Value self-determination is simply figuring out what you care about for yourself. Figuring out your values allows you to tailor your definition of success to your unique personality and life circumstances.

Relying on external markers of success can leave ambitious professionals in any field feeling perpetually unfulfilled. This isn’t to say that ambition and achievement are necessarily bad. But in order to satisfy our souls’ deepest yearnings, there must be alignment between our values and the values of the games we play. We

97 percent of respondents in a 2019 survey agreed with the following statement: “A person is successful if they have followed their own interests and talents to become the best they can be at what they care about most.”

percent decrease in employee sick days.

those who have found a job that they enjoy, expecting it to always be a dream is a recipe for disappointment.

It wasn’t until the German theologian Martin Luther came along that our conception of work’s role in life began to shift. In sixteenth-century Europe, the Catholic Church was making a fortune selling little pieces of parchment called indulgences, pardons for sin to citizens looking to buy their way into heaven.

“The problem with this gospel6—your dream job is out there, so never stop hustling—is that it’s a blueprint for spiritual and physical exhaustion,” writes Derek Thompson. “It is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever.”

Throughout history, wealth has been inversely correlated with how many hours people work. The more wealth you have, the less you work because, well, you can afford not to. But in the last half century,8 the highest earners are responsible for some of the greatest increases in work time. That is to say, the same Americans who can afford to work the

Following your passion works best for folks with the privilege to manage the inherent risk of doing so.