Pursuing your passion feels like cheating

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Issue #191: listening to the “other side” and doing just a few things well
By Harris Sockel

The phrase “follow your passion” gets thrown around so much it’s a joke. It sounds nice, but someone has to pay the bills — and anything, if you’re doing it for money, becomes work.

Dan Pedersen asks a few questions that can help you land on a more useful definition of “passion”: “What problems do you find easy to solve? In what way are you most creative?”

If you’re doing something passion-y, it might feel like you’re cheating because it feels easy — or if not easy, at least interesting enough to keep doing even though it’s hard. In Harvard Business Review, Dan Cable calls this “following your blisters.” Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham calls it “following your curiosity.” Either way: What challenges do you keep returning to, what walls do you actually like banging your head against?

Another lens on passion: the Japanese concept “ikigai.” We’ve touched on this before, but it’s the idea that genuinely great work feels elusive because it’s the intersection of four things: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for. “Passion” is only the intersection of the first two (love + aptitude). Purpose, or ikigai, is all four.

When you can find true purpose, you’re not only happier. You’re also healthier. “People with purpose in life sleep better and have more gray matter in their brain’s insula, lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and less of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva,” wrote science journalist Marta Zaraska on Medium a few years back.

So, what is happiness? It’s not just “passion.” It’s purpose. Something you love that people around you actually need.

From the ol’ archive: the “other side” is not dumb

In 2016, Sean Blanda struck a nerve by saying something very true that no one wants to hear (especially in an election year): You’re not right about everything, and the “other side” is not stupid. Just like you, they’ve reached their conclusions based on a combination of intuition and analysis.

Blanda’s essay has been read by 3.5 million people — and it offers a few tips for listening to each other in a world that’s only gotten more politically polarized over the last decade.

One tip: The next time you’re in a discussion with someone who disagrees with you, don’t try to “win.” Instead, actively try to “lose.” “Ask them to convince you and mean it.” Listen. “As any debate club veteran knows, if you can’t make your opponent’s point for them, you don’t truly grasp the issue.”

And if you ever get the urge to drop a link in the group chat, ask yourself… Am I sharing this link because it contains info I haven’t considered before? Or am I just sharing it to remind my pals that I’m not on the Other Side?

Your daily dose of practical wisdom

You’ll be happier, saner, and better at your job if you do fewer things well. Do not say yes to every piece of work that comes your way. (It took me a decade to learn this, and I’m still learning!)

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

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