Perfect

Follow a Career Passion? Let It Follow You

by Cal Newport

Published: September 29th 2012, New York Times

IN the spring of 2004, during my senior year of college, I faced a hard decision about my future career. I had a job offer from Microsoft and an acceptance letter from the computer science doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had also just handed in the manuscript for my first nonfiction book, which opened the option of becoming a full-time writer. These are three strikingly different career paths, and I had to choose which one was right for me.

For many of my peers, this decision would have been fraught with anxiety. Growing up, we were told by guidance counselors, career advice books, the news media and others to “follow our passion.” This advice assumes that we all have a pre-existing passion waiting to be discovered. If we have the courage to discover this calling and to match it to our livelihood, the thinking goes, we’ll end up happy. If we lack this courage, we’ll end up bored and unfulfilled — or, worse, in law school.

To a small group of people, this advice makes sense, because they have a clear passion. Maybe they’ve always wanted to be doctors, writers, musicians and so on, and can’t imagine being anything else.

But this philosophy puts a lot of pressure on the rest of us — and demands long deliberation. If we’re not careful, it tells us, we may end up missing our true calling. And even after we make a choice, we’re still not free from its effects. Every time our work becomes hard, we are pushed toward an existential crisis, centered on what for many is an obnoxiously unanswerable question: “Is this what I’m really meant to be doing?” This constant doubt generates anxiety and chronic job-hopping.

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. For someone in a new position, the right question is not, “What is this job offering me?” but, instead, “What am I offering this job?”

RETURNING to my story, I decided after only minimal deliberation to go to M.I.T. True to my alternative career philosophy, I was confident that all three of my career options could be transformed into a source of passion, and this confidence freed me from worry about making a wrong choice. I ended up choosing M.I.T., mainly because of a slight preference for the East Coast, but I would have been equally content heading out to Microsoft’s headquarters near Seattle. Or, with the advance from my first book, I could have hunkered down in a quiet town to write.

During my initial years as a graduate student, I certainly didn’t enjoy an unshakable sense that I had found my true calling. The beginning of doctoral training can be rough. You’re not yet skilled enough to make contributions to the research literature, which can be frustrating. And at a place like M.I.T., you’re surrounded by brilliance, which can make you question whether you belong.

Had I subscribed to the “follow our passion” orthodoxy, I probably would have left during those first years, worried that I didn’t feel love for my work every day. But I knew that my sense of fulfillment would grow over time, as I became better at my job. So I worked hard, and, as my competence grew, so did my engagement.

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.

To other young people who constantly wonder if the grass might be greener on the other side of the occupational fence, I offer this advice: Passion is not something you follow. It’s something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.

Hangover

If I were a poet, I would rummage in the tiny pockets of my memory for the best words to tell my story. I would seek north and south, east and west for the right words because this thing that I wanted to tell deserve not just any words, but the right words. And once I did, I would take these handful and weave them--one by one--to form a zipper, that would stretched from one end of deep memories to another of silent combustion of wordless sentiments; so that when a stranger read my story, that zipper could tear open and he or she could taste it--that animal that stretched from deep memories to wordless emotions--pristine and untainted. Alas, these words in my hands, they are not the best, nor are they right. But these few words are the only ones I have; and for now, I pray that these are enough to tell this thing I want to tell and to tell it in a manner that I can tell--a story only I can tell.

Story lets us carve our initials in the wet cement of this moment. And it does it so well because not only does it celebrate vulnerability, but it embodies vulnerability. The act of telling a story is a vulnerable act on and by itself. 

 -- Phil Kaye

Just to be able to stop and instead of catastrophizing what might happen, just say: I'm just so grateful. Because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive. 

-- Brene Brown

But I see the impossible everyday. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold on to others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk: they hear you, they feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It's what I strive for every time I open my mouth: that impossible connection. ...

When I meet you, in that moment, I am not longer a part of your future, I start quickly becoming part of your past, but in that instant, I get to share your present, and you, you get to share mine, and that is the greatest present of all. So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I probably laugh at you. I don't know whether I can change the world--yet--because I don't know much about it. And I don't know much about reincarnation either, but if you make me laugh hard enough sometimes, I forget what century I'm in. This isn't my first time here. This isn't my last time here. These aren't the last words I share--but just in case I'm trying my hardest to get it right this time around.

-- Hiroshima, Sarah Kay

Choose to Sprint

It's about what you want, and how you want to process that--how you go on your journey. So you can go on your journey halfway, which will manifest halfway. In life, people "Ow, they're really lucky! They're this, or they're that!" No, they're probably not really lucky. They probably just really went for it full-out.  

