We often seem to forget that passion is not a singular thing.
My #1 passion in a lot of ways is politics/history/debate. I'm probably better at standing in front of a room of 800 people and giving a speech or fielding a hostile question than anything else I do. If I followed my passion/strengths I probably would have gone to say Georgetown, gotten an economics degree, and found my way into the DC path of being an aide and then into being a candidate myself.
But much like the author of the article, I can't emotionally handle it. I get so worked up that my blood boils, I get enraged, and I know I would die of a heart attack at age 30.
So instead I went to my second passion - engineering. When I told most of my friends and teachers in high school that I was going into engineering they were all shocked.
Yet when I tell my engineer co-workers that my original passion was politics, they are all shocked. I do not talk about politics with co-workers (or on HN for that matter), I keep the two worlds entirely separate.
Maybe I'll go back to it someday, we all know the Congress could use more engineers. But sometimes we throw around 'passion' when we really should say 'like to do'. I like to be an engineer, the problems are interesting, and it's definitely fun to build things as a hobby. But I'm not passionate about differential equations or FEA modeling. Those things don't get me fired up with adrenaline or keep me away at night like my real 'passion'.
Funny thing. I'm hugely passionate about politics, but I avoided that path because:
* The American political system is so hugely, immensely corrupt that I can't and don't want to and won't play that game. I admire people like Elizabeth Warren for doing it, but I simply won't be the guy generating 3 "gb moni plox" emails per day because he needs a $20 million war-chest to run for a single seat in the Senate.
* I want to reach Prime Minister of Israel, not President of the United States.
The American political system is so hugely, immensely corrupt that I can't and don't want to and won't play that game.
It's still better than a lot of other countries; and the best way to make it better (or at least to keep it from degrading) would be for more intelligent people to contribute to it.
Yes, true. In many countries, you need to be a member of the ruling clique, family, or ethnicity to have any voice at all in government. In America, anyone with the money can buy themselves a piece of government!
"I want to reach Prime Minister of Israel, not President of the United States"
I suspect becoming PM of Israel (or any other country for that matter) would involve you having to play plenty of dirty games - maybe the games have a different surface feel than if you were to attempt becoming US president- you may have to compromise with religious nutcases to sanction semi apartheid policies, say, to get support for a crucial vote)
Do you live in the United States? I ask this seriously, not sarcastically.
The games are qualitatively different. Israel has publicly-funded elections and a proportional-representation Parliament (the Knesset). Every nation's political processes involve some level of compromising, politicking, and unwanted deal-making to get one's way on important issues. "Politics is the art of the possible", fact of life.
The United States, on the other hand, does not even really operate on the basis of votes. It operates mostly on the basis of dollars: the highest spender(s) get(s) their way on the issues, with that ruling principle expressing itself in various forms through actual elections, votes, court cases, etc.
Israel, as we have always thought democratic nations should, has politics as its own profession, separate from others. America does not; becoming a politician of any stature means acquiring or marshaling financial power.
"Do you live in the United States? I ask this seriously, not sarcastically."
I don't live in the United States now, but I have lived there and seen elections and politics at close range.
As to the rest I guess we will agree to differ on the idea that Israel (or any other country for that matter) has significantly cleaner politics or that United States pols plumb some depths of evil that politicians in other countries don't. YMMV etc.
Israeli politics? Clean? By objective standards, oh dear God no. It's immensely corrupt.
But it's not captive. Israeli politicians give away favors and embezzle because that's what they think they get for winning the Politics Game. American politicians don't (didn't?) actually embezzle that much from the government, because American politics are really just a rich person's game in the first place; why embezzle when insider trading is legal for legislators?
My issue with politics is the lack of control. If I am engineering a pet project or even a module for work, I have a large degree of control over its construction.
With politics, it seems like you fight and fight and nothing ever changes-a complete lack of control. It also seems like there is infinite cherry picking of data... I just want to get the objective facts which at this point I'm convinced do not actually exist.
