
I Quit My Passion And Took A Boring Job - mshafrir
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/03/18/reader-story-i-quit-my-passion-and-took-a-boring-job/
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krschultz
We often seem to forget that passion is not a singular thing.

My #1 passion in a lot of ways is politics/history/debate. I'm probably better
at standing in front of a room of 800 people and giving a speech or fielding a
hostile question than anything else I do. If I followed my passion/strengths I
probably would have gone to say Georgetown, gotten an economics degree, and
found my way into the DC path of being an aide and then into being a candidate
myself.

But much like the author of the article, I can't emotionally handle it. I get
so worked up that my blood boils, I get enraged, and I know I would die of a
heart attack at age 30.

So instead I went to my second passion - engineering. When I told most of my
friends and teachers in high school that I was going into engineering they
were all shocked.

Yet when I tell my engineer co-workers that my original passion was politics,
they are all shocked. I do not talk about politics with co-workers (or on HN
for that matter), I keep the two worlds entirely separate.

Maybe I'll go back to it someday, we all know the Congress could use more
engineers. But sometimes we throw around 'passion' when we really should say
'like to do'. I like to be an engineer, the problems are interesting, and it's
definitely fun to build things as a hobby. But I'm not passionate about
differential equations or FEA modeling. Those things don't get me fired up
with adrenaline or keep me away at night like my real 'passion'.

~~~
plinkplonk
since you are good at politics, here is a question for you - something I
always wondered about.

How do you _become good_ at politics - not the making speeches to a crowd bit,
the backroom wheeling and dealing and backstabbing bit? Is it a totally inborn
skill or something you can learn ?

(fwiw, I've personally found that once I put on my 'cynicism' hat and evaluate
a situation totally in terms of completely disbelieving what everyone _says_
and thinking solely in terms of "everyone is out to get something for
himself/herself irrespective of what they say, let me try to figure out what",
I get a surprisingly accurate and actionable reading of the situation. Helps a
lot in understanding and utilizing corporate politics, for example, a skill
most hackers don't have.

However, thinking this way, and "seeing" things this way makes me feel slimy
and in need of a bath even when it is effective in mapping the terrain, and so
requires a deliberate act of will to engage in. I suspect politicians have to
work this way all the time, constantly evaluating, indulging and trading with
some nasty people).

~~~
danbmil99
I believe that the most successful politicians, as well as those who are
successful at the petty politics of the office or in social settings, are able
to bifurcate their minds, and operate along two entirely independent tracks.
Track one is filled with sincere ideals, and assumes that other people are
telling the truth most of the time, and have good intentions. Politicians use
that track to talk to people about their problems, "feel their pain" and so
on. This track allows them to gain support and become popular enough to win
elections (or gain popularity in whatever circumstance).

Track two is strictly Machiavellian game theory to the max. Everyone is a two-
faced, scheming bastard (including the politician thinking this way). Ends
always justify means. Most situations are zero-sum games, with a winner and a
loser. If you have more knowledge than the other guy, you will be the winner,
and they are the loser. This is how the world works, and all blatherings to
the contrary are just the attempts of other cynical bastards to try to make
you the sucker. This is the track they use when they want to get something
done (other than gain popularity).

Political types can switch between these two tracks seamlessly, in an instant.
They can almost think along them both simultaneously. They feel no hypocrisy
thinking both ways -- to them it's apples and oranges. You use the right tool
for the job at hand -- what's the problem with that? It's purely rational.

Unfortunately for most of us (or fortunately, you decide), this two-track
thinking is unnatural at best, or just flat out impossible to achieve. But to
those few who seem to have the gift, it's just second nature.

~~~
swombat
Do you have any evidence to back up such a vicious attack on politicians,
other than your personal feelings? I'm not saying politicians are saints, but
your depiction of them makes them out as devils. The truth is certainly
between those two extremes - like for everyone else.

~~~
danbmil99
I don't consider this a vicious attack, nor does it make them devils. My
evidence is a large amount of anecdotal observation, close up and personal, of
various people I've met, and correlating their levels of success in their
chosen professions with my perception of how their minds work. I then apply
some pattern matching to relate what I've seen with my own two eyes to the
patterns of speech and behavior I see in public figures. I can't prove my
hypothesis but I find that it is a very good working theory, ie it has strong
predictive value.

I think everyone is like this to some extent -- we all have some level of
double-think going on in our lives. But for some of us, that fact is deeply
troubling, and we expend a lot of effort to stamp out whatever we see as
hypocrisy in our own thinking and actions. My premise is simply that that urge
is pretty much mutually exclusive with regard to certain levels of achievement
in various walks of life, including (at a minimum) politics and business. Art
and entertainment are a bit trickier, because to some degree they demand a
level of sincerity to be successful -- though there are plenty of obvious
cases of hypocrisy there as well.

[edit: two examples of politicians who do not work this way are Ralph Nader
and Ron Paul. These are clearly people who walk and talk their ideals without
regard to more pragmatic political calculations. Compare their level of
success with, say, Mitt Romney, who in my opinion is willing to send any
neural impulses to his body that he thinks increase his chances of being
President some day. I just don't believe in our political environment, there
is any possible way to get to the top if you are a pure idealist.]

