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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Following your passion to poverty

The Kiplinger.com article recommends readers to forget about following your passions as doing what you love often does not lead to money. Reason? Because you end up competiting with a large pool of candidates who are also going after the small pool of well-paying jobs.

Sure, if your passion is a rare one, like entomology, or even a moderately common one like accounting, money may follow. But if you are like the many people whose passion is shared by half the continent -- for example, activist or performer -- you're in trouble. Millions of people are competing passionately with you for the small number of decent-paying jobs. That's the reason the word "starving" so often precedes "artist."

What's more, even if you do end up getting your dream job, that won't ensure happiness.

Following your dream isn't all it's cracked up to be. Fact is, most wannabes aren't happy. In addition to the constant rejection, they feel unproductive. And when hired, they worry that they're just one wrong word from being unemployed again.

Even if you manage to land a longshot dream career, it may well turn out to be less than dreamy. You may be treated poorly: low salary, no job security, unreturned phone calls, etc. That's because bosses know they have little to lose. Coveys of wannabes are in the wings panting for your job. I've spoken with hundreds of people in so-called dream careers and often they're less happy than are people in more mainstream ones. If being a movie star is so wonderful, for example, why does it seem that half of them are in and out of rehab?

The article advices readers to pick a non-glam but well-paying jobs.

My advice? Unless you're a driven superstar, pick a non-glam career that you'd be good at. Then do a competent job search so you have multiple job offers.

Pick the one offering as many of these characteristics as possible:

- Moderately challenging
- Meaningful work
- A kind, competent boss
- Pleasant co-workers
- Learning opportunities
- Reasonable pay
- Reasonable work hours
- A short commute

A job with even half of those will make you more likely to love your job than if you had pursued a longshot career. Learn more about how to choose the right job for you.

I found the article quite good and agree with it to a degree. Am sure doing what you love is good but as mentioned in the article, that often leads many people to careers fields that are tough to get into and have low rate of success. Fields such as acting, sports, etc. Similarly, many books etc extol the virtues of starting your own business or being your own boss but the reality is that being own boss isn't easy and is not meant for every one. In addition, simply starting a business doesn't guarantee quick, or even...slow bucks.

In addition, I find no problem with being an employee. For many people, it offers the opportunity to expand their knowledge, learn new things, mingle with coworkers, take time off for vacations etc without having to worry about how to find the next prospect, how to get the next customer. Sure, it may not pay not always pay as much as the business owner is making but then it also doesn't cause as much stress and pressure as the business owner is having.

As for following the passion, you can still pursue a side business/hobby while working as an employee. In fact, it's probably more fun because then you can pursue your business/hobby passionately, knowing that you have a decent paying job to take care of your bills. In addition, being an employee doesn't always mean that you cannot make good money - if a person is smart, he/she can be rich even as an employee. Just check out many of the employees at Microsoft who joined it at the start of the firm, or more recently, the employees at Google, many of whom are multimillionaires. Wish I had gotten jobs at such firms!

For complete article, see:

Kiplinger.com: Do What You Love and Starve

Points.com eLearners Earn Rewards at MyPoints.

posted by Ruby @ 7:17 AM

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