I Know I'm Supposed To Follow My Passion. But What If I Don't Have A Passion?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/05/09/182403459/i-know-im-supposed-to-follow-my-passion-but-what-if-i-dont-have-a-passion

by elaineo • 13 years ago

8 13 13 years ago

npr.org

elaineo4• 13 years ago

...then you become a well-paid cog working for someone else who does have a passion.

imcrs• 13 years ago

And there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone needs their work to be the central focus of their life.

coldtea3• 13 years ago

Or a non well-paid cog. Like 90% of the people out there, you know.

In what universe there are either people that "follow their passion" or "well-paid (!) cogs"?

elaineo4• 13 years ago

Yes, or a poorly-paid cog... The point of the article was that you can better optimize your earning potential if you don't follow a passion.

coldtea3• 13 years ago

It's a BS baby boomer ideal that everybody should have some "passion" -- and it should be their work too.

Apparently merely living your life like a normal person (going to school, getting a job, enjoying a few hobbies, having kids, watching some tv, etc, as people in all societies have done for centuries) will not do.

And the "passion" better be something grandiose and pretentious too.

conjecTech• 13 years ago

I think enjoying something you spend 40 hours or more a week on is probably a good ideal to have, and that is what being passionate about what you choose to do ensures.

rooker2• 13 years ago

I disagree. The problem lies in the definition of "passion," which a lot of people take to mean that it's going to be some sort of thrilling, meaningless underwater basket weaving. In reality, combining interest and hard work can lead to more fulfillment than simply drudging in and out of an 8-hour work day to collect a paycheck. When a person simply believes that they're working for a paycheck, their satisfaction will tend to decrease, as the paycheck starts to seem smaller and smaller with regard to the amount of time they're putting in. 8 hours a day is no small chunk of one's life. It also doesn't have to be the most fulfilling time in a person's day, but to say that having a passion for your work is a BS ideal (and to attribute it to baby boomers at that) is oversimplifying the issue.

That said, you're completely right that living a normal life is not enough for some people. These people will tend to be either extraordinary or extremely depressed, all the while thinking they're normal/below normal.

coldtea3• 13 years ago

>In reality, combining interest and hard work can lead to more fulfillment than simply drudging in and out of an 8-hour work day to collect a paycheck.

And how will that work to fill societies needs for waiters, garbage disposal guys, cleaning ladies, supermarket clerks, miners, clerks, accountants, etc etc? There are tons of jobs where almost nobody has a "passion" for. At worst people follow them because they need to feed themselves, at best because they feel they can do that line of work competently and make a decent buck. No passion involved. They still need to be done.

elaineo4• 13 years ago

I'm sure that very few people feel that their true passion is to become a debt collector or tax auditor or patent attorney. Until the robots come along and render those professions obsolete, someone's gonna have to fill them.

There's nothing wrong with living your life like a "normal" person and just working for a living and using the job to support your hobbies, kids, or life outside of work. But you'd better be pretty darn passionate about those hobbies or kids. Because if you don't have anything else to act as your driving force, well, then that's a little bit sad.

jholman2• 13 years ago

There are some advantages to following your passion, if you unambiguously have one. And often there are disadvantages. But pretending to have one is not a reasonable strategy.

As a first approximation, I'm a fan of Cal Newport's thinking on the subject. He claims that passion _follows_ mastery, and that therefore passions are not discovered, but rather constructed, and that deliberate practice can lead you there. My own opinion is that this summary only captures one side of passion, but I think in many ways it's the most powerful side, and also the side that's the most actionable (and thus relevant when someone is asking for advice).

http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/11/24/are-passions-serendipi...

http://calnewport.com/blog/category/features-rethinking-pass...

It does occur to me, though, that I may be being persuaded by well-polished rhetoric that appeals to my biases, so if anyone has evidence or arguments that he's a slick-talking demagogue, I'd like to hear about it. =]

elaineo4• 13 years ago

Hey, thanks for sharing that!

So Cal Newport is effectively saying that humans are inherently competitive, and they'll feel passionate about something once they start kicking ass at it.

That certainly helps, and I think it would hold true for people who start off with something they already kind of like. But then there are all those stories of kids whose parents forced them to ice skate or take piano lessons until it completely squelched any passion the kid had for the activity. So, I'm not sure I completely agree with CN.

jholman2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure "competitive" captures it, exactly. Sort of? I mean, obviously some people like being better than other people, sure. But I think some people just like being _good_, full stop. But of course you don't know what "good" means without comparing yourself to other people, which means it's sort of epistemically connected to competition. But I think it's still not the same thing.

ALSO, I can think of several thought experiments that appear to contradict CN, and I'll add yours to the list, because I totally agree. I've met kids like that, including an ex-friend who rebounded from his parents' forced piano lessons so hard that he ended up confined to the psych ward. He mastered piano AND violin, but he didn't develop passion for either.

Here's another example that is contrastive with CN. I personally am fascinated by dissecting P&P RPG rules, and assessing which are "good" according to an ill-defined metric that interests no one but me. Does it even make sense to talk about mastery at this activity? I can remember being interested in this when I was a little kid; it's an enduring passion. I don't think it's explicable by "mastery".

These situations illustrate what I meant by "this summary only captures one side of passion".

ON THE OTHER HAND...

I do believe that many-or-all people derive enjoyment from mastery, and at some point this is related to passion. I think the reason I like video games SO MUCH is partly because they let me experience the sensation of mastery, cheaply. When you combine that with a goal of being economically relevant (a goal that I think has both ethical and selfish motivations), it makes sense to cultivate mastery at something useful-and-not-antifun, and hope that the mastery becomes a passion.

And to reply to your cousin-comment, I think some people are masterful and passionate about getting the details right, and they can be tax auditors, and their passion overlaps with their work. And some people can be masterful and passionate about intricate systems, and about securing victories, and they can be patent lawyers and their passion overlaps with their work. I am 100% sure there are passionate patent lawyers. And some people can be masterful and passionate about... bullying people? I dunno if anyone can be passionate about debt collection, actually, but two outta three ain't bad.

I Know I'm Supposed To Follow My Passion. But What If I Don't Have A Passion?

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