I think this paragraph reflects what you are saying:
"The reason that scientists and engineers don't go into politics is because they find it deeply frustrating to deal with people who are lying, know they are lying, and do not give a shit. Further, they find it deeply, deeply frustrating to work in a field that does not rely upon evidenced based thinking, but relies upon emotional persuasion and the systematic abuse of the irrational behaviorism of the crowds."
since you are good at politics, here is a question for you - something I always wondered about.
How do you become good at politics - not the making speeches to a crowd bit, the backroom wheeling and dealing and backstabbing bit? Is it a totally inborn skill or something you can learn ?
(fwiw, I've personally found that once I put on my 'cynicism' hat and evaluate a situation totally in terms of completely disbelieving what everyone says and thinking solely in terms of "everyone is out to get something for himself/herself irrespective of what they say, let me try to figure out what", I get a surprisingly accurate and actionable reading of the situation. Helps a lot in understanding and utilizing corporate politics, for example, a skill most hackers don't have.
However, thinking this way, and "seeing" things this way makes me feel slimy and in need of a bath even when it is effective in mapping the terrain, and so requires a deliberate act of will to engage in. I suspect politicians have to work this way all the time, constantly evaluating, indulging and trading with some nasty people).
I believe that the most successful politicians, as well as those who are successful at the petty politics of the office or in social settings, are able to bifurcate their minds, and operate along two entirely independent tracks. Track one is filled with sincere ideals, and assumes that other people are telling the truth most of the time, and have good intentions. Politicians use that track to talk to people about their problems, "feel their pain" and so on. This track allows them to gain support and become popular enough to win elections (or gain popularity in whatever circumstance).
Track two is strictly Machiavellian game theory to the max. Everyone is a two-faced, scheming bastard (including the politician thinking this way). Ends always justify means. Most situations are zero-sum games, with a winner and a loser. If you have more knowledge than the other guy, you will be the winner, and they are the loser. This is how the world works, and all blatherings to the contrary are just the attempts of other cynical bastards to try to make you the sucker. This is the track they use when they want to get something done (other than gain popularity).
Political types can switch between these two tracks seamlessly, in an instant. They can almost think along them both simultaneously. They feel no hypocrisy thinking both ways -- to them it's apples and oranges. You use the right tool for the job at hand -- what's the problem with that? It's purely rational.
Unfortunately for most of us (or fortunately, you decide), this two-track thinking is unnatural at best, or just flat out impossible to achieve. But to those few who seem to have the gift, it's just second nature.
Do you have any evidence to back up such a vicious attack on politicians, other than your personal feelings? I'm not saying politicians are saints, but your depiction of them makes them out as devils. The truth is certainly between those two extremes - like for everyone else.
I don't consider this a vicious attack, nor does it make them devils. My evidence is a large amount of anecdotal observation, close up and personal, of various people I've met, and correlating their levels of success in their chosen professions with my perception of how their minds work. I then apply some pattern matching to relate what I've seen with my own two eyes to the patterns of speech and behavior I see in public figures. I can't prove my hypothesis but I find that it is a very good working theory, ie it has strong predictive value.
I think everyone is like this to some extent -- we all have some level of double-think going on in our lives. But for some of us, that fact is deeply troubling, and we expend a lot of effort to stamp out whatever we see as hypocrisy in our own thinking and actions. My premise is simply that that urge is pretty much mutually exclusive with regard to certain levels of achievement in various walks of life, including (at a minimum) politics and business. Art and entertainment are a bit trickier, because to some degree they demand a level of sincerity to be successful -- though there are plenty of obvious cases of hypocrisy there as well.
[edit: two examples of politicians who do not work this way are Ralph Nader and Ron Paul. These are clearly people who walk and talk their ideals without regard to more pragmatic political calculations. Compare their level of success with, say, Mitt Romney, who in my opinion is willing to send any neural impulses to his body that he thinks increase his chances of being President some day. I just don't believe in our political environment, there is any possible way to get to the top if you are a pure idealist.]
Funny, I think this mentality applies to entrepreneurs as well. On one hand, you have to give the aura you're doing good. On the other, you have to be vicious and be a grey hat if you wish to thrive.
