Can Passion For Your Work Drive Burnout? With Jon Jachimowicz

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (0:00)
Growing a business is so exciting, and it's so overwhelming. I remember that when I owned my business, which was a political consulting and issue advocacy consulting business, at one point, I was paying taxes in like six states, and I had so much compliance and regulatory to pay attention to. And if you're growing internationally, you know it's just not about knowing who you want to hire. It's about keeping everything in that country running smoothly as you scale. And that's where Pebl comes in. If you're a founder or an HR leader, building a great team is the fun part, right? Managing everything that comes with it as you grow globally is where things can get tricky. And Pebl makes that part easier. Pebl makes global hiring simple. Through embedded compliance and AI-driven workflows, the Pebl platform takes the delays and guesswork out of going global. Through embedded compliance and AI-driven workflows, the Pebl platform takes the delays and guesswork out of going global. We have a special offer for listeners of this podcast. Pebl is normally $399 a month per employee, which is already a no-brainer for what you get. But right now, there's a limited-time offer on their site, which makes it easier to get started. Go to hipebl.ai, that's hi, hipebl.ai, hipebl.ai, terms and conditions apply. Hi, I'm Morra Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever. Today, I'm going to bring you one of our most downloaded and one of my most favorite episodes from our archives. It's a classic. The Anxious Achiever has been at it for a long time. We have over 300 episodes, and honestly, they're all still more relevant than ever. You may hear details in this episode that remind you it's from another time. I guarantee that the advice you get will be as crisp and meaningful and the stories as resonant as before. If you have a favorite episode of the show, let me know. I'd love to air it again or even rerecord it for you fresh. Enjoy this classic Anxious Achiever episode.
Look, at this point, it's a cliche in most industries and certainly for high achievers. Follow your passion and professional success will come from that, right? Lead with passion, the rest will follow. We see tech leaders and non-profit visionaries and everyone in between talk about how important it is to really believe in your work and to have it constantly motivate you, to feel fulfillment from the job itself and the purpose.
Passion is what drives me in my work most days, and you can probably relate.
But today on the show, I speak with Harvard Business School Professor, Jon Jachimowicz, who studies what causes passion and what passion results in.
He has found that the downside of passion might just be burnout. When we're in a passionate state, when we're having a passionate day, we feel like we could walk on air, right? Maybe work doesn't even feel like work. But what happens the next day when we're not having such a great day? And what happens when all that passion leads us to ignore taking care of ourselves or overworking? Especially for us high achieving types, passion can sometimes take us to an unhealthy place, and so we need to be intentional about it. And even more, companies themselves need a passion strategy.
So let's learn more about why exactly that is and how it affects us as workers, leaders, and organizations.
Do you tell your students ever? Find your passion?

**Jon Jachimowicz** (3:55)
So I... It's a complicated question.

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (3:58)
It's kind of a joke.

**Jon Jachimowicz** (3:59)
I know, it's kind of a joke, but there's a lot of heft in that question. So two things. I think one of the challenges is, why would I tell them when they already all know that? Like, they all walk through the door knowing that that's what they should be doing. There are posters on campus that say like, make a meaningful difference. The motto of the school is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Me saying it to them, it wouldn't change anything. Like, it's just where their head's already at. So I don't have to tell them. When I was at Columbia Business School, I ran a survey where I surveyed the incoming class of MBA students, and I asked them how important is passion in your future career, like pursuing your passion. Over 90 percent of students listed that as their top priority. It's interesting to think through where are students when they graduate versus 10 years post-graduation.
I would wager, even though I don't have the data, but I would wager that 10 years post-graduation, the importance of passion in careers has decreased. I think the further out you go, the importance of passion decreases until, I think, close before retirement age, when people start thinking about their legacy, and then they start thinking about the impact that they want to have on the world, and particularly people who have been in careers up until that point where maybe they've prioritized making a lot of money or being someone, being powerful.