The problem with passion
Is passion something other than Horizon 5, or part of it?
It may not seem this way to many, but people in higher education are passionate. The object of our passions can vary: Some are passionate about teaching, others about research, others about leadership, and so on. But the passion is there, and it runs very deep. How else can you explain sacrificing 5-7 years of the prime of your life to research and study in order to earn a terminal degree that allows you to pursue those passions full-time?1 And maybe most importantly, when that pursuit leads us into difficult times, as it inevitably will, we can fall back on our passions to pull us through.
And that’s where passion can get us into trouble.
Wait, you might ask, aren’t we supposed to follow our passions in life? Isn’t this what makes life worth living, and work worth doing? My message for you today is: It’s complicated. While we should be aware of our passions, simply “following” them can lead to all kinds of downstream problems that make it hard to have an intentional approach to life and work, especially in academia.
What is the problem?
In my last article, I wrote about Horizon 5, which is GTD-speak for our framework of purpose and principles, and why getting clarity on these things is essential. If you read that article, you might have been wondering where passion fits in. It’s not specifically mentioned as part of that framework (even though “purpose, principles, and passions” would have had nice alliteration). It’s also not specifically mentioned as something outside that framework. Where does it go?
If we don’t come to grips with this question, we will often treat passion like it’s something other than our purpose and principles, something situated on the outside of that framework, like a “Horizon 6” that sits above, and governs, Horizon 5. And that’s the problem with passion: It’s all too easy to improperly situate it among our purposes and principles and instead think of it as something with veto power over them.
This leads to all kinds of problematic situations. For example, I am passionate about making music. Let’s suppose I let that passion take over and just “followed” it. Then the right choice for me, would would be to quit my job and relocate to LA or Nashville, and try to break into the music scene as a session player or touring musician. What a story that would be! But there are a lot of problems with it. First and foremost, unless my wife and kids are willing to uproot and join me as a struggling musician, I would be separated from them for an unknown time. My wife has a job here in Michigan that she enjoys and is good at doing, so she would either have to quit that job and start over (or else we’re separated). I would almost certainly not be making money at first, possibly ever, so it puts my financial independence in jeopardy. And on the list goes.
My passion for making music, in other words, is not some special higher horizon that has override power over my purpose and principles. Instead, it’s one of those purposes and principles, or an expression of several of them. As we saw last time, in a Life Plan you can formulate that framework in terms of values, roles, and domains. In my Life Plan, “musician” is one of my main roles in life — but so is “father”, “husband”, “teacher”, “writer”, and a few others. If I take one of those roles and elevate it above all the others because I feel like it’s my passion in life, I am subordinating all the other roles to it, and I am no longer in balance. Instead, my job as a human, yours too, is to hold all these values, roles, and domains in tension with each other — literally living “intentionally”2 — so that they all work together.
The solution is neither to sell completely out to my passion for music or to silence it, but rather to figure out a way to make music work with being a dad, husband, colleague, writer, and so on. Music is maybe the most important thing in my life right now behind my family and my health. But it’s just one thing, and it’s not fair to myself or others in my life to max it out at the expense of everything else.
Why this can be a major problem for academics
This article and the one before it were inspired by a recent real-life story. Sadly this story is far from unique. I include it here not to shame or blame the person involved, but to illustrate why I feel the issues I brought up earlier are so vitally important for academics.
Daniel McKeown is3 a lecturer in the physics department at UCLA. He is also a prolific TikToker with an impressive portfolio of science explainer videos. But in a video posted in October, he shared that he is only being paid $70,000 for the current academic year. This may sound like a lot of money, but it isn’t, because this is the LA area and his rent was $2500 per month. His attempt to renegotiate his contract with the department was declined. He had to move out of his apartment and was, at the time of the story, living with a friend living 5 hours away. Technically, he is homeless4.
When I first read this story, I wondered what I would do if I were in that same situation, especially with the added constraints of having a wife and children to consider5. This wasn’t a difficult exercise, though, even with those family constraints. To me, it was crystal clear that I would give my employer some anatomically unlikely suggestions for what they could do to themselves, and then immediately do everything within my power to get into a new job, a new career if necessary, where I can actually have a life.
Prof. McKeown was asked about this in the news article and took a different track:
When asked why he doesn’t teach elsewhere, McKeown said, “I refuse to stop teaching. Teaching my students is my absolute passion. UCLA is a top university for physics.” [emphasis added]
I don’t know Daniel McKeown or all the details of his situation, and as I mentioned he and I are in different life situations (kids vs. no kids, for example) and probably have a very different system of principles, goals, and values. So I am not in a position to say his decisions are right or wrong, or better or worse than what I would do6. But, I was fascinated at how different his response to the situation was than mine. Eventually I realized: I’d respond the same way, if I elevated passion to a position separate from, and above, my particular system of principles, goals, and values, or if I didn’t have such a system in the first place.
Which, again, is not to say that Prof. McKeown lacks principles (he clearly does not) or puts passion above those. As I said in my previous article: Not all faculty who end up in terrible jobs are there because of poor decisions or a lack of clarity on their principles. But, almost every faculty member I know who doesn’t have clarity on their principles, ends up making poor decisions – often justified by “passion” – that very frequently lead them into terrible job situations, some as bad or even worse than Prof. McKeown’s.
