[etni] On developing passion
- From: "David R. Herz" <mr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 07:52:49 +0200
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Also from Linkedin World
http://linkedinworld.com/which-comes-first-work-or-passion/
Which Comes First, Work or Passion?
Think passion precedes hard work when it comes to building a successful
career? It might not be so simple.
The claim that finding your passion is the key to a happy and successful
work life is so often repeated that the idea has attained the status of
annoying old saw (and inspired plenty of impassioned rebuttals). But a
couple of recent opinion pieces by career experts suggest that the standard
wisdom on work and passion isn't so much dead wrong as totally backwards.
You don't find your passion and then work. Instead, you work-and then find
your passion.
That's the gist of computer science professor Cal Newport's recent piece for
The New York Times anyway. In it, Newport tells how, during his senior year
of college, he had to choose between three possible life trajectories. His
first impulse, as per the standard advice on these occasions, was to look
for his passion. Was there a rumbling in his gut that showed him one of
these paths was the one he was destined for and to which he would give his
impassioned all?
There was not. But that's fine, writes Newport. Instead of listening for
passion to lead us to work, we should let work build us a passion. He
explains:
As I considered my options during my senior year of college, I knew all
about this Cult of Passion and its demands. But I chose to ignore it. The
alternative career philosophy that drove me is based on this simple premise:
The traits that lead people to love their work are general and have little
to do with a job's specifics. These traits include a sense of autonomy and
the feeling that you're good at what you do and are having an impact on the
world. Decades of research on workplace motivation back this up. (Daniel
Pink's book "Drive" offers a nice summary of this literature.)
These traits can be found in many jobs, but they have to be earned. Building
valuable skills is hard and takes time.. Today, I'm a computer science
professor at Georgetown University, and I love my job. The most important
lesson I can draw from my experience is that this love has nothing to do
with figuring out at an early age that I was meant to be a professor.
There's nothing special about my choosing this particular path. What
mattered is what I did once I made my choice.
This advice may befuddle generations of guidance counselors with their
insistence that love should precede career choices rather than follow them,
but Newport isn't the only person challenging the passion orthodoxy. Founder
Kent Healy recently said something similar on the Young Entrepreneur Counsel
blog.
Addressing the great many people who despair early in their careers that
they're unsure about their passion, Healy writes:
Passion is one very important element (of many) that produces extraordinary
results.
What frustrates me is that the process to attaining this "transformational"
passion is often overlooked or described as though the gods endow it..
It's time to stop searching and start doing. And no, they are not the same
thing.
Searching for your passion is not proactive; it's actually quite passive,
because embedded in the pursuit is the erroneous belief that when seen, it
will be immediately recognized. The reality is that a lifelong passion is
most often revealed through working passionately on something you have
immediate access to.
He concludes, like Newport, that "before passionate (and successful) people
find their true life's passion, they are passionate about doing great
work-whatever that work entails. On but rare occasions is the subject matter
alone the cause or origin of passion."
Waiting around hoping your passion will dawn on you not only can make you
miserable, it's also often an excuse for not putting in the hard work to
achieve extraordinary things-and with them, find your passion.
How would you advise a young person who is worried that they haven't yet
found their passion?
_____
I'm just sharing it. It's not mine
David R. Herz
<mailto:mr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> mr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
skype: drherz
1-203-517-0518
972-4-641-8708
972-52-579-1859
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