Why Follow Your Passion Is Terrible Advice

In the industrial economy, the most used piece of career advice is arguably “follow you passion.” There’s even a cycle of use, peaking right around graduation season when a new list of politicians, business people, and celebrities don outfits from Harry Potter and give the pomp and ceremonial commencement address.

But follow your passion is terrible advice.

It’s not that the graduation platitude isn’t well-intentioned. It’s not that being able to work in a vocation you love isn’t an ideal situation. It’s that “follow you passion” gets it backwards.

Passion comes later.

Passion follows.

One of the things we know from self-determination theory and other theories of human motivation is that one of the biggest motivators is mastery. One of the biggest things that makes you feel engaged, makes you enjoy doing work, is the feeling of making progress and getting more proficient at the task that you’re doing. Mastery is one of the big three elements of self-determination theory and in many ways predicts that as people grow in their skills and can see their own growth, they’re more like to stay motivated and eventually passionate about the job.

As people find something that they’re good at, and they begin to refine and get better and improve, they…