Finding Your Passion (It's Probably Napping)

"Follow your passion" is the most common and most useless career advice in existence. It assumes you have a passion, that your passion is monetizable, and that the market cares about your passion. These assumptions are wrong for most people, most of the time.

The Passion Myth

Passion is supposed to be this burning inner fire that tells you what you were put on earth to do. But most people's burning inner fire tells them to sleep in, eat carbohydrates, and watch another episode. That's not a career path. That's a Saturday. The people who say "follow your passion" are usually people whose passion happened to be something profitable, like software engineering or motivational speaking. Nobody interviews the person whose passion is collecting vintage lunch boxes to ask about their career strategy.

Passion Follows Mastery, Not the Other Way Around

The research on this is clear, and Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You makes the case well: people tend to become passionate about things they're good at, not the other way around. You don't find your passion and then develop skills. You develop skills and then passion shows up, like a cat that only comes around when you're no longer looking for it.

What If Your Passion Is Nothing?

Some people genuinely don't have a passion and that's fine. Not everyone needs a calling. Some people just need a job that pays well, doesn't make them miserable, and leaves enough time and energy for the things they actually enjoy, which might be napping, or gardening, or watching competitive baking shows. There's no shame in working to live rather than living to work. The shame was invented by people trying to sell you a course on finding your purpose.

A More Honest Approach

Instead of "what's my passion," try "what can I tolerate doing for eight hours a day that someone will pay me for?" It's not inspiring. It won't make a good commencement speech. But it's real, and real beats aspirational when you have rent to pay.

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