The problem with the “follow your passion” chorus: We can’t all love the products we work with. Someone has to do the jobs and sell the things that don’t seem sexy but make the world go round.
It’s something we’ve seen in our Bootstrapped, Profitable, and Proud series. Braintree processes credit cards. You won’t meet too many people who claim to “love” credit card processing. Even Braintree’s Bryan Johnson admits, “I’m not particularly passionate about payments, but I am passionate about trying to build a good company.” Johnson gets satisfaction from making customers happy, creating a workplace that employees enjoy, and improving “an unscrupulous and broken industry.”
InsuranceAgents.com sells insurance. Again, it’s tough to find anyone with a “passion” for insurance. Seth Kravitz of InsuranceAgents.com says, “Insurance is not an exciting industry, but that doesn’t mean the work can’t be meaningful. We had to find ways to make the work more fun, make the environment more family like, and show people the positive impact of what they do.”
Both these companies have succeeded by dropping the “follow your passion” idea and focusing instead on process.
The problems with passion
Part of this is recognizing that, despite its wonders, there are also problems with passion. For one thing, most people’s passions aren’t that unique. That’s why it’s so hard to succeed in the restaurant business or as a professional dancer; You’re competing against everyone else with that same dream.
Also, turning a passion into a business is a good way to kill the passion. You might love music. But become a music critic and you’re going to have to listen to hundreds of albums every month. Including a lot of stuff you hate. By the end of it, you might just discover that you can’t stand the thing you used to love. Kravitz says, “I love reading books, but I would hate to be a book reviewer. What you love to do in your personal life, many times doesn’t translate well into a business.”
How not what
So does this mean we’re all doomed to a life of ditch digging drudgery? No. It’s about redefining passion. Instead of working with a thing you love, think about how to work in a way you love.
It’s something Amy Hoy talks about in Don’t Follow Your Passion. Here’s her take on The Cute Little Café Syndrome:
If you want to run a successful café — and enjoy it — you need to love a lot more than coffee. You’ve also gotta get some kind of pleasure, even grim satisfaction, out of the daily grind. (Ha ha.) Which means, of course, interacting with customers, hiring & managing wait staff, handling the day-to-day necessities like ordering supplies, cleaning, paying rent, marketing your butt off, and dealing with customers who want to squat on your valuable tables all day for just $2 of brew.
Take your cues from this “daily grind” example and how companies like Braintree and InsuranceAgents.com succeed. Find meaning in what you’re doing. Work to improve your industry. Get joy from making a customer’s day. Surround yourself with the kinds of people and environment that keep you engaged. Figure out the details and day-to-day process that keep you stimulated. Focus on how you execute and making continual improvements. Get off on how you sell, not what you sell.
It might not be the romantic ideal of “passion.” But if it provides you with sustainable joy and profit that you can count on, you’ll still be way ahead of the curve (and have extra resources and free time to spend doing whatever you want).
Anonymous Coward
on 10 May 11Seriously thank you for writing this, it’s extremely relevant to a career decision I’ve just made and is very reassuring. Thanks!
Justin Jackson
on 10 May 11I also like Hugh MacLeod’s sex and cash theory:
Nico Schweinzer
on 10 May 11I am passionate about trying to build a good company.
Rafal Dyrda
on 10 May 11I am passionate in both. Passionate about building a great company, and passionate in the product that I am building. And yes, the happy satisfied customers do help a lot!
But I also think, to build a great company these days you also have to be passionate about customer service.
Brad Hurley
on 10 May 11Really good advice. I’ve made the mistake of killing a passion by turning it into a job, but managed to create different passions in the process by making lemonade from my lemons.
JZ
on 10 May 11This post reminds me of a TED talk that Mike Rowe, host of “Dirty Jobs”, did awhile back. Not many people who shovel pig slop all day or clean out oil tanks (from the inside) are passionate about the job, but Mike found them to be unexpectedly happy.
You can watch the full video here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html
Martin Edic
on 10 May 11I agree about thinking about the way you’ll be working. My business partner and I started by defining the way we wanted our next venture to work before we knew what it was. It shouldn’t require employees, offices or a lot of overhead. Travel is increasingly important to me so the ability to work from anywhere was also important. With these criteria in place we evaluated several ideas and only one supported these ‘workstyle’ choices. And that idea has turned out to be the most enjoyable business experience I’ve had (we’re not making money yet but…). It was also the simplest of our choices. Recently Mike, my co-founder, decided to move across the country for a job his wife was offered. Without these choices and criteria this could have been a dealbreaker. Instead it is really not an issue at all.
Brandon
on 10 May 11Thank you for this great advice. I have so frequently started building applications and given up because my passion waned. I have begun to realize that my passion must be more than code, but seeing the end result, making a difference in the lives of my customers. I really appreciate this article for the brutal, yet all important truth.
