Don't Follow Your Passion
Do this instead...
How many of you are following your passion?
You’ve all heard the advice, it’s a staple of the self-help and personal development field. But the likelihood is that you’re not doing it and the reason is straightforward.
Follow your passion is terrible advice.
This might seem an odd statement in a newsletter for creative writers. One might reasonably expect that people who care enough about writing to join a group or sign up to a newsletter about it are passionate about writing.
Perhaps many of you reading this are passionate about writing, maybe it really does consume you day and night to the detriment of your family, friends, and personal hygiene.
But I suspect that for most of you, writing is an interest that you are cultivating, nothing more. It has the potential to become more, and maybe you’ve already experienced an upsurge in your level of engagement with the process of writing as your familiarity, knowledge and competence have increased.
I think that is a perfectly normal and acceptable state of affairs. I’d go further - it is a preferable state of affairs to following your passion. Because that is simply terrible advice.
It’s bad advice for most people, but especially for the young. What were you passionate about when you were a teenager? I’ll answer for you: nothing. It wasn’t passion, it was a passing fancy, the latest fad, an infatuation that felt so strong it could pass for passion. But the following month, or even week, you were just as crazy for something else.
Let me give you an example. When I was fourteen, we had to pick which subjects we would drop and which we would go on to take our GCSE exams in at age sixteen. I had to pick between History and German. I chose German. Not because of a passion for the language, or languages in general, but because I fancied a girl who had chosen German.
The result? I never saw the girl again after our exams and decades later all I can say in German is “I am a little blue monkey1.”
Most young people have no idea what they are truly passionate about (because they haven’t yet lived enough to know) and yet the pressure to follow your passion starts at that age, when you are expected to make choices affecting the rest of your life.
I suspect most people don’t know what they are truly passionate about until much later in life. We are made to feel inadequate for this because of the seemingly countless examples of people successfully following their passion. But it’s a false impression and not the basis for career advice. Of course, some people will be enormously successful at doing something they’ve been passionate about since childhood. They are in the minority (a rather small one, I suspect) and anyway, they are the last people who need the advice to follow their passion - they were never going to do anything else.
It’s everyone else who gets told to follow their passion, but the advice is based on a logical fallacy. It’s called survivorship bias - “the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not.”
The pressure to follow your passion leads people to put all their eggs in one basket, to plump for that one big thing to the exclusion of all else. It’s recipe for disaster because if it’s not really a passion then it’s more likely to lead to quitting at the first real hurdle.
So what’s the answer? What do you do if you don’t know what you’re passionate about?
Another curriculum choice I was faced with at fourteen was Computer Studies. For reasons long lost in a hormonal teenager’s addled brain, I chose Technical Drawing instead. Go figure.
A few years later, after several dead end jobs and time off travelling the world, I still hadn’t settled on a career, or even a direction. A chance encounter led to a job interview to train as a computer operator. Despite having expressed no interest in the subject previously, I was now curious about technology and thought I should at least try to learn something about the subject, so I went for the interview and got the job.
I received excellent training and gained a whole new area of knowledge, a window into a world previously closed off to me. I worked as a computer operator for about five years but it was still just a job to me. Then something happened. In a now all too familiar cycle, the job I had trained for was becoming extinct, overtaken by automation. I had to retrain and found something that piqued my curiosity further - how did all these computer systems connect to one another? How did information get transferred from one terminal, one system, one location, to another?
I began to specialise in Networking and Communications, something was about to explode in the industry and a discipline that even experienced IT professionals still regarded as something of a black art.
As my knowledge and experience grew, so too did my interest. I was fascinated by the subject. I learned everything I could, went on every course available, and gained several industry certifications. I was becoming an expert in my field.
I realised that what I was doing was no longer just a job. I had a career, a vocation. I had a passion for it.
And that’s the answer. You don’t follow your passion, you follow your curiosity. You cultivate your interests. As your knowledge grows, so too does your competency, which increases your interest and curiosity, and so on. And then one day you realise you’ve found a passion.
