“Follow your passion” is a very commonly heard career advice, but Cal Newport argues it’s actually quite terrible as a guiding principle.
In his quest to figure out how people find great careers, he found not only that preexisting passions are very rare, but that they have little to do with how most people end up loving their work. The pressure to “find our passion” can therefore unnecessarily lead to anxiety, dissatisfaction and unproductive career changes.
Instead, passion for a career seems to come after you put in the hard work of becoming excellent at something that adds value to other people’s lives, not before.
This is the book that resulted from his research, and where he includes more advice on how to go about building a career based on skills:
Cal Newport (2012). So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.
If you prefer to listen, here’s a video of him giving a talk about it to Google employees (the actual talk is only 25min):
by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR