The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the way we work and live. Those working from home struggled to navigate blurred boundaries between their work and personal lives, while others had to cope with being furloughed or permanently unemployed. Given these disruptions, one would expect that employees’ passion for work would take a back seat. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals not only sustained their work passion but also expanded their passion to non-work activities, and engaging in both passions provided a much-needed therapeutic effect during tough times. In our article published in the Journal of Management Studies, we examine whether individuals could indeed have passion for both work and non-work activities during the COVID-19 pandemic and how different passions combined to safeguard one’s life satisfaction during the crisis.

Harmonious and Obsessive Passion  

Passion refers to an individual’s liking of and identification with a favorite activity, whether this activity is work or non-work related. Someone who identifies as a doctor and a traveler embodies both work and non-work passion. Further, depending on whether one’s internalization of an activity into the self is autonomous or controlled, passion can be harmonious or obsessive. Autonomous internalization occurs when the activity is valued for its characteristics (e.g., challenging, interesting), whereas controlled internalization occurs when the activity is deemed important because of contingent outcomes (e.g., rewards, social approval) stemming from it. Thus, a harmoniously passionate doctor (or traveler) will enjoy their job for intrinsic reasons, such as saving lives (or learning new cultures), whereas an obsessively passionate doctor (or traveler) will value prestige associated with the job (or bragging about visiting unique places).     

Five Different Ways that Work and Non-Work Passions Combine

While co-hosting work and non-work passion is certainly conceivable (e.g., a doctor who is also a traveler), mapping how individuals can uniquely combine and meaningfully balance harmonious or obsessive forms of passion across both work and non-work domains is a challenge, not least because passion combinations may differ across individuals. To address this, we used a person-centered approach which accounts for individuals’ subjective preferences. Using data from workers in two groups (working-from-home and furloughed) collected at the onset of the pandemic (Study 1) and one year later (Study 2), we found five different ways (or profiles) in which individuals balanced their work and non-work passions:

1. Dispassionate at Work and Play:People in the profile were not passionate about work or non-work activities
2. Dispassionate at Work, Ambidextrous at Play: These people were not passionate about work, but had both harmonious and obsessive passion for their non-work activities.  
3. Harmonious at Work, Ambidextrous at Play: These individuals also had harmonious and obsessive passion for their non-work activities, together with harmonious passion for work.   
4. Harmonious at Work and Play: People in this profile were harmoniously passionate for both work and non-work.
5. Moderately Harmonious at Work and Play: This profile is similar to the preceding one except for its lower level of passion.   

Each Profile Predicts Life Satisfaction Differently

Depending on their passion profiles, some individuals were more or less likely to experience life satisfaction. In Study 1, those who were Dispassionate at Work and Play; Harmonious at Work, Ambidextrous at Play; or Harmonious at Work and Play enjoyed equally high levels of life satisfaction. Study 2 reveals that over a year later, as the pandemic wore on, those who were Harmonious at Work, Ambidextrous at Play stayed most satisfied with life. The proportion of individuals in each passion profile also changed between the two time periods, suggesting that the pandemic may have altered people’s work and non-work passions. Specifically, the proportion of people in the Dispassionate at Work, Ambidextrous at Play profile increased during that period, at the same time that the size of the Harmonious at Work, Ambidextrous at Play profile decreased. These suggest that the protracted nature of the pandemic spurred people to recalibrate the balance between their work and non-work passions in a way that prioritized non-work passion and downplayed work passion. Study 2 also showed that segmentors (people who prefer impermeable boundaries between their work and non-work lives) were likely to be Dispassionate at Work, Ambidextrous at Play or Harmonious at Work and Play, whereas those facing work and/or nonwork constraints were likely to be in Profiles 4 or 5, potentially indicating that only harmonious passion can exist in the face of situational constraints.

Implementing the Findings at Work

In determining the passion profile that best fits them, workers can gain clarity on how their life satisfaction is influenced by that profile, and potentially reevaluate how they should balance their work and non-work passions. A starting point may be to reassess their segmentation-integration preferences and/or eliminate work or non-work constraints, so as to achieve a meaningful balance between work and life domains. In particular, to the extent that those who are Harmonious at Work, Ambidextrous at Play and Harmonious at Work and Play enjoyed higher life satisfaction during the pandemic, individuals may want to cultivate and maintain harmonious passion in both domains. Additionally, because those who are Harmonious at Work and Play tend to also prefer work-life segmentation, having strictly defined and impermeable work-life boundaries can be advantageous. While some individuals may be able to do so innately, others may need support from their employers. For instance, organizations can implement mandatory vacations and no-contact-after-work-hours policy to help employees better separate their work and non-work lives.

Overall, our research demonstrates that co-hosting passion in work and non-work domains during a crisis situation can be a “prescription” for life satisfaction. Further, even though prior research suggests that harmonious and obsessive passion are mutually exclusive, we show that both can not only co-exist but also, in certain instances (e.g., being Dispassionate at Work, Ambidextrous at Play), enhance life satisfaction. This challenges the established belief that only intrinsic motivation is valuable, and demonstrates that having both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is not only possible but also potentially beneficial.