Of course, then there are those of us who avoid having to use the second track as a deliberate strategy. Honor, established and maintained diligently, is in fact a fairly powerful attribute to wield.
Is it inherently dishonorable to talk about values that you aspire to, but simultaneously to acknowledge pragmatically (to yourself at least) that it is not possible to successfully match those values with actions in the environment you find yourself in, due to the mendacity and ruthlessness of others?
Having a clear, ethical goal helps; things always get muddy in the implementation.
Example: I want to cure cancer.
In order to cure cancer, I have to hire the right people to develop the IP.
In order to hire the right people, I need to obtain the financial resources, either through a big-company budgeting process, a political process, talking to investors, etc.
At bottom, it's all about power: who has it, how to get it, and how to wield the tools of influence. It's hard to accomplish anything involving other people without understanding how to wield this toolset effectively.
The best way to become good at politics is to have serious political goals and possess IQ and EQ to really analyze how to achieve those goals.
There's also a red herring here - politics (in life, work, government), to me, is a proxy concept for ambition. People generally aren't political just because they like the game in and of itself - it's because they have something to prove, something to achieve, or something to gain.
The real question is: why are some people more ambitious than others?
Following your passion does not mean: "take a job doing it". It may mean that, but it could also mean: "take a job that gets in the minimal amount of way of you doing your your passion". It could mean "get a part time job doing your passion, and a part time job doing something else". It could mean "Don't take that consuming job that takes a bunch of energy and time just because it brings in the good money" (unless it means, do it for a short time and retire to persue your passion full time...). It could mean 100 different things. The goal is to maximize the amount of time and energy you spend on the things you care about and which energize you, and which make your life full.
And a note on passion itself: As a human, expect the things you are passionate about to change with time. When I was a kid I was passionate about history and archaeology, then I discovered computers. Now I'm on and off passionate about programming, gardening, art and a million other things. Largely the computer thing is constant, but it waxes and wanes. No big deal. I am not a robot, I am not programmed to like one thing consistently forever, if this changes, I can go with it, or descend a spiral to unhappiness.
It sounds like the author's passions changed. Sounds like he changed with them. Good on him, but it shouldn't be seen as a condemnation of the idea of following passion.
I completely agree. I would go so far as to say that for many engineers, programming-at least the type they do for work-is not their first passion, but is an activity they enjoy to some degree and it pays well. Hopefully this will allow them increased time to do what they really enjoy.
Yeah, people should find a balance. Instead of looking at the one thing we are passionate about, maybe we should look at 5-10 things that we would enjoy, then go from there. I was most passionate about literature, and started off taking several literature courses in college. Then I read some career advice that said focus on what you'd like to do for the next 40 years, not just 4 years of college. I realized I would not be happy with the job opportunities as a Literature major, so I switched to Computer Science, my 3rd or 4th favorite subject. I like programming and think I made the best career choice for me.
Like most things, following your passion is about priorities. For a lot of people, treating their passion as the most important thing in the world is not sustainable for them. This idea that all of us need to tell ourselves what makes us happy and then do it is also the wrong way to go about figuring out what makes you happy. I cannot even count how many mistakes I have made and then accidentally discovered what made me happy. There is no way I could have known what it was ahead of time.
Expected 'passion' to be startups or internet marketing, but no it was to teach math. Nice little surprise.
Interesting post, sad to hear that the educational system grinds down the few folks who want to actually make a difference to the point where they go join big box retail.
Just to be clear he worked in retail to pay his way through college a second time to get a masters in accounting which is his new job. So to say he was driven out of teaching into retail isn't quite true.
I don't really get what his passion was. He states that he followed his passion and became a teacher, but having never worked as a teacher, there must have been some aspects of teaching that he thought would be fulfilling. Most of the time when people choose career paths it is for reasons that have nothing to do with passion. In fact, for most people it seems that career choice is just a mixture of luck and somewhat random choices. What exactly makes somebody start down the path of being a lawyer? Maybe their father was a lawyer or they saw a movie about a lawyer that influenced them. Conversely, somebody might become a librarian because a job opens in their hometown and they just drift into it without much planning due to sheer convenience (I know a lot of people like that). I think that career progression is largely luck-based as well, because you cannot possibly know what the reality of day-to-day life in a career looks like without living it.
