Follow Your Passion

Let’s talk about the first lie and that is the advice that is often given to follow your passion.

It sounds poetic.

It sounds nice doesn’t it.

Who doesn’t want to follow their passion.

It makes us feel good.

It just sounds right but this advice is often not a good advice.

In one of the best books I’ve ever read by Cal Newport titled So Good They Can’t Ignore you.

Carl gives the advice that passion is simply overrated.

For example when I was younger I was passionate about travel.

I mean I loved to travel and visit different countries so I thought maybe I should get into the travel

industry because I’m passionate about travel.

And it took me years to realize that just because I liked doing something like travel doesn’t mean that

that’s what my work career needs to be as well because I may be passionate about something that I enjoy

purely as a leisure activity.

As soon as it turns into work that leisure activity that was fun that you were passionate about turns

into a chore.

And we want to turn our attention from following our passion to working hard at something learning something.

Learning a valuable skill and getting better and better and better and that act of getting better at

something getting smarter getting more and more recognition.

Having more people recognize you as an expert.

That act of self-improvement and that act of self recognition is what actually makes you enjoy your

job.

Enjoy your skills and enjoy your career.

And that’s often true.

Many people who actually love what they do don’t have a passion for it.

For example I’m a software engineer can I say that I’m passionate about coding and programming now really

I am not really passionate about it but I enjoy the process of getting better and better and the more

success I had in my career the more I enjoyed it the more I became passionate about the topic.

But this wasn’t an innate thing in me.

I just forced myself to learn something that I thought was difficult and valuable.

All you need is a little bit of interest in a topic and once you have that little bit of interest then

by learning and improving over and over it becomes more and more enjoyable because you go from a beginner

to somebody that has a valuable skill that somebody respects.

So you don’t need passion what you actually need is creativity control and impact.

That’s what we want when we talk about a skill that we have.

If we’re able to be creative with our skill if we’re able to have control over our lives and dictate

while we work on if we’re able to have impact in the world and do something worthwhile.

If we combine those three things with a valuable skill set that passion arises.

So the passion mindset should be trashed.

Don’t ask about what the world can offer you what is my passion and what is my destiny.

Instead tell yourself that getting better is a craft.

Learning is a craft and learn to love the process of getting better and better.

This is called the craftsman mindset and the craftsman mindset asks How can I improve and have something

uniquely valuable to offer the world.

Am I willing to push through this go past the obstacles despite how tedious hard or boring a process

may be.

The craftsman mindset says instead of just following my passion and finding that perfect job instead

work hard put your head down learn a valuable skill combine different skills and get really really good

get so good that they can’t ignore you.

You need to earn that great skill great career and the world doesn’t owe you anything.

The process won’t be easy but the process and the hard work is what gets you there.