Benjamin Todd

Follow your passion has become a defining piece of career advice.

Here's a chart from Google Ngram that shows how common the phrase follow your passion is in books in different time periods.

Shows the frequency in books on the y-axis and the year on the x-axis.

The line is very close to zero until about 1997 when it starts to increase a bit.

In 2005 it starts to really pick up and by the end of the chart in 2023 it's gone up over 40 times.

The idea is that the key to finding a great career is to identify your greatest interest, your passion, and pursue a career involving that interest.

It's an attractive message.

Just commit to your passion and you'll have a great career.

And when we look at successful people, they are often passionate about what they do.

Now, we're fans of being passionate about your work.

The research above shows that intrinsically motivating work makes people a lot happier than a big paycheck.

However, there are three ways follow your passion can be misleading advice.

One problem is that it suggests that passion is all you need.

But even if you're deeply interested in the work, if you lack the six ingredients from above, you'll still be unsatisfied.

If a basketball fan gets a job involving basketball, but works with people they hate, receives unfair pay, or finds the work meaningless, they're still going to dislike their job.

In fact, following your passion can make it harder to satisfy the six ingredients, because the areas you're passionate about are likely to be the most competitive, which makes it harder to find a good job.

And there's a bar chart here that compares students passionate about sports, arts or music, which is around 80% or more, with occupations in art, culture, recreation and sport, which seems to only be a few percent.

A second problem is that many people don't feel like they have a career-relevant passion.

Telling them to follow their passion makes them feel inadequate.

If you don't have a passion, don't worry, you can still find work you'll become passionate about.