Ryan's Rules #25: If you're not passionate about your work, find the type of work you are passionate about, you'll be a lot happier.

I had originally linked Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users blog from this post. Unfortunately, neither Kathy nor TypePad are on the internet any longer but the wisdom in that article is still timeless. It’s available on the WayBack Machine.

I have had the privilege to work in a number of different companies through both good times and bad and across a number of different industries. Some of the most memorable times I have had in work weren’t good times at all. They were when I was able to apply the passion I had and achieve a great outcome. Other times, as temperaments changed that passion waned and I knew that it was time to move on.

If you’re experiencing a phase where your passion has waned, this post may just help you identify why. Passion is not something that always stays at 100% but the good news is it’s not something that is spent once and lost forever. 

Stop Tolerating Work You Hate

Picture this. It's a Tuesday morning, a little bit past nine AM. You’ve just landed at your desk and logged in. Maybe you’re working from home and nobody is checking in on you. Perhaps you slunk into the office unnoticed. Even if they did notice you wouldn’t care too much, only you could do without the hassle of having a conversation about why you were late again. You’re on your second coffee. Staring at the screen, you feel absolutely nothing. No dread, no excitement, no wonder. Just a hollow, foggy neutral state that somehow unsettles you more than if you were stressed out.

If all of that sounds familiar, maybe you're not burned out. Or lazy. Or dead inside. Maybe you're just in the wrong room. Maybe you’re doing work that you hate. One caveat worth noting: If what you're feeling is burnout rather than disengagement, that's a different problem entirely. Talk to someone. The longer you leave it, the longer recovery takes.

A lot of these "rules" I write about sound obvious the moment you read them. Witty little truisms. Self-fulfilling prophecies. Simple to understand on the surface but if you delve into the deeper meaning between the words it can help you explore problems and find solutions. And with this one, the thing that really gets me is the number of people who spend their entire careers and lives nodding along, saying "I know, sucks doesn’t it?" but never do anything about it. 

Complaining can be a good way to release pent up pressure and help you tolerate work that you used to love but now hate. Inaction likewise will kill off passion quickly. Both in combination will not only impact you but will also affect those around you. So let's dig into the meaning between the words, and more importantly, what things you can do to make a difference.

Passion Matters

Passion at work, or for your work, is easy to view as a bonus, like a nice salary perk or a good view from the office. You hope for it but don’t plan for it. Look around at your colleagues and co-workers. How many are "quietly quitting" (doing the minimum required and nothing more), how many are actively disengaged and how many do you see doing bullshit work or introducing complexity so it looks like they are getting things done? To me, that's not a problem related to individuals. It’s a symptom that something is very wrong across the board.

What’s more, you and I both know that work doesn't stay in work. Spending 40 or more hours a week on something that drains rather than energizes you cannot stay behind closed doors no matter how hard you try to compartmentalize. The effects seep into the rest of your life. Your relationships suffer. Your health takes hits. Your sense of identity may even erode. You start to question yourself.

I think all of this happens because so much of who we are is tied to what we do. Even with a great work-life balance, it should be painfully obvious that spending the majority of your waking hours slowly dying inside is not good for you.

My experience of work has mostly meant an office and a desk, so it would be dishonest to pretend this applies equally to everyone. It's easy to say that if your attitude is directly correlated to the size of your paycheck, your attitude is the problem. Easy and, frankly, crass. That ignores people that have to work two jobs to keep the lights on, earning very little for genuinely hard work, with no obvious way out. A very different situation. But passion isn't a white-collar privilege. Anyone in any of those situations can still have it, and nobody gets to take that from them. 

Having passion in your career is one of the strongest factors in how healthy, how long, and how fully you live. It is not a luxury. It’s almost a basic need.

The Reasons People Stay

The most common reason people don't pursue more meaningful work is not laziness or lack of self-awareness. It's fear. "I have a mortgage." "The economy is uncertain." "At least I have something." These are valid concerns. But over time, these excuses feel indistinguishable from logic. The security of something you don’t like combined with fear of the unknown have power. You choose security over happiness. Better the devil you know, right?

Many people have spent years building a professional identity around a role that no longer fits them. You reach a point where it’s up or out and up isn’t an option. Changing careers feels like erasing yourself, like admitting something went wrong, like starting over with too much risk and not enough upside. So you stay, because starting over feels like losing, and your ego finds that unbearable.

Perhaps you don't know what you would actually love. What happens if you don't know what you are passionate about? When you've spent years doing what was expected of you (studied what your parents suggested, took the first job that was offered, climbed the ladder that was in front of you), you can lose the ability to see opportunity. Even if it’s right in front of you. Finding your passion then becomes abstract and overwhelming. A task that seems both impossible and fanciful. It’s back to the feeling that having passion is a luxury. A luxury that you don’t feel you deserve.

What Happens When You Find Your Passion?

People who operate with genuine engagement perform better, stay healthier, build stronger relationships, and tend to outlive their less-engaged peers by meaningful margins. And it doesn't have to come exclusively from work. A passion pursued outside the office can change everything, making problems that felt all-consuming shrink to their actual size.

Having passion helps you bring energy to solving problems. You become the colleague everyone wants on their team, not because you’ve found a way to work harder in a grim, grinding way, but because it feels like you actually give a damn. Sometimes a dose of passion for a hobby might mean you want to get something finished and out the door so you can go enjoy that hobby rather than having that uneasy feeling hanging over you. Compartmentalization is taxing and takes energy for some people. I know it does for me.

Stop Nodding Along

If somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that you’re not where you should be professionally, take that seed of discomfort as a signal. Ignoring it won’t fix it or make it quieter. If you're not passionate about your work, find the type of work you are passionate about. You'll be a lot happier. And "a lot happier" isn't a small thing. It's a different life.

I’ll leave you with a question that an excellent course facilitator asked a group I was part of once. If you won the lottery, you were set for life and job security and other people's expectations were completely off the table, what kind of work would you actually show up for? The answer to that question might just be where your passion lies.