Why you should quit your job to pursue your passion
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Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You is about how people fall prey to a “Passion Hypothesis”—the idea that basing your career around your passion will make you happy. Newport argues that people who quit their jobs to pursue their passions expect success and happiness but usually end up with the opposite. Instead, those who focus on building expertise in their existing pursuits end up more fulfilled:
"The happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do."
Newport reasons that building rare and valuable skills makes people indispensable, thus giving them confidence and control over their responsibilities and time (essential traits for career happiness). While I think there are a lot of valuable points in his book, we should reject this central pillar.
You can’t develop rare or valuable skills in a field you’re not interested in.
Natural affinities are important and can’t be forced. If you’re not genuinely interested in a topic, it will take significantly more time and effort to learn it, let alone excel in it. It will also make the skill-developing process more frustrating and discouraging because you aren’t learning as quickly as you think you should be. Natural interest allows you to hone skills quicker than those who are uninterested, which makes you competitive.
Pursuing something you’re uninterested in is a waste of time.
Many people say work is just a paycheck, no one actually likes their jobs. But work is where you spend the majority of your days, weeks, and lifetime. Shouldn’t you enjoy and gain something valuable in the area of life where you spend the most time? Think of the opportunity cost: imagine how much you could accomplish if you pursued your passion during your work day. Spending more time on your passion outside of work can make it increasingly clear that your day job isn’t fulfilling. You realize it’s not the area in which you can provide the most value to the world. Instead of wishing the weekdays away and living for the weekend, you would be optimizing each hour of your day and building a skill that’s important to you over a lifetime.
You have one life, don’t lead it with regret.
Don’t put your passions off. Don’t say you’ll pursue them in a few years once you’ve saved some more money. That’s the easy route and the route that will make you unhappy and regretful. It will only get harder to pursue your passions in the future—harder to quit your day job because you’ll likely have a higher salary with higher expenses, more responsibilities, more excuses, and more time that you’ve lost not fully honing your passion. The important resource here isn’t money, it’s time.
When to jump.
Yes, paying rent and your bills is important. But find a way to do this and pursue some aspect of your passion. Make gradual changes—if you’re in the wrong industry (e.g., investment banking but you love writing), start by switching to an industry that aligns with your interests, even if it means a pay cut. That way you can start building relevant skills during work and become more tuned into and marketable for opportunities in your field.
Using some of Newport’s ideas, make small bets before you jump ship—test out ideas, services, and products with mini-markets to see what people like and what works. This is what social media enables—instant feedback on what people are interested in. Work on developing your passion until you find the portion of it that’s monetizable. You have something that no one else in the world has. Figure out how your passion can provide value and solve a problem that others face. It will require a lot of work.
Passion, happiness, and success are compatible.
Your exact passion may not be aligned with what people are willing to pay for. You need to find the intersection. There’s a concept called Ikigai that’s Japanese for “a reason for being.” It’s when what you love intersects with what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you’re good at. Don’t dismiss your passion. Lean into it and learn how to monetize it. You need to do something you’re interested in, something you believe is worthy of your time.
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