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“Do what you love.” Perhaps you’ve been told this by someone, or read it somewhere online, or maybe seen one of those self-improvement infomercials late at night with the guy with big hair yelling at you to Live With Passion and that kind of stuff. The idea is to find something that you would do even if you weren’t paid for it and then pursue that as a career. If you are at all interested in self-improvement, then you’ve probably come across this catchphrase at some point or another. If everyone just pursued their passion then everyone’s lives would be brilliant and fun and successful and great. Really?

Call me cynical, but I think this idea is a little simplistic and more than a little unrealistic. Think about what you, as a unique person, truly love. Is it something that you can realistically get paid for? Is it something that you could go out tomorrow and get hired to do, right off the street?

Although the post is a little old, Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog made a very good point about the “Do what you love” mantra: It’s bad career advice.

She asserts that career decisions are not about doing what you love most in life, they are about making it possible to live the life you ultimately want to live. She argues that trying to find a paying job doing something you would do for no pay is often an impossible goal. And Penelope emphasizes a point that I totally agree with: no job will make your life complete. “Relationships make your life great, not jobs.”

Her point is that you shouldn’t fixate on trying to find a career “doing what you love” — look for a job that takes advantage of your strengths, adds value to the community and to your self, and focus on building relationships.

Penelope concludes:

“For better or worse, we value people with money. Earn some. Doing work you love is not so important. We value love in relationships. Make some.”

I think that’s good advice.