• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Peak Careers

Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

  • FCD Career Class
  • Online Learning
    • Info about Online Seminars
    • 12 Month Calendar
    • Anxiety and Career Development: Theory, Practice, and Resources
    • Building Your Coaching Business
    • Career Readiness for Justice-Involved Citizens: Factors, methods, and insights
    • Career Advising Using Happenstance
    • Career Trends of the Future: So Much More than AI and Robots
    • EQ at Work: Emotional Intelligence for Career Practitioners
    • Finding Purpose: Working with Clients To Find Meaningful Work
    • LinkedIn: Advancing Your Skills
    • Transition Theory in Career Advising
    • Retirement Coaching: Unlocking New Opportunities for Your Clients
    • Social Media Strategies for Career Practitioners
    • Understanding Holland Interest Theory and Practical Applications
  • Workshops & Training
  • About
    • About Peak-Careers
    • Meet The Team
    • Peak-Careers Advisory Board
    • Privacy Policy
  • Shop
    • Field Guide BOOK
    • The Adventure of Finding Me in New Zealand
    • Career Poster
    • Webinars
      • WEBINAR: Mindfulness, Positive Psychology & Neuroscience to Help Yourself & Your Students/Clients
      • How To Successfully Build Your LinkedIn Network and Beyond
      • How To Successfully Work With Recruiters
      • WEBINAR: Creating a Value-Added Resume
      • Develop Confidence in Clients
      • Linkedin Train-the-Trainer
      • Develop Value-Added Statements
  • Resources
    • Career blogs
    • Book Reviews
    • Interviews
      • INTERVIEW: Choosing 3 Words to Guide You
      • INTERVIEW: With a Few Book Lovers
      • INTERVIEW: Brand Yourself On LinkedIn
      • INTERVIEW: Staffing & Recruiting Agencies
      • INTERVIEW: Would You Benefit from Hiring a Business Coach?
      • INTERVIEW – Creating the Conversation Using Card Sorts
      • INTERVIEW: TED Talks for Career Practitioners
      • INTERVIEW: What is Mindfulness and Why Should Career Practitioners Care?
      • INTERVIEW: My Three Words to Guide Me in 2019
      • INTERVIEW: Reading Books for Professional Development
  • Contact

Do What You Love and Other Lies About Success and Happiness

February 9, 2022 by Jim Peacock 2 Comments

By Miya Tokumitsu

This book came recommended to me (can’t remember who but I have a e-note with lots of book recommendations) and I recommended it to my book club in our career counselors Facebook group.

The used book I bought is filled with highlights, sticky notes, and hand written scribbles on the inside cover and throughout the book.

It was actually quite funny because some pages had nearly the entire page highlighted or underlined 🙂

As a career service provider I was looking for advice on what to do but this is more about why our society is so fixated on the mantra “Do What You Love (DWYL)” and the downsides of it.

Some of the results of this mantra mean that there are many people with college degrees, doing work they thought would be work they love once they got their degree, and instead they are doing work that does not require a college degree and they also have huge student loans.

Companies love to lure people in to do work they love only to pay them little like child care, or interns, or adjunct faculty, then pay them little while the owners make money. All the while many of these people believing they are doing what they love but never can move up to make more money.

Many of these jobs that fit into the DWYL category are minimum wage and people are not able to raise a family on it. The DWYL mantra clearly favors the rich who can afford to send their children to college (who cares if the college costs $60,000 / year), and then find a job for their son/daughter to do.

She rails on all kinds of systemic things like temp agencies as paying little, offering hope of full-time work but never getting it. But I don’t buy all her arguments. I see lots of people who get FT jobs from internships as well as FT jobs from temp agencies.

She makes good points about how this idea feeds the higher education institutions and many companies who promise a future but don’t deliver…except to make millions for the owners. But apprenticeships have been around for centuries and they worked out

There clearly is an elitist and socio-economic thing going on in the US in particular that benefits the wealthy, but some of these systems are still great, like temp agencies, and adjunct. But higher education needs to figure out how to operate their schools AND pay faculty a living wage.

I have more thoughts on this and hope to come back to it soon.

Share this post:

Share on Facebook Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Email

Filed Under: Book Reviews

About The Author

Read More…

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Amy Mazur says

    December 6, 2022 at 7:25 pm

    Thank you for sharing this book review Jim – An important class-based/capitalist perspective to consider. You might also like the work of Erin Cech who wrote The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality.

    More about Cech here: https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/lsa-magazine/Fall-2022/not-passionate-about-your-job–that-s-ok.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=LSA&utm_campaign=230025-MC-LSA-Magazine-EMAIL&utm_content=textlink

  2. Jim says

    December 6, 2022 at 7:28 pm

    Thank you Amy for your thoughts and recommendation for another book.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Footer

Connect With Peak Careers

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn

NCDA-approved provider

Career Practitioners Subscribe Today

Sign up for "the Top 10 Tips When Working With an Undecided Person" and also receive a weekly email on a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more SUBSCRIBE

Copyright © 2025 Peak Careers

Subscribe

Sign up here to receive my  “TOP 10 TIPS WHEN WORKING WITH AN UNDECIDED PERSON”. 

You can also receive our weekly career practitioners email which includes a variety of career topics, industry news, interesting events, and more. 

Subscribe Today