Having gone through an MBA program, I have seen this first hand. People's entire career paths are condensed down to 18 months and a set of a few companies that just happen to recruit where you go to school. One student may come in convinced that he wants to be an entrepreneur, get pulled into the consulting crowd and have a complete shift in goals, just to get dinged by the top consulting firms and end up settling into the management track at Sears. That's the trouble with following your passion- it is pretty tough to define just what that is, and the fact that there are some jobs that involve it to an extent is probably not the best way to follow it.
As an aside: one other thing I noticed which was quite prevalent in the bschool crowd was this dream to do your own thing and run your own business. I would hear people say "my goal is to start a company" or "I want to join a startup." The odd thing is that none of these people actually took direct steps toward trying to start a business. They felt pressure from their peers getting lucrative offers from consulting firms and such and said things like "I'm going to work for a few years and get some experience under my belt and then I'm going to start a business or join a startup." It seems what made these people happy was convincing themselves that they were planning a future that would best set them up to create this business and become rich at some point in the future. What made them get out of bed early and work hard was satisfying some false prerequisite that they dangled in front of their own face. When that was accomplished, they created another, and another, and another. It seems that actually is where their happiness came from- making themselves believe that they were progressing towards their goal.
This is a very good observation....I had never thought of it this way, but I realized this is exactly what I tend to do; it has been a real eye-opener reading this.
I believe this happens mostly because people tend to define means as their passion... Taking a job, or starting a company isn't a goal per se. It is a mean of reaching a goal, which most people never actually define. Considering that following your passion is going after your dreams, or in other words, completing your goals in life, then teaching was his passion, not being a math teacher. This is the most common error I see when you ask someone what their dream are. If that's the case, he could follow his dream through other meanings other than being a math teacher.
So tell me, is your dream really being an entrepreneur, or is it building something or making an idea of yours becomming reality, and being an entrepreneur is a way of reaching that?
The moral of this story seems to be that if you're too passionate about your passion, and become too emotionally invested, it can destroy you.
For this guy, the solution was to quit his passion and do something different. That may not be the best solution for all. By all means, try to do your passion. Sometimes it won't work out, but please don't let this discourage you!
If he had never tried he would not be as happy with his current career. Knowing that he tried but it didn't work out is what makes him satisfied with his current job.
I mean can you imagine living life as an accountant and regretting all the kids you could have helped? Much better to try it out and then fall back on something else....
I completly agree with you. As long as you are not part of a passionate envirenment (they sometimes border fanatism, which is obviously bad..) you will end up one day to work with people and organizations careing less than you do. Since you care, sooner or later this will burn you out.
The lesson for me is, be prepared for the fact that it doesn't work, and get some emotional distance, even it's hard.
Passion/Love can turn to antipathy/hate; happens all the time with personal relationships that focus exclusively on themselves, and with dreams that become obsessions. In common terms it's called "burnout." You generally need to be wary of wrapping your life exclusively around one person or one pursuit.
> I got into the position where I had to report certain problems, like suspected drug use, gang activity, child abuse, and so on [...] the cynism began to grow on me
The reason for him leaving his dream job was completely localized. There are plenty of ways to be involved in teaching besides being in front of a school class. I see this more as moving away from a bad situation, an unhappy collusion of events that got in the way of his chosen path, not a matter of passion vs day job.
Yeah, the author seemed to argue "because the situation I was in while doing a job I was passionate about was unlivable, therefore pursuing any job you are passionate about will make you less happy than working some regular 9-to-5." Logical fallacy.
I think passion is something you do regardless of financial rewards. How many pop artists succeeded with the sole intent of making money? Even those superficial rappers touting material gains probably enjoy the craft (at least the ones with staying power). I think the intersection of passion and success (defined materially) is when you consistently get better at your passion to the point where you can offer value above and beyond others who share your passion.
