What if you suck at your passion?
Jason McKenzie
Solutions Engineer | Customer Advocate | API, SaaS, DevOps, QA Focus | VMware, IBM AIX & Parasoft Certified | Synth & Audio Nerd ?? | Philosophy Grad
People love to say "follow your bliss", or "follow your passion" when giving career advice.
But passion is only one part of the equation. If you suck at it, won't stick with it, or it doesn't help anyone else in any way, then you'll never have a fulfilling career with it. My career formula is:
Passion x Aptitude x Commitment x Profitability
So it's a question of not just "What are you passionate about?", but also,
What do you have a natural demonstrated aptitude for?
What are you committed to manifesting or improving?
How financially profitable is it?
And because these are all equally weighted multipliers, you can evaluate different opportunities against each other wholistically, no matter how different they are. Heck, even if you suck at something, if you are 1000% passionate about and committed to it, eventually you'll get good enough that it will be profitable.
Give it a shot and let me know what you think!
District Manager - Pure Storage - Eastern PA & Delaware
10 年Jason - Congrats on your new job! Very interesting post. Here are a few thoughts; I personally do not believe that your job/career have to contain passion, aptitude, commitment and profitability. I believe that there is a select group that have achieved this level - probably several entrepreneurs. Now do not get me wrong, I enjoy my job and I think that I have become pretty good at it. However, sometimes your day job simply enables you to go pursue your passion. Sales allows me flexibility and the ability to have greater control over my income. If I have more time and money then I might have more time to spend on my passions = Happiness. Also, I think it would be rare for someone to suck at their passion. People naturally enjoy things that they are good at or have better than average skills in. I'm sure that there are some exceptions but I would be curious what they are.