Find your passion?

 Spotted this headline for an article in The Atlantic:

‘Find Your Passion’ Is Awful Advice

A major new study questions the common wisdom about how we should choose our career.

The article is paywalled, so I can’t read it. But the headline provoked me to think about my career.

I don’t recall being told to find my passion. The closest I can come is my dad’s advice to ask myself what I think about in my spare time. Or my postdoc mentor, who said that a scientist thinks about science in the shower. Those guides fall a bit short of manifesting “passion” as I understand the word. But my 47-year post college-career in science is consistent with a certain enthusiasm for science.

It’s easier to get up in the morning and go to work when you are looking forward to your job. There’s a useful distinction to be made between work and toil. Work, while sometimes difficult and challenging, provides opportunities for personal growth and rewards beyond the paycheck. Toil, in contrast, is effort without personal growth or meaning. While there were things about my job that sucked, I was never bored or wished I’d chosen a different occupation.

My maternal grandparents never finished high school. My maternal grandfather died when my mom was a teenager, and his wife had to work as a domestic to support three kids. My mom got the money for college from an older brother who briefly was a pro football player. After having five kids, my mom found her “passion” by going to grad school and getting a PhD, eventually landing a string of teaching gigs. By all accounts, she enjoyed the work and she developed a loyal following of students.

So is “find your passion” awful advice? Maybe. I’d say something more like “harness your enthusiasm.” Certainly, don’t simply do what your parents did or told you to do if you have the choice.

 

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