AkitaOnRails
on 10 May 11Thank you for this article! Many developers follow SvN and because of lack of experience they follow what you say to the letter. That’s very bad because one get a feel for something too idealized, too utopic. I do understand that the whole point is the pursue. There is indeed no point in doing something unless you pursue the very best. But this is a path not a starting point and many developers think they they “deserve” to have a utopic starting poing from the very beginning and refuse to do good work unless they have the “perfect” environment. And what is difficult for me is trying to persuade people that we shouldn’t wait for the ideal to just magically show up, and that we have to pursue and build it. And this path is usually not pretty, we will eventually have to do some “dirty work” to clean up the way. You would help a lot writing more about this worthiness of the pursue efforts and how things don’t start “perfect” and how we make efforts to make a business work.
James C
on 10 May 11Where there’s muck there’s brass.
Joe
on 10 May 11♫ If you can’t be with the one you love, honey. Love the one you’re with. You gotta love, love, love the one you’re with. ♫
Dan
on 10 May 11A wise man I know said something to this effect about passion: You’re not born with passion. Passion comes from working really hard at something, getting really good at it and seeing the beauty in it. I think this wisdom also applies to a person you “love.” Love is something that sort of just happens and you know it when you feel it, but passion…you need beauty to fuel passion and as with all things truly beautiful, its not skin deep.
Michael Kagan
on 10 May 11Cal Newport writes a blog (study hacks) and has spent a good deal of time thinking and writing on this subject. You can find the most relevant posts on this topic @ his blog under the heading: Rethinking Passion.
Here is a link to one of the first posts I read on his blog. It grabbed me and I have been a committed reader of his blogs and books since.
http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/10/16/the-passion-trap-how-the-search-for-your-lifes-work-is-making-your-working-life-miserable/
In his book, How To Be A High School Superstar, he invites us to toss out the concept of passion and replace it with something he calls “interestingness”. He spends some time fleshing this concept out so I will not try to diminish the power of his point by trying to summarize it here. One thing I will share is a comment that he makes that is particularly relevant given Matt’s post (and the various comments). It is not the activity that matters, he asserts, but rather the effect that activity has on your personality.
rafi
on 10 May 11why no link to the o’reilly post that it seems you’re responding to?
David
on 10 May 11Nice post, Matt. To be honest, I can’t stand hearing everyone talk about their passion. It’s goofy. The people who have so much “passion” are also the ones who seem to change their life around all the time (new jobs, new hobbies, new spouses). They are certainly passionate right up to the point where they flame out with a trail of disaster behind them.
Just focus on doing things well.
Brian M.
on 10 May 11Excellent article! I work in healthcare, and it can be boring and dull. Instead of seeking my passion, instead, I focused on redefining what I was passionate about in my job.
I changed the way I thought about my day-to-day, so I focused on improving customer service, then improving the way we deployed and tested software, even going so far as to helping others learn new things at work (I ended up creating a QA position out of my corporate trainer!).
It really does make things more meaningful when you focus on the work. Work is going to be prevalent until I retire or die, so while I’m still working for my hospital, I made my own mission statement on how I am able to fulfill the mission statement of the hospital. This alone has put me on the radar of several big wigs…so yeah, there are benefits. :)
Derek
on 10 May 11Seth Godin’s take on the question of passion is similar to some of the others you mentioned:
“Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.” Linchpin, p.201
Jade
on 10 May 11Can’t agree more.
It’s difficult to explain this to people who have always talked about their passion but never followed through and realized passion burns out quickly, it’s the process that should be enjoyed.
Anonymous Coward
on 10 May 11jfewiof j
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Mark
on 10 May 11Agree 100% with this post. Our small company is passionate about sports & health, but the more exciting part is building a brand from scratch!
luis
on 10 May 11I don’t agree. Or at least, I don’t agree with the way you put it. It sounds comformist and grim. Dont like it.
David C
on 11 May 11Being forced to do something as your livelihood is not nearly as much fun as just doing it when and where you want to.
But yes, finding a larger purpose or goal is a great way to make something unglamorous seem worthwhile. Actually, I sometimes even like cleaning my desk, just to see the end result. I don’t like the cleaning part, but order out of chaos I can get excited about.
Mathew Patterson
on 11 May 11Great post Matt.
The overuse of “passion” as a marketing term is skewered in this David Mitchell video
Nick Sutterer
on 11 May 11Usually, I try to challenge myself to feel comfortable with an awkward work situation – when I have to do things I don’t wanna do I turn this into a competition which urges me to get cool with what I’m doing. It’s like “rephrasing” the tasks into something I love, so this post reflects exactly the way I think. Thanks, Matt!
