Why "Follow Your Passion" Is Bad Advice

I still remember the day. 

I was in Grade 11 English class when one of the counselors came by and handed out pink slips to the teacher. She then explained that each of us had to mark down what we wanted to pursue in college (and beyond) on these slips and return them within 24 hours. 

I’ll never forget the look on my face that evening at home when I stared blankly at that pink slip and wondered what I should pursue as my career

• Engineering

• Life Sciences

• Health Sciences

• Accounting

• Arts

• Other

I thought to myself - “There’s something about each of these that sounds pretty good to me.” Even the ‘Other’ bucket sounded interesting - what’s in there anyway?? What do people who say ‘Other’ end up doing? How do I figure this out in one night?!

^^Me realizing I need a passion by tomorrow morning.

Then I had an epiphany: I should do what I am passionate about. That’s it, pretty simple. Figure out what my passion is, and then just tick that box. 

Wait…how do I figure out my passion? The self-questioning continued

In hindsight, 20 years later, I find it insane that I had to choose what I wanted to do with the rest of my life having absolutely no idea what some of these careers looked like. Our education system is fundamentally flawed in that sense. You wouldn't commit to eating the exact same entrée for the rest of your life without tasting a few appetizers first. Why do we do it with our careers?

Schools program us to learn theoretical concepts on subjects they determine are most important. Whether you like them or not isn’t their problem. We are then forced to prove we understand and know these subjects well enough through assignments and exams. All theory, very little real world application. And then, they hand you a piece of paper and ask you what you want to do in the real world. 

Just as school tells us what to study and learn, it is not uncommon for students to be told what to do with their careers. “Go be a doctor, go be a lawyer, or an engineer. These are safe careers!”

And then 20 years later, many realize that they don’t even know what they are passionate about. (Not me, of course, this is more of a general statement 😉)

So how do you find what you’re passionate about? How could you re-write the script if you could go back in time?

4 out of 5 people don’t know what their passion is. Which means starting with the question “what are you passionate about?” is the worst way to figure out what you want to do. Instead of trying to predict the perfect career from a standing start, invert the problem.

Try a few different things. Experiment. Sample. Treat your career as a tasting menu. Try a bunch of different things in a ‘low-cost’ manner. 

• Want to own a business? Sample what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. Start a side hustle alongside your full-time job and see if it gives you energy or drains it.

• Curious about a specific industry? Network with people working in those roles and see what their day-to-day life is actually like. Does their reality pull you in or push you away? 

• Job shadow. Get in the trenches and watch the work happen in real-time

• Take online classes. Learn skills relevant to a career that sparks your interest. Does learning those specific skills excite you, or does it feel exactly like taking forced classes back in high school?

Eventually you’ll find something you naturally gravitate towards. And it’s never too early to start. It will definitely take a few tries before you truly figure out what you like

Once you do, you'll be in the driver’s seat, able to live out Naval’s famous advice: "Find work that feels like play to you, but looks like work to others.”