“Passion” is a buzzword in the travel community. Follow your dreams, embrace your passion, do what you love — that’s how the collective war cry usually goes.
This is understandable. After all, we’re talking about a group of people who turns travel into a way of life, when most of the population considers it a frivolous pursuit.
But when it comes to work, should you also do what you love?
This article prompted me to do some thinking. I find it hard to come up with a definitive answer to the question, but I’m leaning toward a ‘no’ and here’s why.
#1. The money doesn’t always follow
The Do What You Love movement is essentially a protest against the way the job market works.
The job market is all about supply and demand. If you work in a high-demand profession, you can command a higher pay. So if working is a way to make a living, then the logical thing to do would be to choose a highly paid profession, regardless of how you feel about it.
Doing What You Love means ignoring market forces and knowingly choosing low-paying professions instead, if necessary.
Of course higher-paying professions can be Lovable too, but I imagine a doctor or an engineer wouldn’t have to invoke the Do What You Love mantra to choose their vocations. (I once interviewed a maxillofacial surgeon who enjoys his work and admits that the money isn’t bad too.)
And of course it’s possible to make it big Doing What You Love and earn a lot of money — that’s part of the attraction — but rarely happens. Just think of the number of wannabe-actor waiters in LA, for example.
But if Doing What You Love by nature means being underpaid and overworked, then wouldn’t those working conditions make the work unenjoyable? Wouldn’t it just become another bad job — or worse: a bad job with bad pay?
#2. The thing you enjoy as an activity may not work out so well as a profession.
I’ve always loved writing, so I used to think that Doing What I Love meant writing for a living.
But I tried that and it totally sucked out any enjoyment I used to derive from it. I would hate having to write for 40 hours a week according to the demands of editors and clients every single day of the working week, while dealing with office politics and deadlines.
As I learn over the years, above all else, what I love is being able to do things on my terms, even if it means forgoing regular paychecks and job security — whatever “job security” means in this day and age.
#3. Work shouldn’t be the all-encompassing source of joy in your life anyway.
You are probably a multifaceted person with more than one interest in life. And even if the subject of the work is not something you’re particularly passionate about, you can enjoy various aspects of the work.
You can be a perfectly happy receptionist because you enjoy the human interaction, for example. At 5 p.m., you can truly leave your work at the office and go home to your comfortable apartment. And you have some money in your savings account to travel on vacation days. Or you can even save enough money to take a one-year sabbatical.
(Check out my interview with Amanda, who alternates between working and traveling.)
For many travelers, work is often just a way to enable or prolong travel — not a path to fulfillment. And that’s perfectly fine. Your work doesn’t have to be your passion; it can just be the thing that enables you to follow your true passion.
As Penelope Trunk wrote: “I am a writer, but I love sex more than I love writing. And I am not getting paid for sex…But I don’t sit up at night thinking, should I do writing or sex? Because career decisions are not decisions about ‘what do I love most?’ Career decisions are about what kind of life do I want to set up for myself?”
I realize this post kinda goes against my Steve Jobs post. I feel a little contradicted and this post is like a brain dump to help me sort out my thoughts on this complex subject. I’d love to hear what you have to say. Do you love what you do? Is it important for you that you do what you love? Or is work just a means to an end?
Images: 1. Nomad Wallet; 2. Alan Light (CC BY 2.0 License); 3. Barnacles Hostels (CC BY 2.0 License); 4. Amanda.
I think it’s a matter of choice. Everyone’s different. I have just started earning money on my writing and I have some boring jobs to do, but at the end of the day, this is what I really love doing and if one day I decide that I want to go to my corpo-hole then I will :)
Right! It’s about making choices and timing too. The decision doesn’t have to be permanent because people may change over time and that’s okay.
This is the first time I’ve truly pondered over this question. Should I do what I love? Well, for me, doing what you love does not always mean happiness. So, why shouldn’t I do what I should in order for me to someday be able to do what I love? I am confused myself, but, for now, I think that if one truly wants to do what he/she loves then why shouldn’t he/she do it in a way that he/she can make the most of it (or earn a lot). I’ll probably keep on thinking about it since I’m probably wrong.