A case in point is exercise. I see lots of people in the gym who are committed and even fanatic about achieving their fitness goals. However, the lot of them wouldn't be able to cover living costs if they tried to do it as a job. Still, it doesn't stop them from coming to the gym and spending a significant part of their income on their passion.
Just because you don't make money directly from your passion doesn't mean much to me either because it can drive success in other parts of your life.
I also think people confuse passion with strong appreciation. For example, you can love rock music and claim to be passionate about it. However, you might not be passionate enough to push yourself to practice the craft of music only to listen and critique it.
The confusing thing about this article is that he does manage to transition his career into something vaguely related and not something completely different. Maybe it's the teaching aspect that's really important to him but it still seems like a reasonable career path in line with his core passion.
I have started a company and sold it. Wasn't enough to retire yet and now I have a 9-5 consultancy job that pays a lot of money. But I don't have any stress any more and family time.
So both sides of the coin and depending where you are in life there is no right or no wrong. So judge only for yourself what's right for you. And keep your opinions/judgements about other peoples career paths to yourself.
It is not doing what you love, but loving what you do.
Obviously you must make your job compatible with your personality first so you can get to love it.
If you are introverted and you choose a job in witch you are never alone you won't stand it, no matter how much you try(as you try harder you will hate it more and more).
If you are extroverted and you are required to work focused on single problems long hours alone...
I'm at a startup and am having exactly the same thoughts. I'm passionate about starting a company but MY company, not the one I'm working at. I've felt recently that taking a bigco job (with more pay and less hours) and bootstrapping my own company might be the better path. Please talk me down!
Is the experience you're getting at the startup arming you with knowledge that you wouldn't get at bigco and that you can use when you start your own business?
If you're just a developer stuck in a corner without any real exposure to business decisions then, other than the stigma associated with it, why not work for bigco?
" It’s just something I do for money, nothing more or less." Amen to that. To be able to close the door behind you and not think or worry about work at all is a pleasure in itself. To be completely, utterly, un-encumbered by work for most of the day and all of the weekend is a joy.
I think the takeaway is to examine the effect a job can have on you. It can go both ways.. if you do something you're incredibly passionate about but it physically/mentally wears you out, that can just be as bad as taking a job you have no interest in that makes you question life.
> get out there and grab what affords you the most opportunities to be the best overall person you can be
This is the key point of the entire post. Most people assume that "doing what you love" will provide these opportunities. However, this is not always the case.
I got a bachelors in Physics, and I am not qualified for very much. Does anyone know if I can go back to school to become an accountant without an undergrad degree in accounting? I would adore one of these lovely boring jobs.
'not qualified for very much'? My father studied physics and never worked 1 day in that field; he became developer and then director. I'm not sure how it is there, but here (in EU) they look at 'you have a beta uni degree, you are qualified'.
My #1 passion in a lot of ways is politics/history/debate. I'm probably better at standing in front of a room of 800 people and giving a speech or fielding a hostile question than anything else I do. If I followed my passion/strengths I probably would have gone to say Georgetown, gotten an economics degree, and found my way into the DC path of being an aide and then into being a candidate myself.
But much like the author of the article, I can't emotionally handle it. I get so worked up that my blood boils, I get enraged, and I know I would die of a heart attack at age 30.
So instead I went to my second passion - engineering. When I told most of my friends and teachers in high school that I was going into engineering they were all shocked.
Yet when I tell my engineer co-workers that my original passion was politics, they are all shocked. I do not talk about politics with co-workers (or on HN for that matter), I keep the two worlds entirely separate.
Maybe I'll go back to it someday, we all know the Congress could use more engineers. But sometimes we throw around 'passion' when we really should say 'like to do'. I like to be an engineer, the problems are interesting, and it's definitely fun to build things as a hobby. But I'm not passionate about differential equations or FEA modeling. Those things don't get me fired up with adrenaline or keep me away at night like my real 'passion'.