Does Your Dream Job Exist?
Does our dream job really exist? If we have our dream job, does that mean we are following our passions?
There are several articles lately, and a personal observation, that makes me think we are chasing something that does not exist for many of us.
I was sent an article from the Wall Street Journal – Scott Adams Secret to Success: Failure!
Scott writes:
For most people, it’s easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I’ve been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion.
The ones that didn’t work out—and that would be most of them—slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. For example, when I invested in a restaurant with an operating partner, my passion was sky high. And on day one, when there was a line of customers down the block, I was even more passionate. In later years, as the business got pummeled, my passion evolved into frustration and annoyance.
On the other hand, Dilbert started out as just one of many get-rich schemes I was willing to try. When it started to look as if it might be a success, my passion for cartooning increased because I realized it could be my golden ticket. In hindsight, it looks as if the projects that I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, my passion level moved with my success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success.
Are you passionate because you are successful or successful because you are passionate?
The Myth of the Dream Job
A few months ago The Myth of the Dream Job appeared on the AARP Life Reimagined website.
Bassam Tarazi writes:
Listen to the most recent episode
Consider this: a job is a way to pay the bills, a career is a path toward increasingly better work, and a calling is work that’s an important part of your life and a vital part of your identity. In Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Amy Wrzensniewski, a professor of organizational behavior at Yale University, shares research revealing that“the happiest, most passionate employees [who see their jobs as a calling] 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.”
So yes, you can learn to love a job that no third grader ever dream’t about. That job can feel like your calling. The more years of experience you have at any task, the more effective you feel. You’ve built relationships with coworkers and seen the results of your work helping others.
Did you learn to love your job?
What if you are not passionate about anything?
The most-read blog post on this website is What if you are not passionate about anything?
I wrote this post based on my Birkman Assessment where I had many interests but nothing totally drives me. Believe it or not, this post is found by online searches 50-100 times a day! I am not alone.
I usually last 3-5 years in a job before I get bored and want to move on to the next. My coach taught me that I will probably have to change my business a little every year to keep things interesting.
You might call me a multipotentialite, as I am someone who has many interests.
Do I have a dream job or do I have many?
Does this sound like you?
What if you cannot make a living from your passion?
I have since learned from analyzing well over 300 Birkman assessments for clients that a lot of you are driven by the arts or music. As you might have guessed by now, most of you will never make a living in the arts or music.
What I have done with multiple clients is to re-ignite this love for the arts and music outside of their careers.
A classical example is Sharon Birkman Fink. Sharon is president of Birkman International but is a classically trained singer and musician with a master’s degree from the University of Texas in Music. She runs the family business that is the center of my business. She knows she needs to get her musical fix or she will not be happy.
Sharon is very successful and happily runs the family business but is it her dream job?
Is there a balance?
There has to be a balance between what society needs and is willing to pay for, and what you want to do. There may not be a cross-section of these two things.
What if you are a multipotentialite like myself? I know I have lots of things that drive me and there is no one real dream job.
What about you? Do you know what your dream job might be? Does your dream job exist?
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Some good thoughts here, but I think it is not regurgitating other’s posts. Although passing along insight is good. I think one needs to have some of their own content to add to the conversation instead of keywords. So many career counseling type sites are often people who have not been in the hiring business in the past, but are rather folks seeking their own bliss and feel they can pass along useful tidbits to others. This works, but it is a passion? Are is it just ego? In the end, there is no dream job, there is no passion for work per se unless I would think it is science or music or art. People do become good at something and become complacent, because many things are what they are including recruitment and/or career counseling sites. No magic bullet as they say.
BC,
I wrote this piece because we are taught that we should be passionate about something and then follow that passion. The one thing I have learned from this business is “we are all so different”!
No Marc, sadly we are all very much the same. At least in trying to fit into our society’s norms. Yes there is a a lot of gobbleygook out there that doesn’t fit for most of us. I know why you wrote it.
Marc and BC – This is an important conversation as so many of our friends and family members have found themselves making an unexpected career pivot during the last few years. Building on your thoughts about “is there – isn’t there” a job we can be passionate about – there are societal, family, and cultural expectations about career paths and they can be so convincing! Then, perhaps near mid-life, self-reflection brings us interesting questions about purpose, calling, and passion. It is possible that an individual may not even know their own natural strengths and preferences let alone what new career paths or jobs they might consider. In addition to the kind of evaluation and developmental work you are doing, Marc, there is another piece of data that could be useful: what jobs enable me to use my preferences / strengths? My colleagues and I are working on a tool like that – to match jobs and people. Would love to hear your thoughts on that additional data – do you think individuals would benefit from knowing what jobs they fit based on their preferences and strengths? We think it might open new avenues of thought for them.
Deborah,
I am a Birkman consultant, http://birkman.com and I use that assessment in exactly the way you describe. What happens with many of us is we have forgotten our preferences and strengths. I have written this before on understanding what are your talents. Very often we have ended up in jobs that use skills we possess but not based on our underlying talents.