Don’t ‘Follow Your Passion’. Create It Instead.

Following your passion is dangerous. Skills are sustainable.

In an oversaturated world filled with a culture that pours gasoline on the flames of ego, it’s inevitable that the people living in it become more and more desperate to prove the significance of their existence.

And it’s extremely easy to experience the feeling of importance. We can announce news on Facebook, post photos on Instagram or tweet short quotes on Twitter and let the ‘likes’ roll in.

Amongst the rants, memes and squad photos I see on social media (as a young millennial) — what is extraordinarily common is motivational advice telling us to think big, dare greatly and the topic of this blog post:

Follow your passion.

After all, that’s what the most successful men and women did wasn’t it? It’s certainly the advice Steve Jobs gave in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech.

You’ve got to find what you love. — Steve Jobs

But is this the advice Steve Jobs followed?

Steve Jobs is now known as a technology inventor and entrepreneur, but when he was a young college undergrad figuring out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, he didn’t study technology or business at all.

He dropped out of Reed College and stayed on campus studying western history, dance, extreme diets, meditation and Eastern Mysticism.

If you look take a quick look at the books that inspired Jobs, they are hardly about electronics or business but are a combination of philosophy, spirituality and societal criticisms.

In fact, while working for All-In-Computer, a technology startup run by Alex Kamradt, Jobs left without notice for the All-One Commute. This is hardly the behaviour of a man passionate about electronics, but rather of a young man seeking enlightenment.

If Jobs took his own advice and followed his passion, he would’ve ended up as a Zen Buddhism teacher (and probably an awesome one!) in some Palo Alto Meditation Dojo.

The Attractiveness of ‘Follow Your Passion’ And It’s Dark Truth

Why is ‘follow your passion’ such popular advice?

It’s beautiful and romantic albeit simple. It tells that you just have to do this one thing and the rest of your life is going to be amazing.

All you have to do is follow your passion.

It fulfils the desperate millennial desire to feel important. It teaches you that you have a destiny. That this is special. This is your predestination.

On closer inspection, this advice is awfully vague.

It assumes that you already have a pre-existing passion inside you. If you asked most people, they’d probably tell you that they’re passionate about nothing.

What are you supposed to do if you have no passions?

What if I had a passion for sitting on my couch watching Netflix all day? Should I follow my passion and do that?

While ‘follow your passion’ is undoubtedly sexy advice, it’s unrealistic, unhelpful and even dangerous especially when taken as the unquestionable career guideline to follow.

It may lead you to a thought process similar to this:

I need to follow my passion. Therefore, I need to find my passion. I have no passion. Therefore, I’ll do nothing and wait for a passion.

Which leads to inaction which can waste many years of your life — as well as the loss of autonomy (a quality crucial to your wellbeing).

With such crappy advice being thrown around the internet, it’s no wonder 86% of millennials experience a quarter-life crisis.

So what should you do instead?

With all the criticism with the advice ‘follow your passion’, I feel compelled to declare my opinion that passion is not bad. In fact you should strive to be passionate about your work.

Create Your Passion Instead

In Daniel Pink’s Drive, he reveals to us the three elements which he has found to contribute to passion.

Autonomy — directing your own life Mastery — improving your work and experiencing a high level of skill Purpose —participating in something larger than ourselves

Autonomy

Autonomy is defined as the condition of self-government, which is the fulfilment of our desire to direct our own lives.

You’ve probably heard these few common phrases from your friends or family.

“I feel like I have no control over my life.”

“I feel like I’m living someone else’s life.”

What they’re saying is that they don’t experience autonomy is the sense that they’re not making their own decisions. They feel like their decisions are made for them by other people.

They don’t take initiatives to go out with their friends, or to start on new work projects, but rather just listen to others — not actively seeking out new opportunities.

Some companies have discovered the importance of autonomy and have applied it to their organisational structures.

Atlassian has ‘Fedex days’ in which employees can exercise their creativity and produce a prototype of a project (similar to a hackathon) overnight and present it to their peers.

Google has 20% days in which on one day of the week, employees are encouraged to work on a project of choice not administered by managers.

Mastery

When you think ‘classical music’, you think ‘Mozart’. It’s no secret that he’s one of the greatest classical composers in history.

It would be easy for us to say that he had a predisposition towards music because he was born with a passion for it.

What most people don’t know is that Mozart was taught music from an extremely young age from his father who was also a composer. By age 6, Mozart was already playing multiple instruments in public.

Amy Wrzesniewski, Yale University professor of organisational behaviour conducted a study on college administrative assistants to explore whether they perceived their work as a job, career or calling.

When she pressed into why the assistants perceived their work differently, she discovered that the strongest predictor of an assistant seeing her work as a calling (or in other words, a passion) was the number of years spent working.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that because you have no passion now, you should wait or it to come to you.

It would be a cognitive miscalculation to watch masters of their craft and believe that they achieved mastery because of a burning passion they were born with.

Mastery precedes passion.

Purpose

Purpose is the experience of contributing towards a meaningful cause greater than oneself.

A study done on university fundraisers found that when they met a single scholarship student who benefited the money they raised, the number of calls they made per hour more than doubled and their weekly revenue jumped by 500%.

Understanding the purpose of your work is a powerful motivator. It’s no secret that working for the sole sake of making money can be mentally draining and emotionally demotivating.

Yet when faced with a greater goal, we can become so captivated in our tasks that we become lost in the process, forgetting the boundaries of time and space in pursuit for something larger than us.

“I believe wholeheartedly that a new form of capitalism is emerging. More stakeholders (customers, employees, shareholders, and the larger community) want their businesses to . . . have a purpose bigger than their product.” — Mats Lederhausen

Perhaps autonomy, mastery and purpose aren’t the only motivators of our multi-faceted species. I’m almost certain that factors such as social pressure, connection to those around you and desire to survive may also contribute to one’s passion.

But at least we’re a little closer to reality now. The cultural meme of ‘follow your passion’ has been shattered (at least a little).

I hope I conveyed the myth of individuals containing a pre-existing passion well. If you’re ever lost because you have no passion, remember that it’s unwise to dread over what you lack, but to focus on creating a process which drives you.