{"id":235312,"date":"2018-01-19T07:41:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T15:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/?p=235312"},"modified":"2023-10-26T11:11:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T17:11:50","slug":"dream-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/dream-job\/","title":{"rendered":"How to find a job you love: Land a dream job that brings both joy and money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Do<\/a>In 1987, Marsha Sinetar published Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow<\/a><\/em>, a popular book about finding your dream job based on your passions. She urged readers to “follow their own hearts to the work of their dreams”.<\/p>\n

Sinetar is a proponent of what she calls Right Livelihood: Doing your best at what you do best.<\/p>\n

“Each of us, no matter how ordinary we consider our talents, wants and needs to use them. Right Livelihood is the natural expression of this need,” she wrote. “When we consciously choose to do work we enjoy, not only can we get things done, we can get them done well and be intrinsically rewarded for the effort.<\/strong> Money and security cease to be our only payments.”<\/p>\n

“Do what you love” sounds<\/em> like a great idea — who wouldn’t want a dream job that was both fun and paid the bills? — but as many people have pointed out over the past thirty years, it’s generally poor career advice. When folks cling to the belief that they’ll have no trouble if they do what they love, they run the risk of not being able to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

One obvious problem is that not everything you enjoy doing can generate a reliable source of income. I like videogames, for instance, but I’ll never make big bucks playing Hearthstone<\/a>. It’d be foolish to try.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, career columnist Penelope Trunk put it this way<\/a>: “I am a writer, but I love sex more than I love writing…I don\u2019t sit up at night thinking, should I do writing or sex? Because career decisions are not decisions about ‘what do I love most?'”<\/p>\n

There’s another problem that’s seldom mentioned. When people do<\/em> manage to find what they think is their dream job, to make a career out of what they love, they frequently lose enthusiasm for the very thing they once valued. I’ve experienced this first-hand.<\/p>\n

When I started Get Rich Slowly<\/a> in 2006, I was working as a salesman for the family box factory<\/a>. I didn’t like my day job, so blogging was a fun escape. Eventually, I made enough from blogging that I could quit my job selling boxes to write full time. I was going to do what I loved! Awesome, right? In many ways, it was<\/em> awesome — but it also quickly became a curse. Writing went from a fun escape to a tedious chore, a slog instead of a joy. (That’s one reason I sold this site<\/a> in 2009.) When I repurchased the site last fall, I thought long and hard about how to avoid falling into that trap once again. (So far, so good!)<\/p>\n

Having said all that, I don’t think it’s bad to seek your dream job. In fact, I believe it’s a worthwhile goal — as long as you have realistic expectations (and can be patient). The challenge is to juggle what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and what people will pay you to do.<\/p>\n

The Intersection of Joy, Money, and Flow<\/h2>\n

In 2016, my friend and colleague Chris Guillebeau published a book called Born for This: How to Find the Work You Were Meant to Do<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

“There’s more than one possible path to career success,” Guillebeau writes, “but you want to find the best one — the thing you were born to do.” He says that this “best path” is located at the intersection of joy, money, and flow.<\/p>\n

Ideally:<\/p>\n