A conversation with the 20-year-old me about job, passion, and meaning of work

August 13, 2021

This article was written for my ethics and leadership class during junior year. At that time, I was very lost on what to do for the future. Through challenging the conventional emphasis on passion, I outlined three components that I wish to find in my career.

What a good career for me should look like?

This is a question puzzled me for years and has brought frustration, anxiety, and lost in confidence but never a glimpse of clarity. I want to start this conversation from here.

First, is passion really a must for my work?

If you ask Steve Jobs or any other experienced people for career advice, they would always tell you that you have to find what you love. But what do they really mean by that?

I’ve been trapped with the idea of finding your passion, making a commitment and being extraordinary. It almost seems that one must first find a life-long passion in order to become a fulfilled being. I was a firm believer of this so I was constantly trying to get out of the comfort zone and explore as many fields as possible since freshman year, hoping to encounter my “true passion” one day. Up till now, I found I enjoy doing many of those different things, and have figured out certain areas I don’t like, but I can’t declare anything now that I will be tirelessly doing 40+ hours per week for my entire life (or the next 40 years).

Despite the difficulty of deciding on my passion, I also think that career passion might not always be a “love for the first sight” thing, it could also be accumulated through time and associated with my competence. An example would be my experience in research. I joined a professor’s team in which I was tasked to complete literature review in the first week. This work looked not so appealing to me at the beginning but days after days, I picked up some essentials and managed to process and analyze various information, I started to really like what I do. Thus, I realized that I’m too young to make an accurate judgement of my true passion just by a glance.

Does that mean I don’t have to care about my motivation(passion) in deciding a career? Of course not. But instead of being overstressed to pursue a “life-long passion”, I should probably think more about whether a work excites me or not. I don’t want to experience the life Xu li zhi had --- “standing fall asleep”--- disliking what I do. Because if a career fundamentally made me depress, I would have trouble to act like normal and deliver good quality work. At the end of day, I will not achieve any competence at work and lost my wellbeing.

That being said, I need to work on something enjoyable and I feel excited about. More importantly, I should embrace the uncertainties of my career paths or interest. It’s fine if I can’t settle down on the “one and only” passion, but keep doing what I genuinely excited about.

The next thing to examine is what specific things will make me feel excited?

In the article from Cal Newport, they pointed out that competence, relatedness, and autonomy are three phycological requirement for working happily. I personally echo more with the latter two aspects.

Relatedness:

As Cal suggested, relatedness indicated how you are related to other people at work. It was during this COVID pandemic that I realized my strong mental needs for human interaction. Whenever I spend a day alone, I would feel very discomfortable. Therefore, the ideal work should let me be in touch with an adequate amount of people on a daily basis. I also prefer working in an industry that is more related and closer to people’s daily life, such as consumer goods or education.

Is having basic relatedness enough to excite me? I think the quality of the relatedness is even more crucial. How much do I get along with my team, customer, and leaders? A job that has the right atmosphere with people I have every-day connections is something that make me excited.

Autonomy:

I see autonomy as having control or ownership during work. Growing up, I’ve served as class president, club leader, student organization’s founder and so on, I enjoy being in those positions, not because I’m obsessed in leading others in any means. I like those experience because they gave me autonomy on what to do, and how to do things. Although this usually means more responsibility and pressure, I personally think that owning certain level of autonomy motivates me to contribute and engage more on projects, because I will more associate myself with the result.

By large chance, I will start off my career at corporate place and get employed by others. And for entry levels, it’s unusual to have much autonomy on my work. Most of time I may have to follow the arrangement from more senior people. Then what should I do? How to find the excitement under this circumstance?

Cal has rightly pointed out that by earning more competence on your work, you will make yourself a trustable employee and receive more space to have autonomy. Few months ago, I went on a company visit to McKinsey Shanghai, during Q&A, I asked one HR why they include leadership as an important quality when evaluating candidate. Because for entry-level consultants, they usually have a limited role to play in a project and mainly responsible for the execution. She said that leading others, or the larger organization is just one form of leadership. What’s more important is the ability and desire to lead yourself, lead your own work and make an impact.

Her words led me to a deeper meaning of autonomy. The Greek meaning of “autonomy” refers to “one who gives oneself own law”. If I’m able to be in a career where I can maintain a sense of autonomy for my own work and one day have autonomy beyond myself, I would feel very excited.

Social Purpose:

In Benjamin Todd’s piece, he brought up the ethics and impact of one’s job and argued that people should not work on an occupation that has direct negative impact. Although I tend to not agree on the way he reached his conclusion, I do think that the social impact of my work plays an important role in my physiological perception for career.

The trip to United Nations General Assembly as a youth delegate in 2017 has a big influence on my world view. Since then, I started to pay attention to sustainable development, particularly in environment field. Even though I may not directly land a career in environment, I still insist that the work I do and the organization I work for should not just be serving people’s basic needs. I want my career could generate positive impact on the community and environment at large. Knowing my career is purposeful is very important not only because I care about the society and environment I live in, but also help me to maintain positivity when things at work don’t go well or the tasks are very tedious (which is likely to happen). Therefore, a company with strong social purpose and do good to the society will make me excited to work for.

To sum up, relatedness, autonomy and social purpose are three fundamental aspects I should consider in choosing my career. Because without them, I will lose excitement for my job and feel suffering with the overall work experience. In assuring the three aspects, I’m willing to make compromise in other areas, such as working hour or marriage at young age. Just as Xi believes, work create future, hard work makes the dream of individuals’ and the society’s come true. On one day or another, I may also declare my life passion through the test of time and efforts. But even if I don’t, I will still be a flourished being because my work is always something excite me and motivate me to excel.

Works Cited

- Benjamin, Todd. " Is it ever okay to take a harmful job in order to do more good: An indepth analysis." 80,000 Hours.

- Cal, Newport. " Beyond passion: The science of loving what you do."

- Jinping, Xi. " Hard Work Makes Dreams Come True." The Governance of China.

- Lizhi, Xu. " I Fall asleep, just standing like that."

- Montag, Ali. " Steve Jobs: ‘I Never Did It for the Money." CNBC.