DWYL: Is Doing What You Love Overrated?

We’re encouraged to follow our dreams, and find a job that defines us. But might we be happier earning our crust and clocking off on time?

Like YOLO, FTW and OMFG, you know an idea has captured the public imagination when it has its very own abbreviation. And DWYL (or doing what you love) is key to the mindset of Generation Y, brought up to believe in infinite choice and endless possibilities: the idea that we can do whatever our pretty little hearts desire.

Fast forward to 2014, post-recession and mid so-called economic recovery, and the reality doesn’t quite seem so rosy. Graduates are fast realising that a minimum wage job, let alone the elusive "dream career", is hard to come by.

Meanwhile many in their late 20s and 30s who did follow their dreams when choosing a career, have paid a price: making DWYL pay can mean being burnt out from working all hours and letting relationships and family life slide. Others who put passion before hard cash are still waking up in their parents’ home, having sacrificed future pensions and financial security at the altar of their dreams.

If we needed any further proof, a recent study found that the average writer in the UK earns just £600 a year - barely enough to pay a month’s rent in the capital city.

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And yet we keep dreaming. US career guru Penelope Trunk says the pressure to find the perfect career is now “insane”. “And, given that people are trying to find it before they are thirty, in order to avoid both a quarterlife crisis and a biological-clock crisis, the pressure is enough to push people over the edge,” she writes on her blog. “Here’s some practical advice: Do not what you love; do what you are. It’s how I chose my career.”

It wasn't always this way. If wanderlust and instability are the markers of this generation, security is one of the defining factors of the past. Back in the days when jobs were for life, and Facebook a mere twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye, all that was asked of a job was that it paid the bills and served to live well. Jobs weren’t expected to fulfill our desires and define who we are.

Through the 1990s, there was a massive rise in the use of the phrase “follow your passion”, before it skyrocketed in the 2000s, according to Google’s Ngram viewer, which measures how often a phrase appears in print- something that Cal Newport points out in the Harvard Business Review. At the same time, use of the phrase “a secure career” has fallen dramatically since the mid-1980s. Who needs security when you’ve got passion, eh?

But if there is a demise of the DWYL dream, that won’t necessarily turn us all into corporate robots, says Cary Cooper psychologist and professor at Lancaster University School of Management. For a start, while we may be forced into doing something we don’t love just to pay the bills, it is now more likely that we won’t be doing it for long. “You have to sometimes take jobs that are not meeting your skill set, or level. But many jobs are no longer for life,” he says. “We now have discontinuous careers, mostly forced on us.”

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This flexibility and willingness to move around bodes well for the possibility of DWYL in some capacity: Generation Y are less hung up on pension pots and mortgages, so if an opportunity does arise, we are more likely to grab it with both hands, adds Cooper.  “Generation Y are more capable of being more flexible. I think they’re basically more prepared to take risks than their parents’ generation,” he says. “Insecurity is a great driver of success: you have more drive if you have nothing to lose.”

For wannabe artists or writers, who want to “follow their passion” full-time, Cooper’s advice is just to avoid getting a “proper” job, which in this day and age, takes far too much time and energy to devote it elsewhere: “Taxi-driving, or call-centre work, where you can clock in and out - it’s not a big deal.”

Maybe lowering expectations to DHYJ - don’t hate your job - might make us all a little happier and a little less skint. And as anyone who has been unemployed can tell you, there is a lot to be said for the humble 9 till 5, no matter what Dolly Parton says.