, experiment, and grow, you move down the funnel, and towards a better understanding of yourself and an ideal career."

(http://www.fernstrategy.com/2010/09/18/choosing-your-career/)

colonelxc• 16 years ago

You make an interesting implicit association between passion and satisfaction.

> The result is that we end up in a place that’s not fully satisfying.

For you, you've decided that you want to be passionate about your career, and that would satisfy you. Does that always have to be the case though? Maybe some people would be completely satisfied with their work if they work in a nice and comfortable place, with people they enjoy being with, and not too much stress. They have a pleasant day at work, then get to come home and do whatever they are really passionate about.

I know that here, in the entrepreneur crowd, that someone will suggest that those people need to "figure out how to monetize their passion." Yes, sometimes that's true. Sometimes, I think people just want to enjoy their hobby or whatever, not try to make money at it. If I love model plane building and flying, that doesn't mean I would love to open a hobby shop, or run model plane building classes or whatever.

I think there are a lot of cases where people can be satisfied in their work, in that it is both enjoyable and that it provides for their other passions. I think that's an ok state to reach too.

christopherslee2• 16 years ago

This article doesn't even come close to suggesting a solution to the problem.

As entrepreneurs, I think we overestimate the amount of people that look to their jobs as a way to reach fulfillment in their lives. Many people just see their job as a way to pay the mortgage, feed the family, or as a way to fund their hobbies and passions.

I always struggle to believe that all jobs could find passionate people. For businesses of a sizable scale, can you really find 10,000 passionate insurance adjusters or tax auditors. They may be good at their jobs, and they make care about the quality of work and their professionalism, but are they truly passionate about it?

If the whole world wanted to be passionate about their jobs, most of the mundane services we need to operate as a society would probably fall apart.

Swizec• 16 years ago

Your observation that not every job can have people passionate about it, is probably a symptom of something other than what you think.

1. It could be a symptom of the fact that it's really really difficult to imagine how people can be passionate about something you find mindnumbing. I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't understand how someone can be passionate about programming. It's obviously very boring.

2. There's a distinction between a 'job' and a 'career'. Jobs are more about menial tasks that can be done by anyone, not passion fodder. Careers are more about personal growth, fulfillment in life and doing something for motives other than purely financial - great passion fodder.

zasz2• 16 years ago

Do you think all the people working your cash registers or mopping your floors can seriously be passionate about their work? How about driving cabs, or being a receptionist, or working at a call center? These are universally shitty jobs but very necessary. If we want everyone to have a "career" we should think about how we can get rid of these jobs.

TGJ• 16 years ago

"This article doesn't even come close to suggesting a solution to the problem"

It's a two paragraph blog, what do you think it's going to do?

christopherslee2• 16 years ago

Totally agree, but what's the point of posting some statistic without some discussion about the context, relevance, accuracy, etc? Just for sensational linkbait?

baddox2• 16 years ago

Is this really an issue? Why not just try to benchmark job performance instead of citing this ill-defined (and worse—self-reported) survey? If two people both do the exact same job and the same level of performance, and one claims to be more passionate than the other, does that really matter? This is essentially the philosophical zombie argument.

msbarnett• 16 years ago

I'm not sure how realistic your counter-example is. If I have two workers, one passionate about her job, the other disinterested and bored by it, is it really realistic to expect that the latter's output will never suffer because of their attitude compared to the former?

That would seem to fly in the face of our basic understanding of human psychology and intrinsic motivational factors. It's like the old canard about the "goodness" of a man who spends his life doing only good deeds while thinking only evil thoughts. Humans don't work like that.

reinhardt• 16 years ago

There are quite a few factors that affect productivity besides passion: education, experience, concentration, deep thinking intelligence, quick thinking intelligence, and so on. All else being equal, it would be plausible to suggest that the passionate beats the disinterested one but in practice things are rarely equal.

baddox2• 16 years ago

In many cases, our basic understand of human psychology and intrinsic motivational factors is flawed (there are several articles and talks about how basic assumptions such as "higher salary implies higher productivity" aren't correct).

Either way, the whole point of the philosophical zombie thought experiment is that, unfortunately, reality/truth itself can be shown to not matter when analyzing human behavior, because the zombie would behave identically as the "normal" human, even though the realities/truths are quite different (the normal human experiences qualia while the p-zed does not).

julius_geezer• 16 years ago

For another point of view:

http://head-nurse.blogspot.com/2009/05/fuck-passion.html

gaelian• 16 years ago

That post sounds kind of bitter, maybe a bad day? In any case, it's possible to be passionate while not being flaky or unreliable. In my world at least, passion is what keeps me paying attention to the details, coming in to work on time and interested in what I'm doing.

I guess my definition of "passion" is quite different to that used by this person.

lsc• 16 years ago

see, when an employer starts talking about how they want an employee with "passion" I assume they want a gullible employee who is willing to work more for less pay.

Granted, I want employees who will work more for less pay, too; I mean, who doesn't? but the problem, I think, with asking for and selecting for "passion" is that most employers talk about dedication to the company which, I think, usually leads to getting employees who are willing to fake it. I mean, we all know what the score is. The company is going to get rid of you as soon as you are no longer useful (just like you are going to leave if you feel you can get better working conditions elsewhere.)

I think that the sort of employee who tells you what you want to hear instead of what they actually think is incredibly destructive, and I think quite often that is what you get when you select for "passion" as in company loyalty.

I think you can even turn an honest employee into a yes man and vis-a-vis by responding positively or negatively to criticism. (the hard part is when the guy has a point, but it's not really a priority. yes you say "Good point and I agree, but we don't have time to fix that right now" but you can only say that so many times before it starts sounding like "shut up and get back to work, kid.")

I think selecting for people who are passionate about the technology they work with or about their skill with that technology is a fine thing; but I think it's a very dangerous thing to tell business people to select for because they will select for (apparent) loyalty/passion for the company, which I think is usually a net negative.

known2• 16 years ago

I think Microsoft could ignite the passion among employees by delegating the ownership of product development. And Google by allowing employees to work on 20% of their time on personal projects.

TeHCrAzY• 16 years ago

Spending the 20% time on personal projects would essentially just be letting your employees take an extra day a week off, with the same pay.

known2• 16 years ago

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrapreneur type of work culture may help.

awakeasleep2• 16 years ago

I bet 70+ percent of people aren't passionate about anything, period.

aniket_ray2• 16 years ago

That's probably because they haven't experienced enough things in life. This world is huge with so many different opportunities.

People who appear dispassionate, are not always so. There are people who are passionate about serving their family. Or maybe some sport say football. They have to find a way to channel their passion to their careers. I admit passion is not enough, you need talents but that's again about channeling passion in the right way.

Of course, there would always be some people who would be physically (biologically?) incapable of feeling passion. But I don't think that is the norm.

awakeasleep2• 16 years ago

I guess I never considered people passionate about TV sports/shows. Shouldn't write people off just because they don't have my preferences.

kbatten• 16 years ago

140 pages reduced to a six word headline, impressive. Can someone clue me in on where to look for this 82% stat? My keyword search mostly turned up 1982.

edit: I see for 2008 we have a 20% passionate stat overall. 18% firm employed, but 43% self employed are passionate. But I guess maybe that doesn't make a good headline.

82% aren’t passionate about their work

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