Finding your Passion
What is passion?
We hear about passion constantly. You gotta find your passion. Haven't found it yet? Keep looking. Finding your passion has become the modern holy grail. Many people set out to find it, but few seem to make it.
Personally, I think passion is a high bar. I'm not against doing what you love, not at all, but if you measure every moment against blissful passion you might set yourself up for failure. The truth is passion can be cultivated. Passion can grow from small seeds of curiosity and attention (more below).
Maybe a better question to ask is: What drives you? What motivates you? What are the activities and ideas that pull your attention just a bit more than others?
Does passion matter in your career?
To understand whether passion is important in your work life you should ask yourself what you want. What kind of work do you care about? Are you happy with a simple but unfulfilling job that pays the bills? Nothing wrong with that. There are other things in life that can provide us with meaning. In that case, passion doesn't factor into it.
Perhaps you have a career and a 5-year plan. You want to climb some ladder and gain some status in your profession. In that case, your identity is more interwoven with your work. Your career is a bigger part of your life. Finding something you care about is probably a good idea. You don't want to spend the rest of your life working hard on something you find meaningless.
Maybe you even have a vocation or want to find one. What is a Vocation? A vocation is more encompassing than a career, it occupies an overwhelming part of your life and identity. It's who you are. You can't imagine doing anything else. If you have found such a thing the quest for passion is already over. You couldn't imagine yourself doing anything else in life.
Overall it is probably easier to be good at something you enjoy doing. If you enjoy doing it you will continue to do it and get better at it. Nobody has to push you. It doesn't take grit or discipline. In my personal experience, I have found that Interest trumps discipline.
What if you're not passionate about anything?
But what if - god forbid - you don't feel particularly passionate about anything? Don't worry. As mentioned above, the bar seems unreasonably high for what most people consider passion. Passion almost by definition is fleeting.
What if you are 25 and still don't know what career you want? 25 and don't know what career I want. In this article, we talk about the classic overlap between what you are good at, what you care about, and what provides value to others.
I have no passion for anything. I wrote an article on this very topic. It talks about how sometimes you just need to pick something and give it your all. The secret is that care and passion follow effort, not the other way around.
topic. It talks about how sometimes you just need to pick something and give it your all. The secret is that care and passion follow effort, not the other way around.
How to do what you love?
It all boils down to this one question: How to do what you love?
Do what you love. In this article, we discuss how to discover what you love and how to pursue it. We also look at some common romantic fallacies about 'do what you love'. There are some wrong and harmful ideas about work-life out there that we need to consider.
How to find a career you love?. In this article, we compare the two common paths to finding a career you love. Path one is the classic follow-your-passion approach, as discussed above. Path two talks about how becoming good at something first is a fantastic alternative to loving your work.
What to do with my life?. In this broader article, we tackle the question of what you should do with your life if you don't know. We discuss passion, prestige, and money, and fully committing to one career path.