I actually have a similar line of thinking. :) It’s a balancing act, for sure.
I think every one of us has more than 1 passion. The key is to find the passion you have that matches the demand of the world and do it. You will have success by following your passion. The biggest mistakes is to assume we only have one passion and if we follow that, we won’t get any where far in life.
That’s a good point, Nguyen. Thank you. People are multi-faceted creatures with more than one interest. It’s not necessarily true that everybody has just one all-consuming passion.
The entire thesis depends on the presupposition that money is in any way significant. A mind-projection fallacy that many Buddhist monks, and ascetes would object to. You’re going to also run into problems given you are a woman, and woman and men are entirely different agents. Women are more dependant on externalities; men not so.
People who make passions a priority generally have three qualities that the majority of people don’t have 1) Naturally contented 2) High-self-esteem (Don’t care about what other people think) 3) (Spiritual-minded) The early wisdom to recognize what is significant and what isn’t.
You raise very good, deeply philosophical points. :)
Firstly, is money significant? I would say it is and I suspect most people would agree, but you’re right that some would disagree. Everybody needs certain creature comforts, some more so than others. For me, money means a hot shower when it’s cold outside, a roof over my head, a good education and other such good stuff. And while I don’t need a permanent home, I do prefer to have a cushy horizontal surface to sleep on, whereas I hear Tibetan monks sleep upright. So it’s more about how you want to live, I think.
Secondly, some women are ascetic Buddhist monks, so I believe this is a matter of personality rather than gender.
Lastly, I’m all for making passion a priority. I’m just questioning the belief that it’s necessarily a good career move. I think it’s possible to have a totally unrelated career without abandoning your passion.
Yes, but you’re taking your own Psychological needs, those thing listed, though some are reasonable, and assuming because you need those things, that other people do as well. I think the sex’s are different, I must confess, not trying to be sexist, but in terms of hierarchical needs; also, personality types are different, and I should add cultures are different.
But, you seem to be juxtaposing to huge extremes here also; either really well-off or really poor. There’s a whole lot of in between.
If you’re merely trying to say, it’s better financially or is better for career. It can be, it might not be. But, it’s a question of individual values ultimately. Personally, as a career person, it seems proper to be passion about what I spend most of my time doing.
My needs and wants may be different from other people’s. It’s not really about the particular things I listed, though. Everybody has needs and wants that require money, except for extreme outliers like monks, as you mentioned. Even minimalists don’t swear off all material things.
I agree that there’s a lot of in-betweens I’m not accounting for. Like I said, this is not about people whose passions happen to be in fields where they can easily make money. For example, if you’ve always wanted to be a surgeon, you won’t have this kind of dilemma because you’d have the best of both worlds. On the other hand, if your passion is in the arts or teaching or social work, then things would be very different.
Of course ultimately these are all very personal issues that everyone has to decide for himself. It’s about finding that elusive balance in life and each person has his own delicate point of balance.
Teaching and social-work couldn’t pay for those things? Who’s going to teach if everyone followed your advice? How many great painters and musicians, would never have existed? If your higher order bit is comfort and stability. I think this will cause you to deviate from your true destiny. And because authenticity is so integral to living a good live, and to personal growth, the inauthenticity that arises from dishonestly pursuing a path for motives other than that path itself will lead to dissatisfaction.
You’re trading your destiny for gratuitous comfort, when comfort should be a happy luxury.
It’s all well and good to talk about “higher order” and “destiny” and “authenticity”, but those things don’t pay bills. And that’s why unpaid interns at magazines are well-off young people who don’t really need the money. That’s why you don’t see single parents going for unstable gigs that don’t pay like painting. How many out-of-work actors take on “temporary” jobs like waitressing and end up working in the restaurant industry for life? Reality doesn’t jive with ideals sometimes.
