How to Discover What You’re Passionate About
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A common theme in most writing on goal setting is the need to follow your passions. Do the things that make you want to get up early in the morning. There’s only one thing missing:
What if you don’t have any passions?
I’m sure everyone on this planet has interests. But that’s not the same thing. Enjoying playing video games isn’t the same as spending thousands of hours designing your own. Your passion has to be something you would work exceptionally hard for.
So what do you do, if there is nothing you feel that engaged about?
The Way to Start Isn’t With a Survey…
A lot of career guidance involves measuring your current skills and personality, and then deciding what you would be most suited for. I don’t like this approach because people are complex. And any test will ultimately be a gross simplification of what’s important to you and what you like to do.
I once heard a story about a wealthy woman who was looking for a husband. She invested over $20,000 on a series of psychological surveys to match her with potential candidates. She met individually with the dozen candidates that were her best match. After all that money and effort, she decided she didn’t like any of them.
Six months later, she was engaged to someone she had met randomly at a bar. Moral: people don’t know what they want until they see it (and surveys aren’t much better).
The truth is, I don’t think any questionnaire can tell you what you’re going to be really engaged about. I’d rather experiment with dozens of wildly different activities, than limit my scope, just because a test said I wouldn’t like it.
How to Find Your Passions
The better approach to finding your passions is actually fairly simple:
- Try a lot of different things
- See what you enjoy
The biggest obstacle to overcome is a narrow vision of what you can do. If I wasn’t passionately interested in anything, I’d try to cast a wide net to look at dozens of different activities. Staying safe and familiar is the reason I’m bored, so now is the time to experiment.
Dabbling is key to the art of finding what drives you. Dabbling means committing to something for 3-6 months. This amount of time isn’t enough to become really good at anything. But it is enough time to get over the sharp learning curve in the beginning.
I didn’t enjoy programming for the first few months I worked on it. I didn’t know enough, and it was too frustrating to continue. But once I got over the frustration barrier, I found that programming is an activity I really enjoy.
If you don’t have any project that makes you want to wake up early and sacrifice leisure for, you should start dabbling. Find new activities completely outside your comfort zone you can do for a few hours a week, and commit for at least two months.
Sometimes You Need a Spark…
Sometimes the problem with a passion isn’t the activity, but the goal. I enjoyed working on small self-made projects. But it wasn’t until I saw that people actually made self-run businesses out of those efforts that I became really engaged. Until that point, my goal was just to dabble in something fun. After that point, I realized there was room for a challenging goal I hadn’t considered before.
Equally important to dabbling in activities is to dabble in experiences. Meet people from weird and unique backgrounds. Read books that don’t normally appear on your shelf. Randomness increases the chance that one of your interests will be sparked into something more.
Always Look for More
Dabbling is a continuous process. Committing yourself to one goal is good. But that should still leave time for brief experiments. If you’re always dabbling, you have a large base of passions you can do interesting work from. Don’t tolerate boredom.
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10 Mistakes That Could Be Killing Your Blog, and More | Zen Habits said,
November 12, 2008 at 3:16 pm
[…] Scott Young: How to Discover What You’re Passionate About […]
The Daily Click said,
November 13, 2008 at 1:48 am
I really enjoyed this and totally agree. We all get set in our ways and have are comfort zones. Trying something new, be it reading a different sort of book or watching a TV program that maybe you wouldn’t normally watch can open a whole new area in your life.
Chris (from Lifestyle Project) said,
November 13, 2008 at 2:19 am
Scott,
Interesting post. I have read a lot recently (and been doing a lot of personal searching) on what my passion is. What you present above is different perspective on this which is very though provoking. The problem I am having at the moment is being interested in too many things. Jack of all trades, master of none. Whilst been interested in lots of activities is great, I would like to find my niche passion to really excel in (whilst still keeping all my other interests).
Cheers,
Chris
Hendry Lee said,
November 13, 2008 at 6:32 am
You’re right. I’m now working on a business that I’m passionate about, but I didn’t about such thing a decade ago. Only after a lot of tests and get involved in various business adventures that I know that I really like blogging and help others do the same through one of my site. (It’s in my URI)
After some thoughts, my real passion is to help other people. Not that I don’t enjoy blogging, but that ticks me most. The direct interaction with various people and how I could help people who are just getting started really keeps me sane working long hours every day.
Scott Young said,
November 13, 2008 at 7:10 am
Chris,
As I mentioned in the second-last section, sometimes the key to having a passion isn’t finding the activity, but finding the goal.
Setting a challenging and rewarding goal for an activity you already have an interest in, can ratchet that activity up into a genuine passion.
