The world has some career advice for you: Find a job you’re passionate about. But is it really that easy? In her book, The Trouble With Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality, sociologist Erin A. Cech shares new research on what she calls the “passion principle” – the idea that you should pursue passion in your career, before fair compensation or job security
Passion hasn’t always been a priority
Prioritizing passion is a relatively new concept when it comes to job searching.
- In the 1940s and 50s, career advice centered around stability
- During the 1970s, self-expression overtook stability as the main motivator
- Industries known for long-term, stable employment outsourced their labor abroad
- Now, workers don’t stay at one company for decades anymore
Pushing passion doesn’t guarantee better work
When we give workers more rest, more control over their schedule, more vacation time, they are actually more productive, resilient, and creative
- It’s actually not to an organization’s benefit to demand this culture of overwork all the time
You don’t have to nurture your passions through work
Diversify your meaning-making portfolio
- What are the things that excite you outside of paid employment? How can you invest time, energy, and attention in cultivating passion in that space?
- Passion wasn’t always a priority for workers
When we praise passion, we reward privilege
People from wealthier families are more likely to be employed in jobs that speak to their passions and are stable, compared with people from less wealthy backgrounds
- Low-income or first-generation college students are much less likely to have the financial safety nets or the springboards from their social networks to translate the things that they love into employment that both aligns with their passion and draws a decent salary
Employers can take advantage of workers who work for passion
People motivated by passion first are more likely to work harder than people who aren’t personally invested in their work.
- Sometimes, this lack of compensation is by design. Employers want to hire people who are passionate about their work not only because they think they’ll be hard workers but also because they expect that people with a passion will put in more work without demanding an increase in pay.