How many call center operators grew up dreaming of a life spent answering customer complaints? Do janitors consider their work a masterpiece? Yet there have to be people who do those unglamorous jobs. The notion of a career as a source of fulfillment and personal growth comes from a modern, privileged position. In the past, farms and small businesses were passed on through generations; most people didn’t really have much say in what they did for money. And work was just another part of life. There are other things you can derive fulfillment from: family, relationships, volunteer work, travel and even hobbies.
I’m not saying abandon all you love, sell your soul and become a soulless Wall St broker. I’m saying maybe rejecting all material yearning for an ideal job isn’t the way to go either. After all, sometimes the reality of really working in a field you love isn’t as beautiful as you imagine.
Again, there’s no need for an all-or-nothing position. Life is ultimately about balance. It’s up to every person to find that balance.
Passions can pay bills if you are persistent and talented enough. People need artists, for instance graphic designers, and even cartoonists; all sorts of professions using visual arts. There’s obviously circumstances in which people have no choice.
There’s always been people working in the arts, and always have been people willing to endure discomfort for passion, not just artists, scientists like Tesla lived in poverty, Motzart. What stems from the modern privileged position is the idea that the individual ought to always be comfortable and “happy”. Even religious martyrs who had no hope of any future were willing to go to their deaths for beliefs. So, I disagree. I think the idea that we ought to always be comfortable is what is the greatest problem of modernity, and nothing great can come of it.
I think material yearning is conditioned. It can be displaced through education.
I agree that there doesn’t need to be an all or nothing,
I think a very under-estimated aspect of the whole ‘do what you love’ mantra is that attempting to turn a passion/hobby into a full-time income may potentially take the intrinsic joy out of it.
Exactly. It’s a sad day when you wake up and realize you don’t love that passion/hobby the way you once did.
You can always make more money, but those initial foundations are significant. If you follow money instead of passion, you may attain a level of comfort, but possibly at the expense of meaning, which is a travesty. The only way to have both is to go for what you really want from the get-go It was Confucius who said, “he who chases two rabbits catches neither.” The only thing you can attain by playing it safe is mediocrity, which I think is unacceptable.
This is a tough one as it is impossible for everyone to love their job. If you do count your self as lucky. I have been doing tax and estate law for over 35 years and I still love my job and helping others. Man, this is what I do and who I am. But I also have a life outside work and have a lot of interests, so I have found how to make it all work. I consider myself blessed.
It’s great when you love doing something that incidentally also pays well. That takes care of the conflict between financial pressures and the pull to do something else.
Why work shouldn’t be the all-encompassing source of joy in your life anyway??? I think work should give you joy, and you should be able to enjoy it so you can be more productive!
I agree that work shouldn’t be the main source of joy in life. Isn’t that the idea behind Doing What You Love, though? The whole thing is about following your passion and trusting that it will eventually carry you to a good place. I think that’s not necessarily going to happen, so maybe we should tone it down on the “passion is #1” idea and look for joy in other places, as well.
Whenever I get stuck in things like this, because I tend to over think and then my brain gets clogged, I just remember my dad always telling me, everything in moderation. Of course you should love what you do, there’s no point to life if you work for 30 years at a job you hate at a place you can’t stand, that’s not living. But I also understand the don’t do what you love as well. I love science, I love medicine and yet I know I will never be a doctor. Science is one of my passions but I surprisingly am bad at handling blood so I know it won’t make me happy. I found something else that I like and I’m good at to be my work which turned out to be a great compromise. Hobbies don’t have to turn into professions I believe. Do what you love of course – but within reasonable sense. But hey if you can do what you love and make it a great lifestyle and some good money, why not??
That’s a great, simple advice for over-thinkers. And you’re right about the compromise, so much of life is about finding a personal balance. Unfortunately that also means that there’s no one prescription for happiness and that there’s some experimentation to be done to find that balance.
