→ comment [1] to You’re Not Meant To Do What You Love. You’re Meant To Do What You’re Good At. [2] by Brianna Wiest, who arguments that the skills of people are "a blueprint of their destiny". For support she describes experience with people who try to do something they do not actually enjoy doing.
This whole argument sits on the assumption that skills develop somehow on their own.
Skills develop, because you use them. So if you do what you love doing (note the nuance!), then — except in rare cases — this becomes what you are good at.
And the real joy from daily work is in how it fulfils the values we value. What we value differs between people. For some it is money, for some it is respect and for some it is following the paths they chose themselves.
In addition we live in a society where less and less people are needed for the tasks which actually have to be done — Food. Shelter. Health. Education. — because productivity rises by 2% every year. That means it is doubling every 35 years, so with every generation we need 50% less people in the tasks which have to be done. But new tasks are found which help society and if many people pursue their passions, it is more likely that some people already have the required training when a given skill turns out to be very helpful to society.
The article takes a mistake — people trying to do something they want to have done but what they don’t actually love to do — and then uses this as basis for an argument that people should only do what they are good at. Which is not related to the problem described. It uses flawed reasoning to argument for something very problematic.
A society in which all people have to do only what they are good at is one without personal choice. It is an inhumane dystopia.
Consider the endgame: Your skills are measured at the age of 5. Then you get to learn what you are good at. And later do that.
And yes, with all-encompassing, constant and retroactive external evaluation of every choice in life we are moving there. It’s why people are so obsessed with their CVs these days, while 30 years ago many more followed their passions, regardless of what society thought.
You cannot expect to earn money with something you are not good at. But as a society we need to give people the space to experiment with things they are not yet good at to make it more likely that there are people who have the skills needed for the niches which open tomorrow. Otherwise we will have to pay far more people for doing something they are not good at, because no one will ever have developed the necessary skills.
The only skill you can be good at without doing what you love is a skill which someone else chose for you.
Should you do what you’re good at, or rather do what you love? Should you use your talents or follow your passion?
To answer this question, let’s look at actual research instead of gut feeling.1 Is a talent how good you are at doing something? Then it is a function of training time. Is it how fast you move forward? Then you likely already learned from other tasks many of the things you need for your task at hand.
If you’re not competing in top sports or pitting your skills against others every day in objectively measurable competitions where the winner takes it all (so you would have to be the best to earn anything), you can learn to be really good at most everything, if you put your mind to it. But you have to put your mind to it and train. Research showed that even the level of skill that top athletes and musicians possess is a direct function of the amount of training they put in (on logarithmic scale: double the training to become better by one measurable unit [3]).
That’s why I consider telling people to follow their talents instead of their passion to be cynical, though disguised as trying to help people find happiness. To paraphrase: “You are born with fixed talents. Your only choice in life is to use these or to be unhappy.” This isn’t just patronizing and invalidates the very idea of free will. It is also wrong.
The more realistic (and positive) guideline is to do what you love doing, and to work towards becoming great in what you love doing. Which is not the same as doing what you would love to have done: the hero is not the one who loves standing on the tribune but the one who loves doing what’s right despite hindrances. Training is hard, but if you make it a habit, it can become natural:
»The shift from deliberate to natural is powerful and transformational.«
— Thomas Oppong in To Get More Creative, Become Less Judgemental [4]
You can learn to become really, really good in almost anything you decide to do. It’s unlikely that you’ll become world champion if you start into a new skill at the age of 40, but you can come pretty close to the champions with a tenth of the training they put in. If you always did what (others said) you were good at till the age of 40, you still have a choice: When you reach 50 you can be very good at something you chose, or world class at something others chose for you.
But keep in mind that you’ll still need something to eat. If that what you love doing cannot keep you and your family fed, then you will have to settle for something less — for example using what you’re already good at in such a way that you love doing it and finding joy in some aspects of what you do. Those who told you what to do might have had good reason for that (but then, they might still have been wrong).
(also see The 4 things it takes to be an expert [5] or the book Thinking Fast and Slow from Kahnemann)
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance [3], K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer, Psychological Review, 1993 ↩
Links:
[1] https://medium.com/@ArneBab/this-whole-argument-sits-on-the-assumption-that-skills-develop-somehow-on-their-own-9cd0e3c766bc
[2] https://medium.com/personal-growth/youre-not-meant-to-do-what-you-love-you-re-meant-to-do-what-you-re-good-at-4e8e6b8e929d
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/DeliberatePractice%28PsychologicalReview%29.pdf
[4] https://medium.com/@alltopstartups/to-get-more-creative-become-less-judgemental-14413a575fa9
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eW6Eagr9XA