Passion as a Career Path

So where do I stand on the passion vs. practicality debate?

As we’ve seen, it’s practicality that turns effort to dollars, not love. Love may have uses in business, but only in so far as it is practical. Loving your customers is perfectly practical to business goals.

I think most people find themselves in careers that do nothing for them aside from paying the bills. In that case, passion is only useful after-hours, and that’s a disturbing thought. The typical arrangement is to sell half your waking hours, at a flat rate, five out of the seven days in a week — to somebody else who is making a lot more money with your effort than you are. With the modest amount you receive — and the remaining half of your time — you are to build a life.

Most of us live this reality, and I now see it as a bloody curse. Of course we can do better. We settle, because it seems impractical to walk away from a steady income. Business owners who get rich from our modestly-paid efforts want to make sure we don’t get too entrepreneurial ourselves, so they get us dependent on health benefits that are so difficult to walk away from. Beware. This is the reason public healthcare is so violently opposed in the conservative contingent of the US, but that’s another post altogether.

In his book Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn encourages the reader to ask “What is my job in this planet, with a capital J?”

Good question. Is it selling insurance? Programming data entry systems? Processing credit card records? Stocking grocery shelves? Helping the suburbs of Winnipeg get bigger?

With one precious lifetime to spend, and all the advantages of a developed world and a free market, maybe it’s nothing short of idiotic to resign yourself to a post in life that has nothing to do with who you are or what you love.

Like so many others, I have the dream of becoming rather well-off doing work I love. Unless I die in my thirties, I will do it. You can bet the farm on it.

I’m certain of it not because Tim Ferriss or Steve Pavlina or Tony Robbins says I can, but because I’ve decided I will. It’s not a gamble, it’s not a leap of faith. It’s how I plan to spend the rest of my life. It will take considerable amounts of practical effort — planning and testing — but it is certainly a lost cause without passion.

Passion is definitely not a requirement for a steady income though, not by any stretch. In fact, it’s probably easier to find a steady income if you forget about your passion completely. Don’t let it bug you, don’t allow yourself time for it, and you’ll have your rent paid with ease. Maybe you can let it poke its head out on weekends. Just make sure it’s out of sight by Monday.

To be blunt, working for the weekend is a shit existence, and even though it seems to be the default strategy in my culture, I will not settle for it. In a bearable but uninspiring job, the days slip by so freely that suddenly you wake up to find a decade has gotten behind you and you’re nowhere closer to anything you love. With the exception of what simple pleasures you can cram in on weekends and evenings, it isn’t life, it’s a slow death. There is too much up for grabs for the intelligent (and passionate) individual to let himself pass the years that way.

Certainly a middle ground holds the most promise. I tried the career game without passion for a while, it led me somewhere unbearably mediocre. I’m starting over, with passion as my compass and practical thinking as my throttle.

Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater and think that passion should take a back seat to practicality. One without much of the other is a recipe for disaster, yet I think practicality without passion is much more dangerous, because it can steal your life from you without your realizing it. Maybe it already has.
Passion isn’t worth any money. It’s priceless.