And, and we don't know that.  

They just keep knocking down doors, barriers and walls, and go full-out all the time to get there, to get where they wanted to be in their life. So that's all it is: if you choose to just kinda walk, or you choose to sprint.

-- Mia Michaels

Of Broken Memories

Manila was tremendous--for the most parts at least. Would I ever come back to Manila any time soon? No, I would not. And not necessarily because there were bits which I didn't particularly enjoy, but I think the snippets of Manila which I caught few glimpses of were enough, and they didn't need a follow-up really. It was a nice pull-stop, and I am ready to move on to the next one.

Preparing for the performance was brutal. And I could say this because never before had I ever sustained so many injuries preparing for a performance. My right wrist was messed up, my left shoulder went a little funky, and the shin splints made a second coming. I think they all formed the culmination of shock and stress which I had put my body under after having not danced for too long (due to Canada) and shoved my self into the thick of things abruptly (like TRDO). My body wasn't ready, and I pushed, it pushed harder--I lost and paid the price.

Nonetheless, doing the items I did for Manila really helped me understand the idea of living in the now. I consider myself generally as someone who lives in the future. I set goals on a regular basis, conquering (as I would like to consider myself doing) one thing after another either simply because I need to, or I want to and I can. As a consequence, I hardly spent enough time enjoying the fruit of my own labour. It was always an endless pursuit of the future, which I think I still do, and in which I see nothing wrong--although at times it does feel regretful that I couldn't help myself to remain in the present and relish it a bit more. Of course, there is nothing absolute about it either: there were times where I would chase my memories, vaguely trying to recreate the feeling that one piece of music or that one photo gave me when I heard or saw it for the first time. But generally, I keep my eyes on the finish line, and creating one after another once the former is crossed.

Not too long ago I watched this interview on YouTube of Wade Robson, titled Masterclass Legends: Wade Robson on DS2DIO channel (which if you guys haven't heard of, you should check it out!), and in that interview the host asked, "What do you love about dance?". Wade answered:

With dance, when you're deep in the moment of dance and just how time drifts away. You know, and like usually everything in life we're always thinking about something we want in the future or relating it to something that's happened in the past, you know, when you're in that moment just none of that stuff exists and time just slips away. All of us in life are looking to be a little bit more present and as dancers, we're so lucky that we kind of have that window of opportunity to see what that's really like to not be so caught up in the sort of psychological time. So and then it's just hoping we can take that glimpse and use that sort of more and more in our day-to-day life.

And as corny as it sounds, I really understood what he said when I did those items, during rehearsals, vettings and the show itself. Well, may be partially because the items were really long, but there was also something that when I put on the costumes, and the music began playing, and the lights went down, and there was this thing in the space in front of me that was liberating--it felt safe, empty, and here. May be I am over-romanticising it at this moment, may be just a tiny bit.

Anyway, Manila was special because of the people. The Filipinos that I met, they were a passionate lot. Despite the rain, the horrible traffic, the bugs, the flood and the sweat (or perhaps because of them), these people really knew how to live it. And it was so apparent from the way they dressed, the way they spoke--Tagalog, perhaps due to the Spanish influence, is a language which is spoken with gusto; it has rhythm, inflection and accompanying gestures; it has real character--the way they interacted with one another, and of course the way they drank.

I met this dancer who was not much older than I was, Zyda, and she gave a workshop which was easily the highlight of the whole trip. She was a dream to watch. Really, she wrote poetry with her movements. And when we all talked to her after the workshop, it was all over her: her life journey, her personality and her story, emanating from her pores. She had the words "Om Namah Shivaya" (which meant "I honour the divinity within me") tattooed on her left forearm and a trinity sign (which meant "the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit") on her right wrist, such that when she crossed her arms the two would meet. She mentioned that she used to be rebellious, and now she was trying to dial it down, and those tattoos helped her to relinquish her dark past. Everything about her: her body, her dancing, her movements, her technique, her voice; told her story--and I really admired her for that.

Whatever happened in Manila was not life-changing--nowadays, nothing is--but it made me want to live in the now just a little bit more. I probably will never let go of my clutch on the future, but perhaps I can afford to ease my clench just a tad bit and take chances to savour what is happening now, or what is in very, very near future. And each time that spinal reflex kicked in and I felt like tightening my fist of control over things again, let me be reminded that things would be alright. And even if they didn't, there was still something worthwhile in living in the now with my slightly relaxed fist--in living it so daring greatly.

He Does So Daring Greatly

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

-- The Man in the Arena, delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910 

Epiphany

If dance really is a lifestyle, it's selfish to ask others to live yours, isn't it?