Pursue Opportunity

Mike Rowe gave us all some of the best career advice anybody has offered us in a long time.  Following your passion can lead to nowhere, but following opportunity can lead to rewarding, fulfilling, successful careers.  Passion is a fickle guide at best, and a cruel misleader at worst.

For my whole life, my generation has been spoon-fed the horrible advice of following our passions.  The rising generation behind us has been told the same thing.  In hindsight, that advice is insane.  As Rowe points out, just because you’re passionate at something doesn’t mean you’re going to be good at it.  But that’s not the half of it.  Even if you’re good at it, that doesn’t mean “it” will lead you to a successful career.  What if you’re really good at writing articles for newspapers?  That’s a dying industry, and most newspaper reporters don’t make that much.

What if you’re good at writing in general?  Fine, but most good writers continue to struggle to make a living doing just that.  One fundamental thing they advise aspiring writers in the annual edition of “Writer’s Market” is that in order to make it writing, you first need a day job to support yourself.

Which leads us back to square one.  Instead of just focusing on a day job, most people would be best-served to make their “day job” their career.  Throw yourself into that, gain experience, gain skills, and grow professionally as a result.

Most of us have childhood dreams of some sort of glamorous job, be it a rock star, an astronaut, or a professional athlete.  But as we grow up, both physically and, more importantly, mentally, we slowly realize that those are unrealistic goals for the vast majority of us.  Most musicians are really good at playing an instrument, but they’re always broke on account of depending on itinerant “gigs” to make their living.  Sure, music is your passion, but are you willing to starve on your passion?

Think you can make it as a pro athlete?  The odds say otherwise.  Of all high school basketball players who are seniors, for example, only 2.9 percent – that’s less than one in 35! – go on to play in the NCAA, much less the pros.  Of those who do go on to play college hoops, only 1.3 percent of those – less than one in 75! – get drafted by an NBA team.  To break it down even further, of the aforementioned high school senior basketball players, roughly 3 in 10,000 eventually make it to the pros.  Still think the NBA is an option for you?  Get real!

Sure, it sounds awesome to be an astronaut.  But have you looked at an average astronaut’s credentials lately?  It’s not easy to build up that sort of resume.  More to the point, though, have you asked yourself how often NASA is hiring astronauts these days?  Even if the rate is high, how many open slots are there per rate?

What if you’re passionate about science?  That’s cool:  so am I.  Time was, I actually investigated the possibility of earning a PhD in Entomology.  But the more I learned in my investigation, the more depressing a prospect it became.  It would take three years of catch-up with undergrad work and masters work combined before even entering the doctoral program, which would take another four years – or more! – before earning a doctorate in a subject about which I remain passionate.  And even after all that, I would still need to do post-doctoral research – working for peanuts all the while – before I became eligible to become a professor, and even then, there aren’t that many professorships open in the hard sciences out there right now.  “Screw that,” I thought!

All this leads us to the ultimate advice Mike Rowe gave us in that same video:  don’t follow your passion.  Instead, follow opportunity, and bring your passion with you.

I knew that I was good at making images on the computer, and I loved doing it.  But I also learned that graphic design was a tough field to break into:  hence, no opportunity.  But I eventually realized that I could take this same passion and talent and tweak it into a practical application, that of CAD (computer-aided drafting).  So, I went back to school and got a CAD degree.  I worked hard, got good at it, and soon became passionate about mechanical design.

Which leads us to the whole reason we are here:  to offer guidance to careers that will lead to success and bring out your productive potential.  We shall both explore pitfalls to avoid – and there are many of them – and areas of opportunity to grow and flourish.  Thanks for reading thus far.  Now, let us learn and grow together!