Should You Follow Your Passion as a Career?

The true answer to whether you should follow your passion as a career is: It depends what you are trying to accomplish.

If what you are trying to accomplish is more women in STEM fields, then the answer is apparently ‘no‘.

Apparently, not that many women have a passion for STEM fields. Instead, they are more likely to have a passion for fields that don’t pay that well (such as teaching, perhaps). They don’t have a passion for business or making a fortune; they have a passion for the arts.

Having a passion for the arts or other fields that don’t pay as well as STEM fields means that women who follow their apparent passions don’t make as much money as men who follow their apparent passions for engineering and finance do. And those kinds of career choices keep women poorer than men. By exacerbating a significant wage gap. At least that’s what a research study implied.

In real life, of course, women have all kinds of different passions. Some women really do want to make a fortune, become an entrepreneur, and appear on Shark Tank. Other women want to work for non-profits on social issues that are important to them. Some just want to make the kind of money that will allow them to keep their family at the style of living they want. Some women don’t want to work at all. Some women want to be assistants to someone else. Some women want to run for President.

What the study is pointing out is the same thing that parents who discourage their children from following their passions almost always point out – something else is more practical.

Right now, STEM fields are seen as more practical, whether you’re passionate about them or not. That won’t last forever. But it may last for awhile by and large.

So the answer to the question ‘should you follow your passion as a career’ still depends on what you want to accomplish. If what you want to accomplish is something practical, then you spend your career choice time analyzing what is the most practical option given your circumstances.

Maybe what you want to accomplish is simply to earn enough money to buy necessities. Then you should spend your career choice time thinking about how much necessities cost, and how much money you need to make to cover them. And then look at career choices that meet your needs. You might be passionate about them or you might not.

If you’re like me and you’re passionate about learning new stuff, new knowledge, new skills – then you should spend your career choice time looking at careers that will allow you to continually learn – while meeting your other basic needs.

On the other hand, if your passion is health and longevity, perhaps you can pursue that passion without making a career of it. Or perhaps your passion is acting – and you’re willing to spend your life in mortal terror – of never working, of never working again, of working again and doing a horribly embarrassing job of it, of being a fraud and so on. Then by all means follow your passion. Or perhaps your passion is acting but you are not willing to live a life of terror. Then don’t make your passion a career choice!

In a sense, choosing a career is easy at any stage of life – whether you’re just starting out, just got laid off, your industry is dying, or you’re back in the labor force after a long layoff. You simply decide what your most important priority is and pursue that. Not all your priorities. Not perfection. Just something that fulfills the requirements of your most important priority.

You really don’t need to listen to a lot of career advice to do this. You do need to research what various jobs are actually like. But you don’t have to make your career choice the most important thing in your life. Your job does not have to provide the high points of your day. It can – but it doesn’t have to.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE PASSION FOR YOUR CAREER

You can make choosing a career or a job difficult if you’d like by trying to maximize – trying to make the best possible choice out of all possible choices. But you really don’t have to. There are many things in life that are difficult by their nature (ahem, parenting!). Don’t make choosing a career or job one of them. Whatever you choose may very well be obsolete in a few years anyway!

And after all, there are plenty of other things to get pretty fed up about.