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Thinking about passion versus ingenuity
Submitted by matt on Sun, 01/24/2010 - 10:28pm.
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Earlier this week I found a video on FORA.tv by Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs titled "Discovery, Realization, and Lamb Castration":
http://fora.tv/2008/12/12/Mike_Rowe_on_Discovery_Realization_and_Lamb_Ca...
Don't be put off by the title; watch the video all the way through...even if you may squirm a bit. Mike has a unique perspective having traveled the country authentically apprenticing a new set of "dirty" jobs each episode.
Near the end he spoke quickly about passion, and this struck me. For a while now I have been encouraging people to find their passion and pursue that...as if passion is as easily found as a misplaced set of car keys. I encourage along those lines because it feels right and sounds obvious that doing something you love will lead to a degree of happiness...or at least more happiness than doing something you despise. Perhaps you've heard the axiom:
If you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.
I believe that to be true, and indeed have experienced that periodically: the top of my game fragments of time where I'm using my talents in a way that makes a real difference. During those moments, indeed I never felt like I was working. However, those moments were indeed moments, and have come and gone for me; they have not been consistent. A goal of mine has been to replicate those experiences thanks to the resulting personal satisfaction, and experience of work not feeling like work. Who wouldn't want to be consistently at the top of their game?
That said, it's easy to draw an erroneous conclusion from what sounds like an opposite statement: Not doing what you love means you're working every day of your life, and that leads to unhappiness. Mike's point was that we collectively experience an undercurrent of malice (and perhaps even dread) towards work, believing it leads to unhappiness. Some of the happiest times I had growing up were while working: chopping wood, bringing logs in from the barn to the house in the dead of winter, or mowing the lawn just as it began to rain. I was breaking a sweat in all instances, but the feeling of putting in a good day's work brought a sense of satisfaction. No, I was not and am not passionate about stacking wood or mowing lawns. The personal satisfaction stemmed from the accomplishment and experience, and that had nothing to do with passion.
In a related vein, Mike mentioned a number of instances where people were not following their passion, but possessed enough ingenuity to innovate in their own line of work. As an engineer, I personally aspire to ingenuity. In the context of Mike's examples, I think ingenuity occurs when someone just steps back far enough from the situation to see a problem that needs fixing, or an opportunity waiting to be taken. Maybe a passion of pursuing ingenuity itself is a worthy goal. Then it doesn't matter what you do: finding ways to do it better is what leads to accomplishment and satisfaction.
Just my thoughts after watching the video...not well sorted out yet, as you can see.
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Passion is the source of ingenuity. Inspiration for Aspiration!
Matt,
This is a great concept. It has taken me many years to figure this out. Like you I have been in positions where I get to do what I really enjoy. I really enjoy certain things because I am very good at those things. On everyone's google profile they ask a question "What is your superpower." Once I figured out what I do better than everyone else I also found what I enjoy doing most. It is interesting to note the times when I was enjoying work most and when I was on top of my game I was using my superpower. Like you said Matt. Everyone needs to find their super power, what ever that is, and pursue that passion. Thanks for sharing this with Door 64. Everyone needs to read this and put this into play in their lives.
Nice post Matt! I think we all aspire to be our own boss. The hard part is just committing to it and taking that scary step forward. It takes a lot of courage. -Tyler
Funny and inspirational
What I've found is it's "breaking a sweat" that's key. There is no great sense of satisfaction doing something that is dead easy. Anything that causes me to stretch and grow and really put in some effort is engaging. It's the hard, scary stuff that turns out to be fun in the end. And you get to look back on it and go "Wow. I did that?"
I wonder if we become truely human (a happy individual?) only when we use all of the talents we have; physical and mental. Maybe passion is needed only to bridge the physical and mental in each of us. Like you, I've not thought this throught but even the most passionate of individuals needs to give it (passion) a rest.
Happiness = Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose! Daniel Pink! :)
Lamar Romero
Chief Funding Officer
Romero Capital and Funding LLC
http://RomeroCapital.com/
512-524-9649 direct
512-519-2327 fax
Twitter: FundingUrBiz
"Flow" is also relevant.
The experience of those "top of my game" moments is called flow. Flow requires the right balance of challenge and mastery, to avoid the extremes of boredom and frustration. Often people who are happy in their work find ways to inject challenge into even the most tedious tasks, in order to achieve flow, regardless of what they're doing.
Matt,
I like the direction in which this discussion is headed....
One more thought : Purpose = intersection (Passion, Skills, Needs of the World)
This comes from Roy Spence's book entitled "It's not what you sell, it's what you stand for". It is about finding your purpose and examples of purpose driven organizations such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, etc.
Food for thought,
Andrew Cahoon
Great thread, Matt!
Each and every of us has great talents and nascent abilities. The fundamental problem our society has made for itself is that we condition our children to wait for somebody else to tell them what needs to be done. This problem underlies our gullibility to meaningless advertising, our financial boom-and-bust cycles, and our desperation for leadership from politicians.
My vision for our future is that we break free of that conditioning and begin to build a world where everyone can see that their own passion has a place in a world of self-responsibility, creative abundance and peaceful cooperation.
I wake up every morning considering myself unbelievably lucky to have developed talents of my own and a project I can use to further my passion for making that vision a reality now.
-- Don Wilde
" The CONVINCE Project "
http://www.EngineeringJobFuture.com/convince
o: 512-394-8896
c: 512-749-6447
Passion and obsession are sometimes closely related.
True, NY2TX, so true. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference, especially when I drive myself into the ground following my passion. ;-)
-- Don Wilde
" The CONVINCE Project "
http://www.EngineeringJobFuture.com
o: 512-394-8896
c: 512-749-6447
Members of my Board have described me as "obsessed" in both the positive and negative context. If you weigh the costs of entrepreneurship "my way" lunatic might be a better description.
More classically
Since I'm still operating as a dba, I don't have the luxury of blaming "them". :)
-- Don Wilde
" The CONVINCE Project "
http://www.EngineeringJobFuture.com
o: 512-394-8896
c: 512-749-6447
It is a rather strange idea that working leads to unhappiness. Passion may make a day of work, but it is not required to have deep exciting emotional attachment to one's job to avoid unhappiness at work and in life.
Here's a link to a LinkedIn discussion about what motivates people:
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/technology/software-development/TCH_SFT/...
Many are motivated by the process - learning something or other, others - by doing something cool and useful, many enjoy meaningful relationships with their coworkers. No one mentioned the word passion, yet the people who responded are reasonably happy about their work.
Jane Prusakova
Senior Consultant at Improving Enterprises
LinkedIn Info