A Note About Passion & Happiness in the Workplace

I read an inspiring article this morning in The New York Times “Jobs” section by Cal Newport entitled “Follow a Career Passion? Let It Follow You” (apparently I wasn’t the only one – as of this writing it is NYT’s most-Emailed article).

The short autobiographical piece by the young author questions the age-old “find your passion” advice given by parents, guidance counselors and others who shape the lives of young people, arguing that it adds undue pressure and fosters feelings of dissatisfaction and self-doubt in the workforce later in life.This resonated immediately with me: as somebody who never had a clue what he wanted to do when he was younger, I remember freshman year of college looking resentfully at the fortunate souls who, at age 18, knew they were “pre-med,”  “pre-law” or what have you, their paths clearly & comfortably defined for the next decade.

Rest assured, my path to becoming a professional trivia event producer was not so straight and true. After graduation, I aimlessly meandered from one entry level job to the next, with the occasional detour into graduate school or unemployment along the way. Although I did ultimately find my calling producing trivia team building activities in NYC and beyond, it took an awful lot of time, experience and experimentation to gain the skills necessary to do so; as Mr. Newport so eloquently points out in his article, “Building valuable skills is hard and takes time. For someone in a new position, the right question is not, ‘What is this job offering me?’ but, instead, ‘What am I offering this job?’”

I find it incredibly amusing – even ironic – that people now consider me to be a go-to guy for career happiness, a shining example of someone who has built a career around his passion. If anything, I like to think of myself not as someone who arrived at career happiness by following his heart, but through consistent vision, determination and hard work. I also tend to think of myself as a cautionary tale of what NOT to do when it comes to career planning for young people: drift like a plastic bag in the wind, hoping to land someplace comfortable.

If I had known after graduating college that despite my misery, confusion and lack of direction I’d one day be my own boss, asking trivia questions for a living and loving every minute of it, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Go figure!