'Follow your passion!' is unhelpful advice
Sure you love balancing rocks, but can you make a living from it?
Being told to follow your passion is not particularly helpful in my view, for so many reasons. First, a massive number of people don’t know what their passion is. That can make you feel like you’re missing out on some secret in life, or that you have failed to find your calling. Why on earth would everyone in the world have a special passion or calling? That’s like the idea of soulmates. Lovely in theory, bonkers in reality.
Second, what if your passion is not a money-earner? Let’s say your passion is growing giant vegetables, or making Rube Goldberg machines, or watching Game of Thrones. Not easy to see how to turn these passions into money-makers. And naturally, very few people are passionate about some of the world’s least appealing jobs, while many, many people are passionate about photography and writing, which are (let’s face it) easier, cleaner and far less stressful.
Third, turning your passion into money isn’t easy even when you can monetize it. I’ve met many people, particularly women at home with kids, who decide to start up a business that takes their passion to the world. They’ve made a product, for instance, that fits a specific need for parents. But in many cases they don’t have the time, energy and dedication that they need to make it all happen. In some cases, the economics are against them. If it takes six hours and $200 in materials to make the perfect parent handbag, selling them for $300 means you’re effectively losing money. That’s stressful and it’s slightly pointless, so these people often give up. Another issue is that they assume that because they’re following their passion, it should be easy. That’s a massive misconception.
For most of us it ultimately comes down to money, as this article points out (although I don’t think this is a women’s issue, I think it’s more universal than that). When there’s no financial incentive, it’s hard to motivate yourself to do any type of work, even work you’re passionate about. Of course, when the financial motivation is strong enough, you’ll take almost any type of work and you’ll bloody well get on with it.
Even if you have a passion, and you find a way to make money doing it, it’s not going to be smooth sailing. The idea is as ridiculous as finding your soulmate and never having a relationship issue again in your life. My work is driven by money. I enjoy lots of parts of my job, but my passion for writing does not mean that it’s a joy to be writing terrible search-engine-optimised web copy with a strict 2% keyword density. I don’t do that work anymore but if I needed the money I’d pick it up again in a heartbeat.