The Puzzle of Combining Careers and Passion
There are two options for chasing your passion early in your career
The summer after my first year of college, I worked for an inflatable company and at a BBQ restaurant as a busser. Summer was an important time for me. I needed money to enjoy my college experience so I needed to work as much as I could. I wasn’t getting the hours I wanted from both jobs and there lied the problem.
Enough of the two-job tango, I needed a job that could give me 40 hours of work a week. My Mom begged me to apply for a job at the local grocery store up the street. None of my friends worked at a grocery store and to a 19-year-old, it did not have the same attraction as working at a restaurant or clothing store. After some back and forth and realizing my Mom was right, I applied.
The next thing I knew I was a deli clerk. Meat sliced, hot chicken served, or salad bar set, I was your guy. I was the youngest in the deli by a few years but the manager seemed cool and the hours were good, 8-4, so I was content. Little did I know what being a deli clerk would do for me.
Fast forward over five years later and I still work for the same company in a finance role. Not to mention, it is one of the largest companies in the US. It is fair to say I have my younger self and my Mom to thank. So, thank you Mom.
What I failed to realize was the doors it would open up. I was stepping foot into a Fortune 500 company and gaining valuable experience at the store level. Unknowingly, I was positioning myself quite well for post-grad when I was set to begin my career. Being a deli clerk wasn’t a passion of mine but it did set me up well to advance towards something I was passionate about.
We are told to always chase our passions but it is quite hard for a 19-year-old kid to really chase his passion for finance. I think that advice can be a bit misdirected. It’s very hard to get paid for doing what you want, especially to begin. We are led to believe we must always do something that involves our passions but that belief often struggles to meet reality.
I think it can be boiled down to two options for chasing your passion early on:
Get a job close to the work you want to do and with each promotion, get closer to combining your career and passion.
Have a job that affords a lifestyle to chase whatever your passion may be.
For me, unexpectedly, by working for such a large company, I was slowly inching towards getting close to my desired career and work, at least to begin. Slowly and surely, I built a network. Corporate would come to inspect the stores and there I was, a young kid slicing your deli meat to perfection. Not to be remiss, my deli manager was also a great person to work for and helped me land an internship with the company. And, if you are young and fare well in a company, especially while in college, they will want to do everything to keep young talent within.
Did I love my time in the Deli? No, but it could have been a lot worse. Do I regret any second of it, even the slicing of the slippery, slimy hard-boiled eggs? No, because it has provided me with the opportunities to get where I am today. It was a very simple way to get close to the work I wanted to do. The company had a million opportunities available and by gaining-company specific knowledge, I was on my way.
I was bucking the trend and not chasing my passion. However, I was beginning to get closer to the work I wanted to do. I got my foot in the door and now, I could slowly inch toward a career I desired.
This is not the only way either. Rick Rubin puts it quite well,
“Maybe your purpose in life isn’t related to your job. Maybe your job is your job and the job is the thing that supports you and then the rest of your waking hours are devoted to your purpose, whatever that is.”
Your job doesn’t have to be a passion, at least for now. You can have a career that supports you while allowing you to chase a passion. A paycheck can provide stability and comfort in chasing that passion. Avoided is undermining your passion as play can then become work.
There’s value in having a career that is not your passion early on because your passion isn’t something you discover, it is something you develop. Often, it is not developed early on. Learn how to deliver at a high quality level then follow it using those skills. It can be a dangerous game to tie passions and financial incentives together, threatening the exploration of your creativity. There’s a lot of value in having a job that supports you chasing what ignites your soul.
JJ Watt loved football and it lit up his soul. Initially, he didn’t have a career he was passionate about. He started at Central Michigan University as a tight end before leaving his athletic scholarship behind to become a defensive end at Wisconsin. Except he didn’t have an athletic scholarship. He was a walk-on.
To chase his passion, he picked up a job as a pizza delivery guy. A 6’5” 289-lb pizza delivery guy. Fast forward to today and he was a three-time defensive player of the year and five-time first-team All-Pro.
His time as a pizza delivery guy allowed him to chase his passion without undermining his ability to support himself. He wanted to be a defensive end not a tight end. Wisconsin allowed him to do that but at a cost. With a part time job, he wasn’t consumed by the pressure of chasing his dream and passion. He was allowed to freely operate and the job afforded him a lifestyle to be comfortable with his finances while pursuing a passion. The external pressure was largely non-existent.
The dream of being a professional athlete exists for many. JJ Watt is one of many stories of those who took another job that afforded them a lifestyle to chase their passion and chase their dream.
Today, there is a rocket scientist who currently plays in the NFL. Arizona Cardinals QB Josh Dobbs majored in aerospace engineering while at the University of Tennessee. Not only did he major in aerospace engineering but he got a 4.0 while doing it. Forget the NFL that is a feat in itself.
Dobbs was drafted in the fourth round and only 28% of players drafted in rounds 4-7 actually make the NFL rosters. He has done an internship at NASA and after bouncing around NFL teams, he has started the last three games for the Arizona Cardinals after only starting two games in the prior six years he had been in the NFL.
Despite projecting as the worst team in the NFL, he led them to a win against the Dallas Cowboys. Safe to say, his passion for throwing a football around may be a little easier to chase when supported by an aerospace degree and a NASA internship.
It is okay if your career is not your passion and it is largely never that way at first. Just look at JJ Watt. If it is truly a passion, I am a firm believer that your career will become your passion. A true passion and an innate curiosity will drag you farther than mere diligence ever could. Taking you places where few will ever venture. What looks like work to most is play to you.
Most of us are still young and a passion will allow us to be freakishly good at something. To be freakishly good at something requires an uncomfortable amount of time. What seems like an abnormal amount of hours spent on something becomes effortless to you when it is a passion but it takes time. Time to get there. Time to fuse your passion with your career. It is not something that is immediately reached.
They say nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week but I can assure you plenty of people did. They did so by chasing their passions and callings in their other waking hours or by slowly getting closer and closer to a role they were passionate about with each job.
Thanks for reading.
-Scantron
Scantron’s Selections - A few things I loved this week.
Matthew McConaughey - 2015 Commencement Speech to the University of Houston - “See, JOY is always in process, under construction — it’s in the constant approach, alive and well —in the DOING of what we are fashioned to do… and enJOYing doing it.”
Shaan Puri - Modern Wisdom - Enthusiasm is the most underrated skill. This podcast was just wonderful topic after wonderful topic. Shaan has a unique way of thinking, which I appreciated.
John McAvoy - The Rich Roll Podcast - One of the best podcasts I have listened to all year. I listened to it a few months ago but recently, I shared it with a friend and they loved it so no better people to share it with then the readers of this piece.