A friend told me: “your content is awesome for people who know what they want.”
But unfortunately, most people don’t know what they want.
Or, more precisely, they think they don’t know.
In “Refuse to Choose”, Barbara Sher points out:
“maybe learning about new environments is what makes you happy, what’s right for you. Most Scanners miss that point and don’t realize that they’ve already found the right kind of life for themselves.”
(Editor’s note: a “scanner” is a person that is interested in a large variety of things and doesn’t want to focus on one thing only. Kind of like a generalist.)
We’re chasing that one thing that will give us passion for the rest of our lives. That elusive “passion” that we’ve been taught about from a very early age. That we’ve been looking for all of our career.
Let’s challenge that:
- What if you’ve already found the right kind of life for yourself?
- What if your “passion” isn’t just one thing, but many?
Mark Manson agrees:
“The common complaint among a lot of these people is that they need to “find their passion.”
I call bullshit. You already found your passion, you’re just ignoring it. Seriously, you’re awake 16 hours a day, what the fuck do you do with your time? You’re doing something, obviously. You’re talking about something. There’s some topic or activity or idea that dominates a significant amount of your free time, your conversations, your web browsing, and it dominates them without you consciously pursuing it or looking for it.
It’s right there in front of you, you’re just avoiding it. For whatever reason, you’re avoiding it. You’re telling yourself, “Oh well, yeah, I love comic books but that doesn’t count. You can’t make money with comic books.”
Fuck you, have you even tried?”
The Ikigai Fallacy
On Monday night, I was at Lacrosse practice. -1°C. Frozen turf. Only 9 guys. Mostly very basic drills. Lots of good reasons for practice to suck.
And yet, it was awesome. There wasn’t a single thing I would’ve rather done that evening.
Is Lacrosse my passion?
Maybe. One of many things, for sure.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the “Ikigai” exercise. It prompts you to find something that:
- Gives you joy
- You’re good at
- The world needs
- You can get paid for
You know what? That’s really hard to find. I’ve done this exercise several times, only to arrive at the conclusion that maybe, for me, there is no such one thing.
Take Lacrosse: it only checks 2 boxes: it 100% gives me joy, and I’m not horrible at it.
Does the world need it? Maybe. But there are other things the world needs more.
Can I get paid for it? Absolutely f**king not.
(Although Mark Manson might say: “fuck you, have you even tried?”. To which the honest answer would be: no, not really.)
Does this mean I shouldn’t do it?
No. It just means I shouldn’t allocate all of my time towards it.
And this is the Ikigai fallacy: thinking that you have to find that one thing that checks all the criteria. I think that’s wrong. Nothing will check all 4 boxes out of the gate.
It develops. Just like passion.
Passion Develops
Passion doesn’t come out of nowhere. You don’t wake up one day and think “damn, I’m really passionate about lock picking”.
No. What might happen is:
- You lock yourself out of your apartment.
- A locksmith shows up.
- He opens your lock.
- You think: “holy s**t, how did he do that?”
- You google “lock picking”.
- You buy a lock picking set.
- It’s kinda fun.
- You get really good at it.
- Your friends call you to open their locks.
- You think you can’t make a living out of it.
- Mark Manson tells you: “fuck you, have you even tried?”
- You think: he’s right.
- You start a YouTube channel as a side hustle next to your main job as a lawyer.
- You publish videos twice a week.
- All the sudden, your channel has 4.57M subscribers (yours truly being one of them) and you’ve filmed yourself 1622 times while opening locks.
The key (pun not intended) is – as always – to start doing.
In a way, it’s like finding a job or a romantic partner. You can overthink it all you want, but if you never apply anywhere or talk to potential partners, then you’ll never find one.
Thinking won’t make a difference. Doing will.
Assemble your portfolio of passions
Now, our Lock Picking Lawyer seems to have found his Ikigai. But what if you haven't?
Here’s another framework I like, taken from the book “Designing Your Life”: the work-health-love-play inventory.
In the book, the authors ask you to regularly check your “dashboard” (kind of like the fuel gauge in your car). When all 4 are full, life’s good.
If you fill your dashboard from one activity, great. But very likely, you won’t.
Instead, build a portfolio of activities that ensure your dashboard is full at all fronts. For example, you could:
- Have a job that you enjoy and that makes reasonable money (= work)
- Play a team sport (play, love, health)
- Make time regularly to meet family & friends (love)
- Take some time every week to yourself (health)
- Engage in silly games for no reason besides their pure enjoyment (play)
- Every now and then, do some one-off consulting that adds variety (work)
You get the idea. So instead of attempting to find your one true passion, just assemble a portfolio of things you’re passionate about.
​Kind of like a portfolio career.
In fifth grade, our class teacher asked us what we wanted to do when we grow up. Back then, I answered “geography professor”.
Man, I wish I had that clarity as an adult.
But ultimately, I think it’s the wrong question. Most of us don’t have enough information to make a decision about the rest of our lives right now.
We do, however, have enough information to decide what we want right now (and extrapolate this to the next 1-2 years). Work with that instead, and regularly check in whether that’s still the right way to pursue.
Happy Monday. Enjoy life this week. LFG.
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That’s it. Thanks for reading. If you liked this, please share it with one friend. If you didn’t, please let me know so I can improve this newsletter.
With ❤️ from Dominik.
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