-Scott
randomness helps you find what you are passionate about? : Danspace Changelog said,
November 13, 2008 at 7:52 am
[…] For me, randomness has just been a past-time mostly during the early hours of the morning when I cant sleep. It seems that randomness can serve an entirely different purpose (link). […]
Neil Matthews said,
November 13, 2008 at 8:50 am
Thanks for saying it is okay to dabble.
I have been doing that for years and people give me such as hard time
“But you tried [activty x] and that only lasted a few months, I hope [activity y] will not end up the same”
what if activity z is the lifechaning thing that brings me complete joy inlife.
Thanks for the post
Ash said,
November 13, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Thanks Scott, this was really enlightening. I loved the non-conventional approach to figuring out your passions - it is so true that the only way you can tell if you like something is by trying and doing it. No amount of reading and tests can compare to the real life experience.
Make something happen! » Wie Du heraus findest, wo Deine Leidenschaften liegen said,
November 14, 2008 at 1:29 am
[…] Dies ist die Übersetzung des Artikels: How to Discover What You’re Passionate About - by Scott Young […]
Chris (from Lifestyle Project) said,
November 14, 2008 at 3:46 am
Scott,
Thanks for reply. My goal is very firmly to get out of my 9-5 job. Aside for not enjoying working for “the man” I also want to have a positive reason to get up every morning to do what I want to enjoy - just finding my true passion is what eludes me. I think I am perhaps focusing too much on the financing aspect of quitting the 9-5.
Good stuff Scott,
Cheers,
Chris
When I Grow Up - The Blog » Blog Archive » Freakin’ (Great Links) Friday: Installment 3 said,
November 14, 2008 at 11:16 am
[…] to be passionate about? Or maybe you’re looking for a new passion? Scott H Young offers How to Discover What You’re Passionate About (summary: do a bit of everything and see what […]
AccountingElf said,
November 15, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Thanks for the article. I dabble in a lot of stuff… sometimes I re-dabble. The only thing I have stuck with is being an Accounting major, but in terms of what I’m really passionate about I alternate between practicing drawing, writing, dancing… I usually get really excited about them for awhile, and then it wanes and I switch to a different one. I still haven’t figured out how to be continuously passionate about anything beyond computer games!
Vitaly Pimenov said,
November 18, 2008 at 9:25 am
Thanks!
I want to add a few thoughts:
I think discovering the passion is indeed discovering the way you are thinking, i.e. that is naturally optimal for brain and body.
Looking at great masters, I notice: dancers think in dance, composers think in music, writers think in imaginations, athletes think in movement.
They discovered the way they think.
Acting in the way you are thinking is a passion.
That’s my view.
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November 18, 2008 at 9:34 am
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jspencerriddile.com – The Rewards of Living Adventurously said,
November 19, 2008 at 8:38 am
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In what reality am I? said,
December 1, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Scott,
I am glad to have found your site through google when I search: “The goal is ahead…challenge the obstacles in between”. I realized that my goals and dreams in life has been dormant and I have been living a sheltered life. Thanks for writing and all the best to everyone who comment as well.
Loren said,
January 30, 2009 at 1:35 am
Passion comes in many forms. For some, writing a new song, or painting a picture, while others might find their passion doing something totally out of their usual list of activities. It is something that awakens our inner child who has grown silent after many years of boring passionless activities. That child is still there waiting to play. While on a vacation in Florida, I was up very early in the mornint just to see the dolphins come swimming up the bay. My inner child was curious and excited for the first time in years. It really took me back, as I was completley unaware how it was affecting me. I now monitor myself for acivities that “get me up early” and “lose track of time” These are signs of Passion trying to work into our lives. At a job talking with an older Gentleman ho loved playing music for a living, I asked him how he found work he was passionate about. His responce was to tell me his father told him at a young age:
“It’s hard enough getting out of bed as you get older, don’t make it harder by doing something you hate.”
Helen Lewis said,
April 8, 2009 at 6:02 am
I enjoyed Po Bronson’s discussion of this topic in his excellent book “What should I do with my life?”.
His advice is simple:
“Ask yourself ‘What question could I devote my life to exploring?’”.
This approach means that you get to think in terms of what you get to do, not what you exclude. I love the idea of using the power of your curiosity to tap into your passion. The questions that tick through your head are there for a reason and they are the source of what will get you springing out of bed in the morning.
Another one of his ideas that stuck was that we sometimes mistake the idea of ‘passion’. We assume passion means something that is dramatic, colorful, outside ourselves. Yet passion can also be something quiet, something resistant, something that won’t let you go. Even if we don’t know what it is, we sometimes just know it is there, and we owe it to ourselves to keep digging for it.