According to the internet, Confucius said, “Choose a job you love, [and] you will never have to work a day in your life.” He even created a great infographic on this, except it’s just one of those memorable fake internet quotes. That said, the notion that we are better off aligning our careers with our interests is remarkably prevalent, as is advice on “following your passions” or optimizing your career for your intrinsic motivation.
To be sure, there are many reasons to adhere to this principle. First, you are much more likely to identify with your work persona when your career is focused on meaningful work and your professional self is aligned with your overall self-concept. As noted by William Kahn, professor of organizational behavior at Boston University’s business school, this tends to translate into higher levels of employee engagement and job satisfaction, which is generally good for the employer. Second, passion and interest lubricate learning and development, so the energy (and ROI) associated with skill development will be significantly higher when you love what you do.
It actually starts very early in life. Early in childhood, kids differ in both their interests and abilities, and parents often react to reinforce the connection between the two. So, for instance, if a child is musical she or he may be interested in playing with instruments; when parents notice this they will likely reinforce this skill-interest connection by organizing music lessons for the child, which will hopefully not reduce the child’s interest! In turn, this should enhance both skill development and an interest in music, shaping potential career choices, and so on.
Does interest matter?
But can you be good at something you dislike? Just as passion and interest may not result in career success, even if they do increase talent development—to stay with music, it is generally not an easy way to have a successful career—it may be possible to be great at something for which you are not truly passionate, especially when you are aligned with market demands.
As a matter of fact, the correlation between measures of interests and measures of skill in that domain of interests rarely exceeds 0.3. This means that about 90% of the time, you may be deeply interested in something you are not good at, or really good at something you are not interested in. To be more concrete, consider some of these common examples:
(1) Learning to do what you dislike: Many valuable skills are acquired not because we enjoy them, but because circumstances force us to practice them. A lawyer may dislike public speaking, a CEO may hate networking, or a scientist may loathe fundraising, yet repetition, feedback, and necessity can make them highly competent at these activities. Indeed, disliking something is perfectly compatible with becoming good at it, provided you have enough ability, discipline, and incentive to persist. Further, some dislikes may be based on misconceptions or misrepresentations of the job and task in question, so being courageous enough to experience those professional choices could lead to recalibrating and pivoting.
(2) Optimizing your career choices for success: Careers are not just expressions of identity; they are also markets. You may love philosophy but have exceptional quantitative skills, or dream of becoming a musician while possessing unusual commercial judgment. Since the economic value of a skill depends partly on how scarce and useful it is to others, there are perfectly rational reasons to build a career around what you are good at, rather than what you most enjoy. To be sure, when choices are plentiful and results are uncertain, it does make sense to focus on what you love doing. And yet, this will likely result in unintended consequences and trade-offs that are worth considering at the outset. For instance, pursuing what you love may steer you toward overcrowded fields where passion is abundant but opportunities are scarce, while ignoring less exciting domains in which your abilities are both unusual and highly valued. Equally, turning an interest into an occupation can change the nature of the activity itself. What was once intrinsically rewarding becomes subject to deadlines, competition, clients, performance metrics, and financial pressures. In other words, there is a difference between loving to do something and loving to do it for a living.
(3) Keeping your passion for your hobbies: Not every passion needs to be monetized. In fact, turning something you love into work introduces what we mentioned above—deadlines, clients, competition, performance pressure—plus the irritating requirement that somebody actually pays for it. There is much to be said for being an enthusiastic amateur musician, photographer, chef, or writer while earning your living from something you are good at but find merely tolerable. Also, there is a difference between acquiring the necessary levels of skill to enjoy doing something, and having the necessary level to excel at something to the point that people pay you for doing it.
(4) Going outside your comfort zone: If we pursue only activities we naturally enjoy, we risk turning preferences into constraints. Growth frequently involves doing things that feel uncomfortable, tedious, or unnatural, particularly when they expose weaknesses we would rather ignore. In fact, as I have illustrated in my latest book, this is why authenticity can limit your career development. If you limit yourself to your past and present self—doing what feels good or natural—you will probably not become a better version of yourself, let alone the best possible version. And you will limit your career choices. Your interests tell you where you want to spend your time; they do not necessarily tell you where you have the greatest potential to improve, contribute, or succeed. So, just as height may be a better predictor of basketball performance than interest in basketball, your ability to add value to a role or organization will depend more on the range of skills and talents for that role than your degree of interest in performing it.
A balancing act
Ultimately, the sensible career advice is probably neither “follow your passion” nor its equally simplistic opposite, “do what you are good at.” Interests matter because they supply energy (they are the fuel of achievement), persistence, and meaning. Abilities matter because the world tends to reward what we can actually do, typically because of the assumption that we can be motivated to deploy our skills with external carrots and sticks.
The happiest careers may maximize both, but when the two diverge, there is no psychological law requiring us to choose passion. Also, many people achieve relatively impressive levels of career success without either liking their job or being particularly good at it—but they may excel at managing relationships and being rewarding to deal with. Sometimes the thing you are surprisingly good at is precisely the thing you would never have chosen to do. In such instances, what will be particularly important is the degree to which others are interested in your talents and skills, and how that interest translates into career opportunities.
