Passion Eats Passions For Breakfast

A not-so-subtle call to get a life by Saransh Mehta, Brand Strategist

Image credits: Vaibhav Vidyadhar

‘Advertising is a passion-driven industry’ is what most of us would reckon. So much that we often hold others in contempt for being less passionate than us. And vice-versa.

But why is being ‘less passionate’ sacrilegious, when one can square off their job lists (and hence their JD) day after day? And not want to contribute beyond that.

Because we all have normalized the ‘passion’ culture. The culture that borderlines with, and creeps into everyone’s sanity:

Throwing in a number or two from a recently conducted survey* to prove how too much passion has costed our sanity:

• 66% were still working (beyond 10 pm) when they responded to the survey
• 71% didn’t have enough time to pursue hobbies
• 75% are already facing a lifestyle mishap

*(The survey was conducted on IG Story were 108 of my friends in advertising, across agencies, replied diligently, gladly & hopefully.)

Thus, rather than stigmatizing the lack of passion in others, shouldn’t we de-normalize toxic passion within us?

“Sounds funnily wrong, doesn’t it?”

I mean, is it so wrong to turn my passion into my career? To wake up every morning and believe that I’m going to be happy, and content by EOD?

“Surely, that doesn’t sound off-script.”

The problem is the way we crunch our passion — playing a non-stop staccato on the laptop, flattening cushions after cushions, making a cactus of our brain, and glorifying our peanuts, that keeps radiating from our hearts, but has readily shadowed our lives.

Here’s proof:

• 67% were not able to take care of their health at least thrice a week
• Most of them had not traveled (for leisure) for the last 9 months before the lockdown
• 90% believed the joke of salaries being peanuts to be a reality
• For most of them, it took the pandemic-induced free time to learn something new

Thus, our crime is not ‘being passion-driven, but ‘misappropriation of passion’ that has evidently killed our so-called life.

In our cradling days, the showcase of passion must have brought us some working high. But soon when it started giving diminishing returns in our life, we couldn’t help but question it:

“That, did it really warrant for so many lost moments, uninitiated trips, non-recurring hobbies, unfinished plans, unappreciated thoughts?”

And every time the gut answered a negative, it weakened our motivation — to be in advertising. This too reflected on the survey — 93% of them are already determined to quit on the grounds of no work-life balance, mental/physical health issues, or a low pay grade

Passion, in that sense, is such an omnivorous cannibal that, if need be, it feeds on its own ally — motivation. So, how do we not let one passion outweigh other passions? How do we Davids kill the Goliath of our miscreant passion and not lose our Soul Stone — motivation?

In fact, can we do it the Avengers-style? Like, seriously.

Call upon all our super strengths from within, gather all the gems of work-life balance, and snap away to success?

I think we, at Webchutney, already have the ways to all the six stones and are somewhere in the journey to find them. Take for instance:

1. The Space Stone: Planned downtimes: The first, for each team & the second, across all our floors have unarguably given us the Space Stone in the year 2020 (mum about the year). I just hope that we don’t lose them for 2021.
2. The Reality Stone: Brand goal setting: A journey we all recently took to define what’s really possible on all our brands and how we plan to achieve them within our 9-hour work policy.
3. The Power Stone: SOP alignment: An exercise for which we collaborated with our client and made power equal at both ends. We defined where power could be used for certain exceptions and could also be used to say a humble ‘no’.
4. The Mind Stone: Hank Nunn Institute: Our collaboration with the HNI team, regular mails from our CEO reminding us that it is ok to not be ok, and constant efforts of Freya to make sure we are ok to prove that the Mind Stone is never to be forsaken under any circumstances. 😊
5. The Time Stone: Timesheets: A friend disguising as an enemy when the weekend is about to end (you know if you know :D). But it has surely made me at least aware that I need to manage my time better.
6. The Soul Stone: Our other passions: Our CEO couldn’t have made this any clearer that Webchutney wants us all to keep being who we are. From giving us the Medium blog to rant on, to collating every employee’s interest areas (something big to come).

Now that we all have or eventually, will be having all the six stones, what will our killer move be like?

We copy-paste the kind words Gautam Reghunath, our CEO has time and again echoed: “Repeat after me, you do not owe your work more than 9 hours of your day.”

Because what we do 7–10 is really going to invigorate what we do 10–7. Life, itself, is the black gold for us all in advertising — or in any other field for that matter. And the more we refuel ourselves with it, more often shall we have our wits about us while trying to solve a problem IRL.

And so, with our passions chained, clients on our side, a favorable system, an aware mindset, and most importantly, Gautam’s tenet we might just have all the required stones to build the omnipotent gauntlet that would snap away our collective miseries and restore motivation (read: life) in our lives.