It’s a tough one. But I think we should go where we’re most wanted, and do what we love on the side until it gets to be a viable stream of income.
But I’m biased. That’s what I did starting in 2009 until 2012 when I left my job.
It definitely is tough. The thing is there’s no one answer to the problem, I think. Everyone is biased and can only speak from personal experience.
Hi,
Your post is, to me, clearly an analysis of where you may stand now, as a person, as a professional and as a writer.
I think that your thoughts are interesting, but can’t help but feel that they’re a bit reductive as to what “do what you love” may mean in terms of work.
Many people may indeed be “dreamers” and not make much money or manage to live off of passive income. I personally don’t feel any penchant towards that way of thinking or that kind of goal.
I do however think that what “do what you love” for a traveller can not be reduced to one single thing. A travel-writer needs to experience travel in order to write for it. A travelling teacher needs to teach in order to experience travel fully. A travelling dreamer needs to find something to keep him/her grounded enough to see where s/he’s going in travels.
Work is a means to an end to me, but it also a necessity. These past six months have been the first since I was 15 (and I am now 23 and proud) that I haven’t had a job alongside my studies. It drove me crazy. Work can be many things. It can be a good income. It can also be the learning experience, the social experience, the budget experience or any other kind of experience I may not even fathom. To each their own, be it in terms of financial needs or activitiy ones.
“do what you love” does not mean sacrifice yourself for it, unless that is how YOU wish it to be. It is, in my perspective, an aim, whether professional or personal, to be happy. Slaving over work may satisfy some, while others (like me) need to pace themselves as well as do a whole lotta stuff on the side. It is feeling content, ethically, socially, mentally, spiritually and any other -ally I haven’t thought of yet, with yourself and your choices.
My definition of Do What You Love is pretty narrow. That’s because that’s how it often applies to me and to many other professionals in the creative field. Lots of people, at some point in their creative career, have to go through the overworked and underpaid phase.
I completely agree that you can’t boil it down to one single thing. People have multiple passions in life and you can’t let go of everything else to focus on just one. It’s about balance. And it’s about knowing yourself to reach that balance.
Maybe it’s just that happiness, whether in work or finances or everywhere else, is such a personal thing that there can’t possibly be a one-size-fits all solution. That’s why it’s important to think about what work means to you, which you obviously have done, and be purposeful with your career decisions, so you actually build the kind of life that you want.
Hahah! Just when am currently having a quarter life crisis, I stumble on this! Great advice! I’d always prefer doing what I love on my own terms vs eventually hating it because of the pressure and what not. However, though, I still think one should pick a job that’s still pretty enjoyable… imagine dragging yourself to work every freaking day. Worst. Feeling. Ever.
Yep, the main thing is the job shouldn’t be soul-crushingly depressing, I think.
I think possibly that it is more important to not do what you hate… So far I’m still looking for a happy medium here!
Hmm…that’s an interesting insight. You may be right!
Super good advice, Deia! I was one of those people saying you should do what you love for a living… But then i came across someone who loved riding their bike in the mountains. So he turned his hobby into a job and started guiding groups of bike riders in the mountains – and shortly after that, he started hating riding his bike in the mountains because he associated with with lazy and cranky tourists who didn’t appreciate neither the bike ride, nor the mountains and only complained about stuff.
So i totally agree with you – don;t do for a living what you love – keep that one for yourself. BUT – i would suggest you find something to do for a living that you can love. Love what you do, so you can keep doing it for a living – then you will be able to do what you love in your free time. Agreed? :D
Yes, I love the way you put it! Some passions are meant to be kept for yourself. It’s sometimes better to get a non-soul-crushing job with good working conditions and decent pay so you can continue doing what you love for fun.
For me my happiness, health and financial future will be MY FAULT and I can accept that responsibility.
A friend of the family is a millionaire, owns 12 properties and earns 12k a month just off rental income. So as I’m about to rent my first property (to move abroad) I asked some advice. Suddenly he jumped to meet me. His advice:
To show me his financial statement for the second time after I’ve already seen it.
