I got a chance to talk to some college juniors last year, and I talked about following your passion. I said I doubted anyone in our building’s “passion” was to work on financial data. I did say that something in your job should make you go “Huh!” so you were interested.
I got a chance to talk to some college juniors last year, and I talked about following your passion. I said I doubted anyone in our building’s “passion” was to work on financial data. I did say that something in your job should make you go “Huh!” so you were interested.
Yes! There are all kinds of problems worth solving — sometimes you get paid for them, sometimes you don't.
One of the most interesting insights in my (so far just 50 person!) qual study on how to have a healthy relationship with work was finding that the healthiest people I spoke to were not passionate about their profession, they were passioante about life. They constantly sought out interesting problems to solve and devoted themselves to it.
One of the women I spoke to had this fascinating way of charging for her time — the more she was interested in something, the less she charged to do the work. There's actually research that bears this out — when you introduce an extrinsic reward like money or status, you actually become less intrinsically motivated to do it.
It seems counter-intuitive, especially in the context of exploited passion, but she was balancing her books on joy more than money and it was working for her.
Another funny thing I found — the healthiest people had the hardest time explaining what they do for a living, most often because they did so many different things according to their interests. Life as a great big buffet of interesting problems worth solving.
Yeah, I agree with this. My aunt says you should always be learning in your job otherwise you're just languishing and I think it's a good perspective. Even if it's not your primary passion, you can still be learning and growing.
This framing resonates with me. I work at a membership association (IYKYK), which is an industry I didn't even know existed until I started working in it. But the thing I like (and sometimes hate) about my job is that there's constantly something new to learn. We're small (ahem, understaffed), so there's a lot of flexibility and some "we're doing this new thing, just figure it out" but overall it keeps things interesting. But I know that's the kind of work environment that would be absolute torture for others.
I got a chance to talk to some college juniors last year, and I talked about following your passion. I said I doubted anyone in our building’s “passion” was to work on financial data. I did say that something in your job should make you go “Huh!” so you were interested.
I love that framing. Also just thinking of work as problems you enjoy solving.
Yes! There are all kinds of problems worth solving — sometimes you get paid for them, sometimes you don't.
One of the most interesting insights in my (so far just 50 person!) qual study on how to have a healthy relationship with work was finding that the healthiest people I spoke to were not passionate about their profession, they were passioante about life. They constantly sought out interesting problems to solve and devoted themselves to it.
One of the women I spoke to had this fascinating way of charging for her time — the more she was interested in something, the less she charged to do the work. There's actually research that bears this out — when you introduce an extrinsic reward like money or status, you actually become less intrinsically motivated to do it.
It seems counter-intuitive, especially in the context of exploited passion, but she was balancing her books on joy more than money and it was working for her.
Another funny thing I found — the healthiest people had the hardest time explaining what they do for a living, most often because they did so many different things according to their interests. Life as a great big buffet of interesting problems worth solving.
Yeah, I agree with this. My aunt says you should always be learning in your job otherwise you're just languishing and I think it's a good perspective. Even if it's not your primary passion, you can still be learning and growing.
This framing resonates with me. I work at a membership association (IYKYK), which is an industry I didn't even know existed until I started working in it. But the thing I like (and sometimes hate) about my job is that there's constantly something new to learn. We're small (ahem, understaffed), so there's a lot of flexibility and some "we're doing this new thing, just figure it out" but overall it keeps things interesting. But I know that's the kind of work environment that would be absolute torture for others.