"Do what you enjoy" is weak career advice, because paid work changes how an activity feels. The overjustification effect is the reason: once something enjoyable becomes an obligation with a reward attached, the internal motivation drops. Most things you love for an hour you would not love for twelve hours a day. Choose for the problems you want to solve and the life the work allows, then keep the hobby a hobby.
The other route is growing: England recorded 308,770 apprenticeship starts between August 2025 and April 2026, up 8.7% year on year. — DfE, Apprenticeships, 2025/26
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It’s 1835.
Your mom’s shouting at you.
Wake up!
Shoot, you have overslept. You jump out of bed, grab a half eaten potato and race your way over to your job.
Well, that is if you are a boy. In which case, you would be either making your way to the local coal mine or, if you are less fortunate, to the roof tops, so that you can shimmy your way down some chimneys and get them spick and span.
Now, if you're a girl, well you are in for some real luck! Get yourself a big batch of clothes to wash by HAND and also get started on scrubbing the floor clean with some good old carbolic soap.
Enjoy!
….
Why am I telling you this?
Well, for the vast majority of history, most people did not have the option to select between 1000s of different careers, especially ones that were safe and well paid. In that sense, we are extremely privileged.
However, this has also led to a relatively new discourse about what career one should pursue?
There are literally thousands out there.
You could be a doctor, an engineer or even a gumologist…(somebody who creates the mind boggling texture and flavour you taste when you work your way through a pack of Wrigley’s).
Nowadays, the "which career should I pick" conversation is becoming especially convoluted with the emergence of the ginormous selection of career paths. So, which one should you pick?
Well, unfortunately, you aren’t going to find that out today. What I will discuss, however, is how not to pick a career.
“Just do what you enjoy!”😄
I briefly outlined 4 key elements that you should consider when choosing a career in a previous newsletter. For a quick recap, here they are again:
1. What you love 🥰
2. What you are good at 😏
3. What you can be paid for 🤑
4. What the world needs 🤔
Today, I wish to dive in a bit deeper into the science of why these 4 principles are important. More specifically for this article, I want to outline why you shouldn’t just pick a career that you enjoy.
Now, I am by no way suggesting that you should suffer in a career that you hate, but rather why you can’t simply pick a career you find fun.
What is the overjustification principle?
In 1973, a study was conducted by researchers involving a group of schoolchildren.
They took these children and split them up into groups. These groups were put into 3 different classroom environments where, at recreation time, there was a drawing station for the kids to use.
In the 1st group, the drawing station would promise a reward to the child if they drew something on it. In the 2nd group, the kids would get an unexpected reward if they drew at the station and in the final group, the kids would receive nothing after drawing.
Following this time period, they would observe the childrens' attitudes to drawing and see if they had changed.
Sounds fairly straightforward. So, what were the results?
Well, the children in the 1st group did engage in drawing over the course of the study, but the pictures they drew were of a lower quality compared to the other groups and they also drew less often. Even worse, after removal of the reward, their interest in drawing halved!
Keep in mind that all the children selected for this study had a pre-existing interest in drawing (might have lost the next Picasso in the 1st group, but oh well).
In the other 2 groups, the children drew higher quality pictures and also following the study, kids in these groups didn’t lose their interest in drawing.
Perplexing...
Surely, if we are getting rewarded to do something, we would probably do it better and more often?
Well, that’s half of the truth.
It turns out that there is a psychological principle at play called the over justification principle.
In a nutshell, if you reward a behaviour which is already intrinsically valued (i.e the person already enjoys doing the activity without any external or physical rewards) then it decreases their motivation to do the activity. This is partly due to the fact that the person is no longer engaging in the activity because they enjoy it, but rather because they want the reward. Therefore, in the absence of an increasingly bigger reward, they are much less motivated to do the activity. The children in the 1st group associated the action with receiving rewards, while the other 2 groups didn't have the same association since they either didn’t receive a reward or got one unexpectedly.
It makes sense if you think about it. Imagine if your boss just stopped paying you. Let's be real, most of us would be out that door in no time.
However, we engage in unpaid activites everyday such as playing football or socialising because we find them intrinsically rewarding. We don't expect a physical/monetary reward from doing these activites.
Let me reiterate. I am not saying don’t do something that you don’t enjoy, but that shouldn’t be the SOLE reason for why you are doing it. There are plenty of things that I enjoy - playing video games, watching Netflix, but if someone was to make me do it for 12 hours a day, then maybe I wouldn't be so inclined.
Having a meaning to our daily activities outside of personal enjoyment is essential for long term fulfilment.
If you simply follow your base pleasure-seeking instincts, then don't be surprised when your performance crashes and you feel completely burnt out after the first few months.
What else is worth reading?
- Why networking is important
- Discovering Your Passion Post-Graduation: A Guide for New Graduates
- Effective Networking Strategies in London's Education Sector
- Embracing Risk: The Key to Personal and Professional Growth
- Essential Mathematics Books for Aspiring Professionals in the UK
What can this guide not tell you about your own pay?
Pay, entry routes and how much demand there is for a role vary by employer and by region, and they change from year to year. Nothing here is a forecast of what you personally will earn or be offered. The current official position for any UK role is on the National Careers Service.
Course claims are checkable, and this is where the numbers come from:
“The data on Discover Uni includes official statistics from national surveys and data collected from universities and colleges.” — Discover Uni, About our data
Where can you check this at source?
Pay, entry routes and duties for any UK role change over time, and the official profiles are the version to trust:
- National Careers Service — job profiles with current pay bands and entry requirements
- Apprenticeships (gov.uk) — how apprenticeships work, and what they pay
- DfE — Graduate labour market statistics — employment rates for graduates against non-graduates