DO WHAT YOU LOVE!

In an overstocked marketplace, businesses can no longer crank out pallets of identical widgets. They must create customized, intriguing, even beautiful products, services and experiences. How do you do this? You need employees who possess not only technical ability but also a sense of curiosity, aesthetics and, yes, joyfulness.

In other words, to make it in the emerging economy, we will have to do things that software can’t do faster and that overseas knowledge workers can’t do more cheaply. In addition, what we produce must also satisfy the growing consumer demand for products and services infused with emotion, spirituality and artistry.

As the information age matures, “eat-your-spinach” skills are still necessary, but they are no longer sufficient. The abilities that matter more are turning out to be the abilities that are also fundamental sources of human gratification. And that’s good news for many intrinsically motivated (but sometimes parentally discouraged) professions. Indeed, more Americans already work in art, entertainment and design than work as lawyers, accountants and auditors.

To be sure, this new labor market is not a land in which every person will be able to pursue a passion and instantly arrive at a fat paycheck. Still, we may finally be at the point where we can tell freshly minted graduates: Look, it’s a rough world out there. There’s only one way to survive.
Do what you love!

Excerpt from a nytimes.com article by Daniel H. Pink the author of “Pomp & Circumspect.