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sophacles
Following your passion _does not_ mean: "take a job doing it". It _may_ mean
that, but it could also mean: "take a job that gets in the minimal amount of
way of you doing your your passion". It could mean "get a part time job doing
your passion, and a part time job doing something else". It could mean "Don't
take that consuming job that takes a bunch of energy and time just because it
brings in the good money" (unless it means, do it for a short time and retire
to persue your passion full time...). It could mean 100 different things. The
goal is to maximize the amount of time and energy you spend on the things you
care about and which energize you, and which make your life full.

And a note on passion itself: As a human, expect the things you are passionate
about to change with time. When I was a kid I was passionate about history and
archaeology, then I discovered computers. Now I'm on and off passionate about
programming, gardening, art and a million other things. Largely the computer
thing is constant, but it waxes and wanes. No big deal. I am not a robot, I am
not programmed to like one thing consistently forever, if this changes, I can
go with it, or descend a spiral to unhappiness.

It sounds like the author's passions changed. Sounds like he changed with
them. Good on him, but it shouldn't be seen as a condemnation of the idea of
following passion.

~~~
EricDeb
I completely agree. I would go so far as to say that for many engineers,
programming-at least the type they do for work-is not their first passion, but
is an activity they enjoy to some degree and it pays well. Hopefully this will
allow them increased time to do what they really enjoy.

~~~
re_todd
Yeah, people should find a balance. Instead of looking at the one thing we are
passionate about, maybe we should look at 5-10 things that we would enjoy,
then go from there. I was most passionate about literature, and started off
taking several literature courses in college. Then I read some career advice
that said focus on what you'd like to do for the next 40 years, not just 4
years of college. I realized I would not be happy with the job opportunities
as a Literature major, so I switched to Computer Science, my 3rd or 4th
favorite subject. I like programming and think I made the best career choice
for me.

------
arupchak
This reminds me of one of my favorite TED talks by Mike Rowe
([http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.htm...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_rowe_celebrates_dirty_jobs.html))
where he talks about 'following your passion' and work in general.

Like most things, following your passion is about priorities. For a lot of
people, treating their passion as the most important thing in the world is not
sustainable for them. This idea that all of us need to tell ourselves what
makes us happy and then do it is also the wrong way to go about figuring out
what makes you happy. I cannot even count how many mistakes I have made and
then accidentally discovered what made me happy. There is no way I could have
known what it was ahead of time.

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jgmmo
Expected 'passion' to be startups or internet marketing, but no it was to
teach math. Nice little surprise.

Interesting post, sad to hear that the educational system grinds down the few
folks who want to actually make a difference to the point where they go join
big box retail.

Glad to hear he is happy with his new job.

~~~
dkasper
Just to be clear he worked in retail to pay his way through college a second
time to get a masters in accounting which is his new job. So to say he was
driven out of teaching into retail isn't quite true.

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dkrich
I don't really get what his passion was. He states that he followed his
passion and became a teacher, but having never worked as a teacher, there must
have been some aspects of teaching that he thought would be fulfilling. Most
of the time when people choose career paths it is for reasons that have
nothing to do with passion. In fact, for most people it seems that career
choice is just a mixture of luck and somewhat random choices. What exactly
makes somebody start down the path of being a lawyer? Maybe their father was a
lawyer or they saw a movie about a lawyer that influenced them. Conversely,
somebody might become a librarian because a job opens in their hometown and
they just drift into it without much planning due to sheer convenience (I know
a lot of people like that). I think that career progression is largely luck-
based as well, because you cannot possibly know what the reality of day-to-day
life in a career looks like without living it.

Having gone through an MBA program, I have seen this first hand. People's
entire career paths are condensed down to 18 months and a set of a few
companies that just happen to recruit where you go to school. One student may
come in convinced that he wants to be an entrepreneur, get pulled into the
consulting crowd and have a complete shift in goals, just to get dinged by the
top consulting firms and end up settling into the management track at Sears.
That's the trouble with following your passion- it is pretty tough to define
just what that is, and the fact that there are some jobs that involve it to an
extent is probably not the best way to follow it.

As an aside: one other thing I noticed which was quite prevalent in the
bschool crowd was this dream to do your own thing and run your own business. I
would hear people say "my goal is to start a company" or "I want to join a
startup." The odd thing is that none of these people actually took direct
steps toward trying to start a business. They felt pressure from their peers
getting lucrative offers from consulting firms and such and said things like
"I'm going to work for a few years and get some experience under my belt and
then I'm going to start a business or join a startup." It seems what made
these people happy was convincing themselves that they were planning a future
that would best set them up to create this business and become rich at some
point in the future. What made them get out of bed early and work hard was
satisfying some false prerequisite that they dangled in front of their own
face. When that was accomplished, they created another, and another, and
another. It seems that actually is where their happiness came from- making
themselves believe that they were progressing towards their goal.

