Is “Find your passion” really a good way to choose a course?

It’s advice that is as old as the sun: “Find your passion, and you’ll never do another day’s work in your life”.

Or when you are heading off to university “Choose a course that you are passionate about”.

But, most careers advisers nowadays would say that such advice is deeply unhelpful. It creates the expectation that every young person should have found their passion. And since most of you simply haven’t found your passion while still at school, it just creates unnecessary pressure on you. Which in turn just makes you freeze; unsure of how to progress and how to choose what to do next.

However, perhaps there is something to be said for working out ways to explore your potential passions; how to find challenges, industries, and roles that might feel more like you are making a difference, and less like you are doing a job.

So how can you go about exploring what yours might be?