You probably know some of these faculty: The professor who says “yes” to almost every request for unpaid labor in a department, thus wrecking their physical and mental health, because they are “passionate about students”. The researcher who works nights and weekends in the lab, to the detriment of their families, because they are “passionate about research”. And on and on.
The passion itself is probably a good thing. But making passion the most important thing, so that it overrides the other good things that should govern our lives and work, turns it into an idol, and turns us into nothing more than machines at its service.
So what do you do about it?
You’re not a machine, though — you are a human being with a life that is worth living to its fullest extent. To do that, we have to honor our passions, while at the same time realizing that they are just one member of a group of principles and values that have to be taken as a whole.
I said I wondered what I would do if I were in Daniel McKeown’s place, but in fact I was in a similar place once. In 2010, I was in a faculty position at another institution, and had been there for nine years and had even gotten tenure and a promotion. But it wasn’t going well at all, on a number of levels, and I was miserable to the point of having repeated and deep depressive episodes that would often bleed into my family life. My family wasn’t homeless, but we’d bought a house that was more expensive than we could afford, and were barely making ends meet (which added to the depression). By 2009, I knew I had to make the same choice as Prof. McKeown: stay put or move on.
I was passionate about students too, and one choice I could have made was to stay put and try to salvage my career. But I had a dim awareness at the time7 that I had other roles, goals, and values that were in tension with this passion that also needed to be honored:
I was a father who needed to provide for my kids (at the time aged 1, 4, and 7) both financially and emotionally.
I was a husband who need to support and love his wife and give her time and space to grow and live a life.
I was just beginning my journey as a writer and speaker and lacked the time and space to build in that direction.
And so on.
My passion for my students at this college was strong — but on balance, considering everything in my life that I cared about — the best choice was to risk everything and move on. Doing so was the hardest decision I have ever made. It was also the best.
The particulars of your situation are probably different than mine, and under the same conditions the “right” choice for you might be different. But what will make any decision good — whether it’s a huge decision like whether or not to quit a terrible job and strike out in a different direction, or a smaller one like which journal to submit your paper to or whether to say “yes” to a service opportunity — is whether your choice arises from an intentional consideration of everything that is important to you, and isn’t merely driven by “passion”.
And to do that on a consistent basis, you need to have some idea of your Horizon 5 and a firm grasp on the idea that your passions are not something apart from and above Horizon 5, but rather a part of it — an important part, sure, but just one voice among several that you should listen to.
Now you do it
First of all if you have not done the “homework” from last time, do that.
Think about the things that you would say you are passionate about — teaching, research, writing, baking, playing Euchre, snowboarding, whatever. Write these down. You may only have 1-3 things and that’s OK. If you can’t come up with anything, put the assignment down for a while and spend time reflecting. You are definitely passionate about something.
Now think about where your passion fits into your framework of values, roles, and domains. It is one of those? Is it a combination of them?
Extra Credit: Reflect on a major decision that you might be facing. It could be whether or not you should stay in a particular job; or take on a new responsibility at work; or explore some new and demanding area of life, like having a child or selling your home and moving. How can you use your framework — which now includes your passions as full members — to make that decision intentionally?
Etc.
Students, too, often are in positions where they lack the means to meet their basic needs. To learn more about this and get some options for doing something about it, please check out the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs at Temple University.
A Chicago tribute band based out of Russia might not have been on your bingo card today, but Leonid & Friends has you covered (haha!). They are probably the world’s greatest cover band, playing note-for-note renditions of complex songs from Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire, Steely Dan, and more and making it look easy — especially considering English is not their native language. Check out their version of the Chicago deep cut “Old Days”.
You might say, “stubbornness and a lack of judgment”. I offer no comment on that.
I don’t actually know if “in tension” and “intention” are really related etymologically or if it’s just a coincidence that they are homophones. But I’m struck by the fact that they are, and I think there’s quite a bit to learn by thinking about them side by side.
Prof. McKeown’s employment with UCLA is currently uncertain, at least to me; this October 25 news item reports that he was placed on leave and relieved of his teaching duties.
As I said, this situation is far from unique. Read this, or this, or watch this for instance. In fact this recent report found that 38% of instructional staff, mostly from community colleges, responding to the survey are unable to meet their basic food and housing needs. There are clearly massive systemic issues in higher education that need to be addressed, because this can’t go on.
At least, as far as I was able to determine, Prof. McKeown does not have any partner or dependents. I may be wrong about that.
I do feel the need to say: I have a lot of questions about this response. First, who said anything about quitting teaching? HigherEdJobs.org currently (November 2024) lists over 900 faculty jobs in physics, about 600 of which are full time, many of which are not accessible to generalists but a lot of them are. Second, is UCLA the only place worth teaching physics at? I would think students at the University of North Florida or Appalachian State University would be thrilled to have a dedicated and talented “science explainer” as their professor – and these are significantly less expensive places to live than LA. Third, to those who counter that one cannot “just move to a different place” because it costs money to do so, you’re right, but I’d point out that Prof. McKeown started a fundraiser to raise $100,000 so he could move — to a particular LA neighborhood where the monthly rent averages over $3000. A person could move to Jacksonville, Florida or Boone, North Carolina for a fraction of that amount, so why not raise the money to do that instead? Like I said, no judgment but a lot of questions.
This was right around the time I discovered the GTD philosophy and so had only a loose grasp on the idea of Horizon 5. But the grasp was good enough.