Chase Your Purpose, Not Your Passion

Focus less on what makes you feel passionate, and more on what you truly care about, your purpose. Harvard Business School Professor Jon Jachimowicz

Chase Your Purpose, Not Your Passion, according to new Harvard Business Review research. The research shows that chasing your passion makes you less satisfied at work because work can be often difficult, draining, and even boring.

Research on passion suggests three key things:

  1. Passion is not something one finds, but rather, it is something to be developed;
  2. It is challenging to pursue your passion, especially as it wanes over time; and
  3. Passion can also lead us astray, and it is therefore important to recognize its limits.

Trade “purpose” for “passion”. 

We try to pursue our passion when we chase after what gives us the most joy or provides the most pleasure. In one study, researchers found that commencement speakers gave students advice on how to pursue their passion. Much of the advice centered on “focusing on what you love” as the way to follow your passion. But some speakers described the pursuit of passion as “focusing on what you care about.”

The distinction is subtle but meaningful: focusing on what you love associates passion with what you enjoy and what makes you happy, whereas focusing on what you care about aligns passion with your purpose, your values and the impact you want to have on your community and the world.

Instead of asking what makes you happy and “following your passion,” instead ask yourself what you care deeply about…what’s your purpose in life, according to Harvard Business School professor Jon Jachimowicz.

By focusing on purpose, you align your work with your deepest values, and also relieve yourself of the expectation that the long slog of a career will be all (or even mostly) happiness and sunshine. 

Purpose gives you the resilience to succeed.  

Jachimowicz says research backs up his claim that chasing purpose will make you more successful than chasing passion.  “In a set of studies, he found that passion alone is only weakly related to employees’ performance at their work. But the combination of passion and perseverance–i.e., the extent to which employees stick with their goals even in the face of adversity–was related to higher performance,” he writes. 

A well-rooted sense of purpose gives you way more resilience than passion alone ever could. And that resilience is what is likely to make you successful over the long haul.

Try to follow your passion and ask yourself this simple question: What do I truly care about?

Purpose is a far better career compass than passion and joy.  

“You don’t “find your calling,” you fight for it…” Dave Isay, StoryCorps founder

“You don’t just “find” your calling — you have to fight for it”, explains Dave Isay, StoryCorps founder. “People who’ve found their calling have a fire about them. They’re the people who are dying to get up in the morning and go do their work.”


References:

  1. https://hbr.org/2019/10/3-reasons-its-so-hard-to-follow-your-passion
  2. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/new-harvard-research-to-be-successful-chase-your-purpose-not-your-passion.html?cid=sf01001
  3. https://ideas.ted.com/7-lessons-about-finding-the-work-you-were-meant-to-do/