~~~
pm90
This is a _very_ good observation....I had never thought of it this way, but I
realized this is _exactly_ what I tend to do; it has been a real eye-opener
reading this.

~~~
robyates
Agreed, insightful comment. Many people seem to fall into their current career
path.

I've also been following Cal Newport's blog lately and talks lot about the
"follow your passion" advice. For him, that really means one has "to
_construct_ — not discover — a fantastic career".
[http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/06/17/on-minecraft-and-
the-l...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/06/17/on-minecraft-and-the-launch-
of-project-remarkable/) [http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/09/10/the-danger-of-
the-drea...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/09/10/the-danger-of-the-dream-
job-delusion/)

------
tnash
The moral of this story seems to be that if you're too passionate about your
passion, and become too emotionally invested, it can destroy you.

For this guy, the solution was to quit his passion and do something different.
That may not be the best solution for all. By all means, try to do your
passion. Sometimes it won't work out, but please don't let this discourage
you!

~~~
ScottBurson
I think the moral is more like: teaching in the public schools will burn
anyone out who actually cares about teaching.

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ricardobeat
> I got into the position where I had to report certain problems, like
> suspected drug use, gang activity, child abuse, and so on [...] the cynism
> began to grow on me

The reason for him leaving his dream job was completely localized. There are
plenty of ways to be involved in teaching besides being in front of a school
class. I see this more as moving away from a bad situation, an unhappy
collusion of events that got in the way of his chosen path, not a matter of
_passion vs day job_.

~~~
boxein
Yeah, the author seemed to argue "because the situation I was in while doing a
job I was passionate about was unlivable, therefore pursuing any job you are
passionate about will make you less happy than working some regular 9-to-5."
Logical fallacy.

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flocial
I think passion is something you do regardless of financial rewards. How many
pop artists succeeded with the sole intent of making money? Even those
superficial rappers touting material gains probably enjoy the craft (at least
the ones with staying power). I think the intersection of passion and success
(defined materially) is when you consistently get better at your passion to
the point where you can offer value above and beyond others who share your
passion.

A case in point is exercise. I see lots of people in the gym who are committed
and even fanatic about achieving their fitness goals. However, the lot of them
wouldn't be able to cover living costs if they tried to do it as a job. Still,
it doesn't stop them from coming to the gym and spending a significant part of
their income on their passion.

Just because you don't make money directly from your passion doesn't mean much
to me either because it can drive success in other parts of your life.

I also think people confuse passion with strong appreciation. For example, you
can love rock music and claim to be passionate about it. However, you might
not be passionate enough to push yourself to practice the craft of music only
to listen and critique it.

The confusing thing about this article is that he does manage to transition
his career into something vaguely related and not something completely
different. Maybe it's the teaching aspect that's really important to him but
it still seems like a reasonable career path in line with his core passion.

------
toadi
I have started a company and sold it. Wasn't enough to retire yet and now I
have a 9-5 consultancy job that pays a lot of money. But I don't have any
stress any more and family time.

So both sides of the coin and depending where you are in life there is no
right or no wrong. So judge only for yourself what's right for you. And keep
your opinions/judgements about other peoples career paths to yourself.

------
forgottenpaswrd
It is not doing what you love, but loving what you do.

Obviously you must make your job compatible with your personality first so you
can get to love it.

If you are introverted and you choose a job in witch you are never alone you
won't stand it, no matter how much you try(as you try harder you will hate it
more and more).

If you are extroverted and you are required to work focused on single problems
long hours alone...

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outside1234
I'm at a startup and am having exactly the same thoughts. I'm passionate about
starting a company but MY company, not the one I'm working at. I've felt
recently that taking a bigco job (with more pay and less hours) and
bootstrapping my own company might be the better path. Please talk me down!

~~~
anthonycerra
Is the experience you're getting at the startup arming you with knowledge that
you wouldn't get at bigco and that you can use when you start your own
business?

If you're just a developer stuck in a corner without any real exposure to
business decisions then, other than the stigma associated with it, why not
work for bigco?

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joedev
" It’s just something I do for money, nothing more or less." Amen to that. To
be able to close the door behind you and not think or worry about work at all
is a pleasure in itself. To be completely, utterly, un-encumbered by work for
most of the day and all of the weekend is a joy.

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AznHisoka
I think the takeaway is to examine the effect a job can have on you. It can go
both ways.. if you do something you're incredibly passionate about but it
physically/mentally wears you out, that can just be as bad as taking a job you
have no interest in that makes you question life.

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kposehn
> get out there and grab what affords you the most opportunities to be the
> best overall person you can be

This is the key point of the entire post. Most people assume that "doing what
you love" will provide these opportunities. However, this is not always the
case.

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elliott34
I got a bachelors in Physics, and I am not qualified for very much. Does
anyone know if I can go back to school to become an accountant without an
undergrad degree in accounting? I would adore one of these lovely boring jobs.

~~~
tluyben2
'not qualified for very much'? My father studied physics and never worked 1
day in that field; he became developer and then director. I'm not sure how it
is there, but here (in EU) they look at 'you have a beta uni degree, you are
qualified'.

------
jwingy
Reminds me of a quote I heard somewhere from someone...(I apologize for
butchering this but my memory is a bit hazy):

"Never make music because you have to, otherwise it will be the end of you..."

Corrections welcomed!

