Am I Screwed for Following My Passion?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03.360 | All right, let's do one more question here.

00:00:08.120 | I have one from Matt.

00:00:10.840 | Matt says, in college, I had a couple influential role models

00:00:14.400 | tell me to follow my passion.

00:00:18.280 | This led me to get my bachelor's in cultural anthropology.

00:00:21.200 | Now I'm in a PhD program.

00:00:23.480 | Only after I started my PhD did I read your book,

00:00:25.800 | So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:00:28.560 | And I became convinced of your philosophy

00:00:30.600 | of acquiring career capital rather than

00:00:32.760 | following a pre-existing passion to attain career fulfillment.

00:00:37.400 | Now I've committed to a path based on a philosophy

00:00:39.920 | that I no longer believe in.

00:00:40.960 | How would you adjust the advice that you

00:00:42.520 | give in So Good They Can't Ignore You

00:00:44.100 | for people who have already committed

00:00:45.640 | to a passion-based path and now see it as a sunk cost?

00:00:50.840 | Well, Matt, there's no adjustment you need to do,

00:00:52.880 | because here is the reality of my advice.

00:00:54.880 | I say, when it comes to figuring out what path you set down,

00:01:00.920 | you can lower the bar.

00:01:02.840 | There's lots of paths that you can transform

00:01:05.160 | into a life, a professional life, that's

00:01:07.760 | a real source of passion and fulfillment.

00:01:11.440 | So what really is going to matter

00:01:12.760 | is once you fix one path, for whatever reason

00:01:14.760 | you chose that path, is what you do

00:01:16.160 | once you chose it, which is focus

00:01:17.520 | on building rare and valuable skills,

00:01:19.240 | use the career capital that generates

00:01:20.800 | to take control of your career, move it

00:01:22.600 | towards things that resonate and away from things that don't.

00:01:25.440 | Have a clear lifestyle in mind that you use

00:01:28.400 | to help guide these decisions.

00:01:32.160 | So the key to that philosophy is,

00:01:34.120 | I don't care that much how you chose your current path.

00:01:36.960 | So the fact that you chose your current path because you

00:01:39.720 | were using passion philosophy, that's fine.

00:01:42.880 | If you thought, described this as a passion,

00:01:45.200 | that means it's something that was interesting to you,

00:01:47.480 | that probably had interesting opportunities associated

00:01:49.720 | with it, and that you had some sort of inclination for.

00:01:51.600 | So great.

00:01:52.100 | That's a perfectly good reason to choose a path.

00:01:55.560 | So the idea is not, let's be really clear about this,

00:01:57.840 | that if you follow your passion, that that will

00:02:00.960 | lead you to a bad career.

00:02:03.600 | That's not true.

00:02:05.080 | The issue I have is if your only strategy

00:02:09.400 | for getting to a good career is matching a job to a passion,

00:02:13.280 | and then sitting back and saying, my work here is done,

00:02:16.080 | I should love this now.

00:02:17.240 | I'm saying, no, no, no, your work is just beginning.

00:02:20.200 | So I don't care much about how you chose your career.

00:02:23.580 | You chose it because you thought it was your passion, great.

00:02:26.860 | Good way to do it.

00:02:28.300 | What matters is what you do next.

00:02:30.660 | And what you do next is you focus with deliberate practice

00:02:33.100 | on becoming so good you can't be ignored.

00:02:35.100 | Take the career capital that earns you to have leverage

00:02:37.500 | over your career.

00:02:38.100 | This is where you're going to need courage, not in choosing

00:02:40.120 | what to do, but choosing to change

00:02:41.660 | what you do to be different than what other people are doing.

00:02:44.200 | This is where you step back and say,

00:02:46.220 | I'm going to not take a professorship,

00:02:48.660 | or I'm going to be a professorship at this school

00:02:50.240 | and still write books, or I'm going to do my own thing,

00:02:52.960 | or whatever it is.

00:02:53.660 | But you're investing your career capital

00:02:55.860 | to create a career that pushes towards things that resonate

00:02:58.940 | and away from things that don't.

00:03:00.280 | And again, the way you hone those instincts of residence

00:03:03.400 | and anti-residence is lifestyle-centered career

00:03:05.520 | planning.

00:03:06.320 | Fix in your head a really clear image

00:03:08.520 | of what your life is like, where you live, what you do,

00:03:11.080 | who you're with, what your time is like, how you feel.

00:03:14.240 | Fix an image you can taste, that you

00:03:16.680 | can smell, that just touches something right in you.

00:03:20.200 | And let that be your guide to figuring out,

00:03:23.280 | I want to go more towards this in my career

00:03:25.500 | or more towards that.

00:03:26.480 | And the thing that allows you to make those choices

00:03:28.640 | is career capital.

00:03:29.720 | It is being good at things that are rare and valuable.

00:03:32.000 | So Matt, you're in a great position.

00:03:34.700 | You've already chosen a good path.

00:03:37.440 | It's a good match for you.

00:03:39.120 | Now let's focus on actually navigating that path

00:03:42.240 | as effectively as possible.

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00:03:48.440 | (upbeat music)

00:03:51.020 | (upbeat music)

Am I Screwed for Following My Passion?

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