He is 70 years old, has a nice house, is alone and boasts of a woman he dates half his age. He is incredibly lonely and acts as if he is the Dos Equis man. I would gladdly die as a Walmart greeter than live my entire life as a slow death of absolute lonliness. Our lives are not the result of a financial statement. I am thankful that I make a high salary (which I will be giving up soon thank you) so I can see that the numbers are only an illusion.
If you do not derive a certain level of satisfaction from your work on the average of your days you will purchase happiness the moment you are off. Perhaps this link by Alan Watts can describe better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4
Good point. Life is not just about money and success and financial statements. On the other hand, though, should it be about the pursuit of this one abstract dream of making it big as a painter/sculptor/musician, to the detriment of one’s health and well being? Doing What You Love at any cost may not be realistic or sustainable in the long term. For example, if our struggling artist has a family to feed, it might be better for him and his family if he gets another job.
Money can’t buy happiness, of course. But loneliness has more to do with personality than the amount of money someone has. I’m sure there are poor people who are lonely, too. And, all other things being the same, I’d rather be rich and lonely than poor and lonely. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about feeding myself, etc. and can spend my time finding friends through volunteering, joining a networking group or even mentoring younger entrepreneurs.
For me, money is about having options. Like the option you’re taking by creating passive income, quitting your job and going away to travel. A struggling artist who struggles to even make ends meet would not have that option.
Money doesn’t buy happiness necessarily but it sure as hell buys peace of mind. Like you, I believe that the more money i have, the more options I have. I’ve struggled for money and it took a toll on my relationship and my quality of life. Money makes things easier, there’s no way around that. I don’t think you have to starve for passion’s sake OR be rich and miserable, I believe for most of us we can find some sort of reasonably happy medium.
I should add that I don’t dream of being rich – it would be nice but it’s not my end goal especially since I’ve picked a field that I enjoy and the tradeoff is it’s not gonna make me rich – but I do require a living wage and financial security, because that kind of stability underpins my happiness.
Yeah, I’m in the same conflicted boat as you and I definitely think the right answer varies for individuals. I never thought I’d like writing about business but turns out it’s pretty awesome (because I cover entrepreneurs and people rather than numbers). And that’s definitely made me wonder what else I might actually love too if I actually gave it a shot.
That’s interesting. You’re doing what you love (writing), but even within that field there are many different things you could do. I guess it’s not as easy as saying you wanna be something when you grow up and then growing up to actually love it. There’s some trial and error to do to figure things out.
Absolutely. I started out thinking I’d like to be an entertainment writer. But I would hate to be constantly reviewing concerts and albums. I don’t have the thick skin to be a critic. And I would definitely resent having to leave gigs early so I could write up a piece and get it in for deadline, and to have to be out at nights for work. Plus entertainment journalism can be pretty repetitive and I know I wouldn’t be very comfortable interviewing rock stars and movie stars. It just wouldn’t be for me.
I’m a bit of a personal finance nerd, but not entirely – I know I would hate to write about it all day every day (as you can tell by my slightly eclectic blog).
My current gig is pretty cool because I get to write, and edit, and manage content and do social media, and cover stories across many different industries.
Yep, going to concerts for free and getting to go backstage may seem awesome, but in reality it’s just as inconvenient and exhausting as any other job. I love personal finance too, but I could never do a straight-up personal finance blog that’s all about withdrawal rate and return on investment and dividend yield; I just don’t like getting into that much detail. I guess it’s really about trial and error until you find a Goldilocks zone where you feel like everything is balanced.
That fantastic DWYL article inspired my latest blog post too…
I really like what you have to say and Penelope’s quote about what a career is. I want to travel AND write AND not feel constantly depressed that the way I fund these isn’t my passion. DWYL doesn’t work for me.
That’s a good quote, isn’t it? :D There are many factors that affect whether you’re happy at work and I think just saying everybody should do what they love is too simplistic.