The problem with "following your passions"

The purpose of life can be more than just a career

Teaching my daughter, who was then 2 years old, to paint.

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When I was in high school and college, I worked for a few summers painting houses. Some parts of the job were difficult. Burning old paint off an eave with a heat gun in the summer sun is not pleasant. But there were also things I really enjoyed about the work. It was cool to produce something physical — I still point out houses I painted when I’m back in my hometown — and I learned a lot of skills that I still use to this day, such as cutting in without tape. My boss was into music, so we talked a lot about bands. And on hot days, sometimes clients would let us jump in their pools after we were done with work.

Pretty much everyone in my life at the time — including my painter boss — encouraged me to go to college, so that’s what I did. In college I was frequently praised for my writing skills, and that constant praise eventually convinced me that writing was a passion I should pursue professionally. Today I’m a professional writer, which is quite a privileged thing to be indeed.

But I often reflect on my time painting houses and the fact that on net, I enjoyed it. Was painting houses my passion? No. But could it theoretically have been just as good and rewarding a career as the one I ended up pursuing?

It’s impossible to say for sure, but I suspect the answer is yes. And the reason is that because over time, I’ve realized that while I do like writing the things that bring me the most happiness in life are not my career victories but my family life. Case in point, I won a minor journalism award last year. But I’d trade a thousand such awards for any random evening of teaching my daughter to ride a two wheeler, or for any of my family’s big Sunday dinners. I know it sounds sappy, but it is what it is.

Research seems to confirm this; as Arthur Brooks reported in The Atlantic Thursday, the happiest people tend to be those with the most robust relationships, including with family.

In any case, I was thinking about the relationship between work and happiness recently while reading this New York Times piece about the advice to “follow your passions.” The piece reveals two useful findings (at least for our purposes here). First, a pair of surveys show that “follow your passions” is the most common advice college students receive when choosing their majors¹.

And second, the article argues that this is actually terrible advice. Amen.

The article’s argument is that “the passions that young people are supposed to be following seem highly malleable and susceptible to influence.” Passions are, in other words, just the things society tells people to be passionate about.

My experience with writing and painting offers anecdotal evidence of this. If everyone had told me I was terrible at writing I’m sure it wouldn’t have turned into a passion of mine. And if I’d been encouraged to pursue painting as a career, and was told for years and years that I was good at it, I suspect it would have become my passion.

The authors of the New York Times article are particularly concerned that the “follow your passion” advice ultimately produces gender inequalities in professions such as computer sciences. It’s a good point and one deserving of exploration, though I’d say the authors’ focus on nerd jobs² leaves a blind spot; the gender disparity in many trades is even larger³.

But I think the bigger issue is that the “follow your passion” advice frames work as life’s central focus.

To understand this idea, think about this question: “Should you follow your passions when choosing a college major or career?” If you answer yes, then of course you believe work should be where a person focuses their passion and energy.

But if you answer that question in the negative, it still implies that work is where one’s passions ought to lie — it just means you think that there are other priorities that have gotten in the way. So for example: “Should you follow your passions? No, I think I should sacrifice them for some other thing.” That “other thing” could be anything. People sacrifice their “passions” to support family businesses, to take care of ailing parents, to live up to external expectations, or simply to make enough money to survive (which is what most people end up doing in practice). But the point is that it doesn’t matter how you answer the question because by simply asking it we’ve already framed work as the central activity in life.

Now imagine a different framing.

Suppose a high school senior meets with a counselor for advice on choosing a major. Maybe the counselor asks what the student is passionate about. If they say math, the counselor might recommend engineering. If they say biology, pre-med.

But what if they say, “I’m passionate about having a family”? Or just “I’m passionate about having good relationships and living la dolce vita”?

You still need to choose a college major, and later a job, in this paradigm. But the nature of the work is inconsequential. You’d probably want to find a profession with a decent wage, but also a good work-life balance. There might be geographic considerations — many people feel it’s easier to raise a family in places with lower costs of living — or maybe you don’t want to move around every couple of years, which disrupts friendships. But there are many jobs fitting those criteria.

The point is that in this flipped paradigm, work is simply the means through which someone pursues a non-work passion.

I suspect that the work-as-passion paradigm is so deeply ingrained for a lot of us that it’s difficult to even mentally break out of it. I’m struggling to explain the idea. So let me phrase it differently: The way we currently think about passions, and tell people to follow them, implies that the primary focus in life is a rewarding career.

But that’s not the only option. The purpose of life can be — and historically often has been — having a family. Or it can be a lively social life filled with rewarding relationships. Or anything else. (Though I do think family is it.) In this framing, work is secondary.

In practice if you ask people, a lot will say that their relationships are the most important thing in their lives. Still, the work-as-passion concept is everywhere. Think about how many movies feature a protagonist facing pressure to conform to some family expectation, which they then overcome and end up doing some job they truly love. It’s a ubiquitous plot, and we celebrate those protagonists as courageous and brave. I wrote about one such movie in March, noting that it seemed to be telling an accidental tale of misery.

Now try to think of movies that frame family pressure as a good thing, and celebrate a protagonist’s decision to give up on their “dream” and prioritize non-work activities such as relationship building? No such movies come to mind. Can you even imagine a story about someone who wants to be, say, a sculptor, but then they realize that being a starving artist thousands of miles from their social network will suck so instead they become an assistant manager at their family’s furniture store in the Cleveland suburbs?

Or consider this: How many people do you know who, when offered a plum job opportunity that would require them to move to a new place, turn that job down and instead make their career secondary? I know a few, but not many.

All of which is to say that the work-as-passion paradigm, the idea that work is life’s foremost endeavor, is hammered into all of us from all angles and at all times. And yet my own experiences suggest that I could probably be doing anything for work as long as I have the means to take care of my family and live a bit of the good life.

I’ve already chosen a career and started a family, so for me personally this is all possibly moot. To some extent, I’m having my cake and eating it too thanks to a career that I love. I’m fortunate.

But these ideas will shape how I advise my own kids. As they get older and think about what kind of life they’ll want to live, I hope they explore enjoyable jobs. I hope they’re as fortunate as me.

But I also won’t ever tell them to “follow their passions” in work. Instead, I’ll tell them that what they do matters less than the lifestyle they have. They’ll have to work — journalism is not a profession that has enabled me to set up trust funds — and choosing jobs that aren’t miserable matters. But more than anything else, I’ll stress to them that the best thing in life is time spent in good company, and that their jobs are a means to that end. “Follow your passions,” I might say, “but make your passions the people around you.”

Thanks for reading to the end of this post. If you are a passionate person you will share this post with your friends.

Headlines to check out this week:

Against the Childcare Blob

“There is also a Childcare Blob in the United States. It’s a group of “think-tankers, lawmakers, journalists and others in official Washington — who coalesce” around establishing universal childcare provided via daycare centers. The Childcare Blob, in other words, wants government-funded childcare, and it wants that childcare to be provided in what is called “center-based care,” i.e. via daycare centers (as opposed to by family or friends). The Childcare Blob is often also opposed to funding childcare provided by churches, synagogues, and small, in-home daycares.”

1. I suspected that was the case; it was certainly the most common advice I received, and it appeared to be generally the guiding ethos when I was in high school and college.

2. Journalism is a huge nerd job.

3. I’ve met both male and female computer engineers, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a female plumber. Obviously there are some, but the trades are still overwhelmingly dominated by men. Whether that’s good or bad is a conversation for a different day, but it is worth noting that there are many good non-white collar jobs. As I’ve previously written, the richest guy I know is my plumber.