How many times have you stumbled on the question: What should I do with my life?
And how many times have you received the advice: Just follow your passion.
As per an article published on Forbes, a recent Stanford research paper (a good summary is here) identifies the main flaw of this undead trope: “Finding your passion” presupposes that interests and passions are fixed, rather than fluid and evolving as we age and gain wisdom and experience. Those who follow the fixed mindset are much more likely to give up when obstacles arise. As the authors say, “Urging people to find their passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket but then to drop that basket when it becomes difficult to carry.”
Following your passion also means that you presume that you have one. However, everyone has a unique combination of talents, they might not know what their passion is. And if you tell them to follow their passion, they might just simply feel inadequate and confused.
Sometimes the issue with simply following your passion can be that either it simply ignores the market or your passion can become your job, which might take away the enjoyment from the passion after a point in time.
What could be a good framework to choose your career is to :
- Learn from the startups which follow an approach towards market validation and product-market fit. You can choose to identify the needs in the market, assess your strengths, and match up these two in a constantly iterative process.
- You can develop your passion, rather than follow it. According to Cal Newport, developing rare and valuable skills will lead to far greater career satisfaction because they make you financially stable and give you lots of control over your time. And slowly, you develop a passion for a field you have profound expertise in. OR you can reverse engineer your lifestyle: Know how you want to live, and then fit a career around that vision.
- According to Michal Bohanes, you can follow up on this adapted version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Thus, in conclusion, following your contribution is my recommendation. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better and that is the thing to follow. That sounds like a far more durable blueprint for career success and life happiness. On that road, you’ll develop that passion to hustle you are trying to find amidst the rubble of conflicting priorities.
