When I lived near my alma mater I went to annual meet-and-greets for prospective university students. They were held in a beautiful music center with a wide staircase that swept down a glass wall to the reception hall below.

There were fruit skewers and cheese cubes and passed hot hors d’oeuvres, and lots of high school students and parents and alumni like me making small talk.

(One time a parent steered her student toward me, stared at my midsection to read my Gender and Women’s Studies name tag, and moved right on. My kid doesn’t need to talk to someone who got that degree, I could see her thinking.)

I spoke with students and parents, talking about campus life and majors and academic advisors and the like. And I would hear comments like, “I just want [my student] to study/get a job that she’s passionate about.”

And I would sigh gustily (in my head of course), because the charge to “follow your passion” gets bandied around a lot and it’s Very Misleading and Oversimplified Career Advice.

9 Reasons Not to Follow Your Passion

1. You have more than one passion. So to “follow your passion” do you just pick one?
2. A job of your passion might negatively impact other things you care about. Say you love love love cooking. But if you found employment as a chef, the hours could make it hard to spend time with your family and friends.
3. Your passions might not even BE a job. Or rather, not a job you’d enjoy or be good at. Say you’re passionate about climate change. There are plenty of jobs you could take combatting climate change, but would you enjoy those jobs as much as you care abotu climate change?
4. It’s okay to love doing something and not make money from it.
5. In fact, it’s super healthy to love many things that aren’t tied to money or deliverables or other people, because it’s great to do something just for you.
6. If your passion becomes connected with your living, it might stop being enjoyable.
7. If passion is your career compass, what happens when your passions change?
8. Having a job you’re passionate about doesn’t mean you can avoid annoying, difficult, uncomfortable tasks (I used to think “following my passion” meant everything would be fun and meaningful 100% of the time).
9. How do you measure passion? How do you know what you’re passionate about, and if it could be a job, and if it could make a living? “Following your passion” makes it sound like you should have no uncertainty or doubt, which is unrealistic.

It is GREAT to enjoy your job and to do meaningful work every day. Sometimes that’s passion, and it’s amazing! But dispensing career advice to “follow your passion” – like asking a marketer for the ONE THING that makes her different, or asking a friend for the ONE THING they want to achieve in their career – reduces people.

You’re more than one passion. You’re more than the sum of your passions or your career or your unique value proposition. And your goals and interests evolve with you.

Image of yours truly by Sam Czeh.