So don’t fret if you don’t know what you’re passionate about. You don’t have to. Just be curious and see where it leads. You don’t have to limit yourself to one thing, be open to go where your curiosity takes you.
Passion is not something that you pursue. It is something that ensues. It ensues from from curiosity.
My curiosity made me passionate about communications. In what seems to me like a natural progression, where once I provided the infrastructure that carried the message, I now write the message.
Am I passionate about writing? I don’t know, but I do know I write on subjects I’m passionate about, which amounts to the same thing.
Writing Events
Many thanks to Richard G for bringing the following to my attention. There’s a Spring Writers’ Retreat coming up next month at Braziers Park, a Grade II country house and estate on the edge of Ipsden – a small village near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, about 10 miles north of us in Caversham.
A quiet space to write, reflect, and connect. While there is no structured agenda for the weekend, there will be opportunities to share work and exchange ideas. Take time out from the noise of everyday life to focus on your writing in our peaceful surroundings.
This mostly self-led retreat offers the freedom to shape your own creative rhythm – whether you are beginning a new project, polishing a draft, or simply seeking space to think and write. Enjoy long stretches of uninterrupted writing time, the calm of shared silence, and the companionship of a small community of fellow writers.
Full details here: Spring Writers' Retreat — Braziers Park
The Hay Festival is coming up (21–31 May) and tickets are available now for a selection of early bird events before the full programme is announced.
It’s the granddaddy of book festivals and everyone who loves books should try and go at least once, it’s a magnificent location and event.
Full details here: Hay Festival
Our Last Meeting
Writes & Bites - an in person social event
We were tempted across the river from Caversham into Reading by the Bottomless Tapas on offer at Las Iguanas for this month’s Writes & Bites event - “treat yourself to 90 minutes of endless plates, bold flavours and pure indulgence - all from just £17 per person.”
It turns out I’d neglected to select the offer when booking our table, but our very helpful server Kaycee made sure we didn’t miss out. Five little plates was enough for me, the Sunshine Salad a particular highlight. Great food, great company, thanks to all who came.
I’m always open to suggestions for the next Writes & Bites, let me know if you have a favourite in Caversham or Reading you want to recommend we try next.
Next Week's Meeting
Ask the Agent! Meet Nikki Carrero
Wednesday, Feb 18 · 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM GMT
We’ve had plenty of authors come and talk to the group about their writing and path to publication over the last couple of years, such as Kate Wells, Stephanie Bretherton and Sunday Times bestseller Victoria Selman. I’ve wanted to get a literary agent to come and take part in a similar session for a while, so I’m delighted that Nikki Carrero, Literary Agent will be joining us on a Zoom session next Wednesday.
Please note this is NOT a pitching opportunity. Nikki has kindly agreed to give us the benefit of her experience in publishing and book marketing in a Q&A session, so don't come along to push your WIP.
This event is for Caversham Writers members only and you can sign up to join us and attend on our Meetup page:
Free To Join, Free To Attend
As you know Caversham Writers is free to join and free to attend and I want it to remain so. That doesn’t mean it is free to run, though. I organise the group meetings on Meetup.com who have seen fit to double the fees paid by group organisers over the last year.
This has led to many groups shutting down or moving platform. I like to think of Caversham Writers as a local group with a global reach and I want us to remain open to voices from all over the world. Meetup provides that global reach so I intend to stay there, but would welcome any contributions toward the costs of running the group.
So if you enjoy this free newsletter and our weekly free events, please consider helping out by buying me a coffee at the link below.
Ich bin ein kleiner blauer Affe
Love this last newsletter. It's so true that passion is something I've always desperately sought in paid work. What am I passionate about. The things that I have been interested in were all volunteer roles with low paid and intermittent job alternatives not suited for a good home life. I'm still searching. It feels as if I'm getting closer, although, I still feel 'behind'. I guess that's all part of the journey!