{"id":867,"date":"2008-11-12T10:00:39","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T17:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/12\/how-to-discover-what-you%e2%80%99re-passionate-about\/"},"modified":"2018-04-03T08:26:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T15:26:03","slug":"how-to-discover-what-youre-passionate-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/12\/how-to-discover-what-youre-passionate-about\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Discover What You\u2019re Passionate About"},"content":{"rendered":"

A common theme in most writing on goal setting is the need to follow your passions.\u00c2\u00a0 Do the things that make you want to get up early in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u2019s only one thing missing:<\/p>\n

What if you don\u2019t have any passions?
\n<\/em>
\nI\u2019m sure everyone on this planet has interests.\u00c2\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the same thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Enjoying playing video games isn\u2019t the same as spending thousands of hours designing your own.\u00c2\u00a0 Your passion has to be something you would work exceptionally hard for.<\/p>\n

So what do you do, if there is nothing you feel that engaged about?<\/p>\n

The Way to Start Isn\u2019t With a Survey…<\/h2>\n

A lot of career guidance involves measuring your current skills and personality, and then deciding what you would be most suited for.\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u2019t like this approach because people are complex.\u00c2\u00a0 And any test will ultimately be a gross simplification of what\u2019s important to you and what you like to do.<\/p>\n

I once heard a story about a wealthy woman who was looking for a husband.\u00c2\u00a0 She invested over $20,000 on a series of psychological surveys to match her with potential candidates.\u00c2\u00a0 She met individually with the dozen candidates that were her best match.\u00c2\u00a0 After all that money and effort, she decided she didn\u2019t like any of them.<\/p>\n

Six months later, she was engaged to someone she had met randomly at a bar.\u00c2\u00a0 Moral:<\/strong> people don\u2019t know what they want until they see it (and surveys aren\u2019t much better).<\/p>\n

The truth is, I don\u2019t think any questionnaire can tell you what you\u2019re going to be really engaged about.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u2019d rather experiment with dozens of wildly different activities, than limit my scope, just because a test said I wouldn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

How to Find Your Passions<\/h2>\n

The better approach to finding your passions is actually fairly simple:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Try a lot of different things<\/li>\n
  2. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 See what you enjoy<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The biggest obstacle to overcome is a narrow vision of what you can do.\u00c2\u00a0 If I wasn\u2019t passionately interested in anything, I\u2019d try to cast a wide net to look at dozens of different activities.\u00c2\u00a0 Staying safe and familiar is the reason I\u2019m bored, so now is the time to experiment.<\/p>\n

    Dabbling is key to the art of finding what drives you.\u00c2\u00a0 Dabbling means committing to something for 3-6 months.\u00c2\u00a0 This amount of time isn\u2019t enough to become really good at anything.\u00c2\u00a0 But it is enough time to get over the sharp learning curve in the beginning.<\/p>\n

    I didn\u2019t enjoy programming for the first few months I worked on it.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know enough, and it was too frustrating to continue.\u00c2\u00a0 But once I got over the frustration barrier, I found that programming is an activity I really enjoy.<\/p>\n

    If you don\u2019t have any project that makes you want to wake up early and sacrifice leisure for, you should start dabbling.\u00c2\u00a0 Find new activities completely outside your comfort zone you can do for a few hours a week, and commit for at least two months.<\/p>\n

    Sometimes You Need a Spark…<\/h2>\n

    Sometimes the problem with a passion isn\u2019t the activity, but the goal.\u00c2\u00a0 I enjoyed working on small self-made projects.\u00c2\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t until I saw that people actually made self-run businesses out of those efforts that I became really engaged.\u00c2\u00a0 Until that point, my goal was just to dabble in something fun.\u00c2\u00a0 After that point, I realized there was room for a challenging goal I hadn\u2019t considered before.<\/p>\n

    Equally important to dabbling in activities is to dabble in experiences<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Meet people from weird and unique backgrounds.\u00c2\u00a0 Read books that don\u2019t normally appear on your shelf.\u00c2\u00a0 Randomness increases the chance that one of your interests will be sparked into something more.<\/p>\n

    Always Look for More<\/h2>\n

    Dabbling is a continuous process.\u00c2\u00a0 Committing yourself to one goal is good.\u00c2\u00a0 But that should still leave time for brief experiments<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 If you\u2019re always dabbling, you have a large base of passions you can do interesting work from.\u00c2\u00a0 Don\u2019t tolerate boredom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A common theme in most writing on goal setting is the need to follow your passions.\u00c2\u00a0 Do the things that make you want to get up early in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u2019s only one thing missing: What if you don\u2019t have any passions? I\u2019m sure everyone on this planet has interests.\u00c2\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4,680],"tags":[247,26,183,248,38,182],"class_list":{"0":"post-867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-goal-setting","7":"category-nc-productivity","8":"tag-dabbling","9":"tag-goals","10":"tag-passion","11":"tag-passions","12":"tag-productivity","13":"tag-work","14":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Discover What You\u2019re Passionate About - Scott H Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/12\/how-to-discover-what-youre-passionate-about\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Discover What You\u2019re Passionate About - Scott H Young\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A common theme in most writing on goal setting is the need to follow your passions.\u00c2\u00a0 Do the things that make you want to get up early in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u2019s only one thing missing: What if you don\u2019t have any passions? 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