Benjy
on 11 May 11Interesting twist on the usual “do what you love” mantra… this is something I’ve struggled with in the past couple years, as I moved from a couple jobs where I was interested in what the companies sold (computers/electronics, modern lighting) to one in which I am not (retirement communities, RV campgounds). In addition to a more stable company during the worst of the economic downturn, I was also lured by the prospect of explore some of those areas of my craft I had hoped to. Sadly, however, that hasn’t come to fruition as we continue to maintain/update out of date sites rather than build new ones or explore new platforms like mobile.
Tathagata
on 11 May 11Hmm… I don’t want to be mean, rather I felt that you needed some extreme criticism to continue your success into the future. I think this (meaning this post and all that’s related to it) is one of the 37 signals that’s indicating that 37signals is going downhill, and aiming for short-term success. I can list a few more if you want me to.
I guess what you are trying to say is that, we (meaning everyone down the ladder from the CEO) should all be like sissies. I don’t agree one bit, although I have followed this dictum myself for several years, I can attest to the fact that it not a charming way of life. It is simply a life not worth living.
When work is just work, it always sub-standard (no matter how much artificial enthusiasm you imbibe into it). No wonder, we are surrounded my mostly sub-standard things. If Edgar Alan Poe was not passionate about what what he wrote, well, you know what you would be reading right now (though that would have ensured that his grand-chindren would be filthy rich).
I think you guys are getting greedy.
A lot of people here have mentioned your great customer support, but why have you been hiring more and more customer support people? Is that going to ensure better customer support? If your developers can’t do customer support well, you have already shot yourself in the foot by hiring such people. Don’t you remember the days when you not only did development, but also passionately did customer support? Wasn’t that what made you into what you are now today.
Brad
on 11 May 11I can’t help but feel this is a rationalization. You shouldn’t necessarily make your passion your job but you shouldn’t just take hold of any industry because your enjoy the process of building something. Your work should at least be somewhat in line with what you enjoy in the rest of your life. If you’re a programmer who passion is art you’ll be hard pressed not to feel a little bit empty spending 8+ hours of your day a site designed to help people find insurance.
deb lavoy
on 12 May 11I have a slightly different take on this. I think passion comes from a feeling of knowing what you do is making a difference, has an impact, a purpose. Typing all day is not interesting, not something I’m passionate about. Insurance may not be sexy – but it makes families more secure, children healthier, etc – manual labor may not be a labor of passion, but connecting the country with a railroad is… In other words, making sure that what we do is for a meaningful purpose makes the work more of a pleasure than a grind.
carlos
on 12 May 11Isaac Asimov summarized this best, by describing how after Phd’ing in chemistry he went on to write more books on astronomy. Why? He knew “too much about chemistry to get excited about it..”
Passion is in the learning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CwUuU6C4pk
Craig Pickering
on 12 May 11I agree with Brian M. I just try to do things better when I can.
Lucas Arruda
on 12 May 11I think if want to have passion for something, when doing a service, you need to have passion for serving. That’s the kind of passion that moves you without being too passionately utopic.
Tomas Sancio
on 14 May 11A really fun job can be ruined by a terrible boss and a glass ceiling.
Nishanth
on 15 May 11Killer stuff, loved it thoroughly. This is what we should do ideally and looking towards following this awesome stuff. Thanks!
Paul Montwill
on 16 May 11I started to run an online shop with Moleskine notebooks and started to hate them :) Seriously! I stopped. I am a big fan of stationery again.
I’m passionate about marketing and building e-commerce platforms. I sell boring products like SSL Certificates to clients in an easy way. Security made simple. I am excited about ROIs, conversions, investments in marketing etc. and the outcomes it brings. I’m excited about measuring success rate and bringing the best customer service. I don’t love products, but I am passionate about making clients happy.
My pure passion and interests goes on my blog where I write about creativity and marketing. No timeframes, deadlines and goals. I just write when I want. Period.
Brinn M
on 16 May 11Great post – the comments are really interesting and possibly highlight something about your process vs passion idea:
I think it really depends on the type of person you are and what drives you. For instance I know many people that have a real passion for something, whether it be web design, or film production, or music. These people, because they are so passionate about these things, tend to want to do that thing without really thinking about where the payday is. Like you highlighted, there’s often lots of others interested in these industries so it’s already an uphill struggle to make it pay well. In other word these people get blinded by the passion of the task itself i.e. designing the website or producing the film for a client.
The other types of people are more likely to be driven by something else such as money, or fame, or success rather than the pastime itself. In it’s purest form you might see this as a bad thing but it actually lets you assess an opportunity more objectively than if you are blinded by the idea of actually doing something that ‘you like’. You mentioned the idea of card processing and I think that’s a good example – not particularly exciting but it’s an opportunity and one that might be missed by someone vocation driven rather than results driven.
- Brinn
This discussion is closed.