Why “Do What You Love” Is Only Half the Story

We’ve all heard it a thousand times: “Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.” This well-intentioned advice has launched countless career changes, side hustles, and inspirational Instagram posts. But after 20+ years in design, education, and creative community-building, I’ve learned there’s just one tiny problem with this philosophy: It’s woefully incomplete.

The Passion Paradise Myth

Back when I co-founded Ramp Creative with my partner Michael Stinson, I was a card-carrying member of the “passion equals happiness” club. We built a design studio around work we genuinely enjoyed, expecting our career satisfaction to skyrocket automatically. The result? Let's just say reality hit harder than explaining why we can't “just pull better stock photos” from thin air.

Because here’s what nobody tells you when they’re busy preaching the “follow your passion” gospel: loving your work is necessary but nowhere near sufficient for true career fulfillment.

The Missing Ingredients

What I’ve discovered is that career satisfaction is a complex recipe that requires several key ingredients beyond just passion:

1. Empathetic Teammates (Who Don’t Make Team Meetings Feel Like Eternal Punishment)

Imagine developing design comps but working with colleagues who respond to your directions with “can you make the logo bigger?” seventeen times a day. Or being passionate about running virtual event programs but surrounded by leadership who believe a single poll question is “revolutionary audience engagement” and the chat function is just “distracting clutter.”

The truth? You can adore your actual work but still dread Monday mornings if your team dynamics resemble a reality TV show competition. In leading the Digital Events team at Adobe, I recognized that great teammates don’t just make work bearable—they make it exponentially better through mutual support, respectful feedback, and the occasional shared eye-roll during unnecessarily long meetings.

In a design community, abundance comes through giving first and receiving second. Building genuine connections with empathetic teammates isn’t just about expanding your network—it’s about creating a community that sustains you through the ups and downs of your career. These relationships become your professional lifeline, especially when you’re trying to navigate the chaos of creative work.

2. Respectful Stakeholders (Who Remember You’re Human)

Ah, stakeholders—those mysterious figures who somehow believe their project is the only one that exists in the universe.

You might love designing annual reports (I do!), but if your clients treat your design directions like a game of "Let's Make Random Changes Until We Circle Back to Version 1," you'll soon find your passion fading quicker than your memory of last quarter’s strategic initiatives. As I’ve learned from hosting hundreds of virtual events, without proper engagement and respect, even the most exciting creative work becomes a soul-crushing exercise in futility.

Good stakeholders respect your expertise, provide clear direction, and understand that you can’t bend the laws of physics or time to meet impossible deadlines. The best ones actually value your input and make you feel like a partner rather than a service provider who exists solely to execute their increasingly indecisive requests.

3. Managers Who Set You Up For Success (Not Just Set You Up For Blame)

Perhaps the most crucial element in this equation is having a manager who:

• Advocates for you when you’re not in the room

• Establishes clear parameters without playing backseat driver

• Gives feedback that doesn’t require three days of emotional recovery

• Cares about your professional development beyond how it serves this quarter’s metrics

• Protects your time like it’s the last Berry Chantilly cake in the bakery at Whole Foods (inside joke, ask me about this one)

A good manager doesn’t just direct your work—they create the conditions that allow your passion to flourish rather than wither under the harsh fluorescent lights of corporate reality.

The Ecosystem Theory of Career Satisfaction

After years of building design communities from TypeEd to AIGA chapters, I’ve come to realize that career fulfillment follows an ecosystem model. Your passion for the work is the keystone species, but without the right environmental factors, the whole system collapses.

Think about it: even the most beautiful typography can’t save a poorly structured page. Similarly, your passion for your work can’t sustain itself in a toxic workplace environment, no matter how inherently enjoyable the tasks might be.

Finding The Complete Package

So how do we find this elusive combination of work we love AND the right ecosystem to support it?

First, we need to expand our job search criteria beyond just the role description. Company culture, team dynamics, and management style should be equal factors in our decision-making process. When I transitioned from teaching design at Cal State Los Angeles to joining Adobe to run their design event program, I wasn’t just looking at the job description—I was evaluating the entire ecosystem.

Second, we need to ask better questions during interviews. Instead of just “What would my day-to-day look like?” try “How does the team handle disagreements?” or “Can you tell me about how managers support professional development here?” These questions reveal the true culture beneath the corporate jargon.

Third, we need to be willing to walk away from toxic environments, even if the work itself aligns with our passions. No amount of love for your craft can compensate for a workplace that systematically undermines your well-being.

Trust me, I’ve seen enough human pyramids at AIGA leadership retreats to know that without a solid foundation and people supporting each other, the whole thing comes crashing down—just like a career built on passion alone without the right workplace ecosystem to hold it up.

The New Career Mantra

Maybe it’s time we update the old adage to something a bit more comprehensive:

“Do what you love, with people you respect, under leadership that values you, and you’ll still work—but it’ll be worth it.”

Not as catchy as “make it pop,” perhaps, but infinitely more useful. 😛 

Because at the end of the day, career satisfaction isn’t just about the tasks you perform—it’s about the entire ecosystem in which you perform them. When all elements align, work becomes something more than just tolerable or even enjoyable. It becomes fulfilling in a way that transcends the mere absence of Sunday night dread.

And isn’t that what we’re really looking for when we say we want to “do what we love”?

So here’s to finding not just work that you love, but workplaces that love you back—complete with teammates who get it, stakeholders who appreciate it, and managers who protect it. Because when you give to the design community, you receive. And when you build the right career ecosystem, everyone wins.

What's been your experience? Have you found that loving your work isn’t enough, or have you discovered the secret to making passion the only ingredient that matters?

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