Live your passion and you will never work a day in your life! 

If that sentence sounds familiar, it is quite natural. This idea of a search for passion has been omnipresent since the 1970s in a large number of books or articles, and has truly boomed at the end of the '90s, first in North America then in Europe, and the most developed countries where it got a certain echo. We regularly see it on our Timelines and Instagram profiles in the form of motivational quotes, mostly in English, such as "follow your passion", "live your dream", "find your passion, life purpose and take action",...

It is the very definition of social success as known in the past that is questioned.

The search for passion is truly rooted in our culture and seems to particularly inspire younger generations. Graduates from the most prestigious schools are leaving their executive jobs they do not identify to anymore, or find it meaningless, and are increasingly turning towards crafts, opening a restaurant, a wine bar or even creating their startup as Jean-Laurent Cassely explains in his book La révolte des premiers de la classe (The rebellion of the top pupils). It is the very definition of social success as known in the past that is questioned. The phenomenon of Professional Bifurcation affects the younger generations as is described by Chloé Schemoul, ESCP graduate, in her article “Et tu avais besoin de faire HEC pour faire ça ?” ("And you needed to go to HEC to do that ?") in which she gives many examples of brilliant Business School graduates who had a career change after barely 2 or 3 years in their professional life, with the common thread: lack of meaning in their career and a need for more "practical" jobs. This phenomenon remains quite difficult to measure because such occupations are out of the traditional classification of trades practiced after a master level training, but the media and some studies (ISM and APEC) show a real shift rather than a simple trend. Trainings intended for executives going through a career change are also multiplying.

The passion trap 

Why are there so many career changes? Why is there so much frustration in some testimonies? One of the explanations is certainly this perpetual search for passion, which has become a sort of Holy Grail, a goal to achieve professional fulfillment. Like any target, it can trigger a feeling of failure and/or frustration when it is not reached. If some people find their passion (at a young age or much later in life) and manage to make a living out of it (for the best among them), the vast majority of young graduates start their professional life with this goal in mind while performing jobs that may seem meaningless to them, which causes this professional bifurcation phenomenon mentioned above. The latest study conducted in 2014 by the Conference Board in the United States reveals that only 48.6% of Americans are satisfied with their job compared to 61% in 1967.

Wanting to match ones job to a pre-existing passion is a bad idea.

The search for passion can therefore have a detrimental effect because it creates a feeling of frustration, misunderstanding, and even of a self-examination and anxiety: "Why do others find their passion and not me?" Cal Newport, in his book So good they can't ignore you, tells his encounters with farmers, a screenwriter, guitar players or a windsurf manufacturer or actors, to understand where their success comes from. His study, carried out during several weeks, confirmed his first intuition: wanting to match a job to a pre-existing passion is a bad idea. The success of these people comes first of all from constant work, the repetition of tasks and tedious exercises, and especially the development of rare skills having a real value in the sector in which they operate. The combination of these factors is at the root of their success, it allowed them to develop a rare talent and brought them satisfaction in their job 

The search for passion is not wrong, and the people who have found theirs must be encouraged to persevere in their path and to succeed. However, Cal Newport’s theory is shedding a new light on this search that can become a source of frustration and explain the lack of sense felt by young talents, their desire for sometimes-radical changes. Just as success never comes before work, do not overlook the importance of developing a solid career capital with valuable skills, in order to become an expert in a field, a key figure, and someday be passionate.

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If you wish, you can contact Mathieu on this address: mathieu.cherubin@gmail.com