Where does passion come from? You can create, grow and sustain passion!
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
One sentence summary: It’s possible to start out not passionate about a job and end up being super passionate; passion at work can be cultivated; one of the best ways to cultivate passion is by working on something that makes the world better.
Summary:
Standard career advice: “Work on what you are passionate about.”
But what if you aren’t passionate about anything?
What if you can’t make money from your passion?
And what if your passion changes?
Input Side vs Output Side Passion:
Option 1 - Passion on Input Side: Passion * Work => Happy
Option 2 - Passion on Output Side: Meaning * Work => Passion + Happy
Meaning (purpose) = helping make the world better
Comment
What what what? You can get passion from the output side of work? Ie you start off not passionate but become passionate about work over time?
I’ve found that one can become passionate about work overtime if the work is meaningful (makes the world better).
I didn’t start out passionate about Edrolo (a company I co-founded), but now I’m deeply passionate about Edrolo.
Each year I’ve slowly become more and more passionate about Edrolo as meaning and progress increase. It’s honestly the most beautiful thing!
Jingle: It’s not “work on what you are passionate about.” It’s “work on making the world better as then you’ll become passionate about work and have lasting happiness :)!”
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Details:
I have found that passion can be cultivated and grow year on year:
Passion Magnitude = 1. Meaning (making world better) * 2. Magnitude of possible improvement (eg where can you get to in long term) * 3. Progress each year
At Edrolo passion started low for me and has grown massively
Each year at Edrolo IMO we’ve been able to find ways to improve humanity more than I realised was possible. Ie magnitude of possible improvement today is WAY more than I thought it was a year ago :).
This increase in improvements to humanity is intrinsically linked with my growing in passion in the work I do at Edrolo
One Edrolo goal: that the magnitude of improvement to education increases each year, hopefully in an exponential fashion.
I honestly believe this has been the case.
1 lens is the evolution of our products: TM > TMEM > Mustang 1 > Mustang 2 etc
Each time the new products are adding more and more value
Outcome: combining all of these things my passion from edrolo has gone from ‘moderate’ to ‘massive’ :) !!
Comment:
I didn't know this was possible!!
10 years ago Duncan thought you were born with an innate passion for something or you weren’t.
This is a fixed mindset approach and when you think about it, it's kind of ridiculous
How could genetics really be able to fixate you on something as complex as passion and make you incapable of changing your focus
IMO it's a crime that people don't know you can cultivate passion! That you can go from indifferent about something to out of control passionate.
IMO a life with passion is better than a life without passion.
Everyone can have passion and meaning in their life. You just need to give it to yourself.
Helping make the world better IMO will make you passionate about what you do. Giving to others is giving to yourself. The best things are selfless and selfish.
Is “Option 1 - passion on input side” or “Option 2 - passion on output side” better?
IMO “Option 2 - passion on output side”
All else equal, it's better to have ‘Passion, Happy and Meaning’ (Option 2) than just ‘Passion and Happy’ (Option 1).
Option 1 - passion on input side: Passion * Work => Happy
Option 2 - passion on output side: Meaning * Work => Passion + Happy
Lasting vs Ephemeral Passion
Passion based on ‘personal preference’ = open to change (ie ephemeral)
Passion here is not being derived from the impact you are making, it is what you are innately interested in
If you are unable to make an impact on the world and strengthen your passion it may be fleeting or at least not as strong as you could otherwise achieve
Passion based on ‘making the world better’ = lasting (eg I might decide I really like fashion and then change my mind… but it’s very unlikely that I would feel that improving education is ever not important)
It’s not “work on what you are passionate about.” It’s “work on making the world better as then you’ll become passionate about work and have lasting happiness :)!”
Doing ‘meaningful’ (aka making the world better) work is one of the best life hacks I know of.
One model I like for a Good Life = Health + Enough Money + Friends + Purpose
Doing meaningful work can help you will all of these outputs
Meaning * Work => happy at work which is a solid foundation for mental health
Meaning * Work => normally engenders one liking work => solid foundation to do well at work and thereby have enough money
Meaning * Work => building something together is a wonderful canvas on which to build quality relationships. Of course you should have quality relationships outside of work but best to have them at work as well.
Meaning * Work * Progress => Purpose
In other words, Meaningful Work can be the cornerstone upon which you build a good life!
If you want Meaning and Passion in your life, IMO one approach is to pick a way to help improve the world and get going at improving! It doesn’t matter what it is, just pick something and get started. If you make progress I think you’ll find Meaning and Passion ‘just happen’... And all the other pieces for a good life might become 10x easier to get into place!
Examples - Stories to exhibit where passion can come from.
Story 1: Duncan Anderson’s story for Edrolo - believe it or not I wasn’t passionate about Edrolo in the beginning
I don’t think there is a ceiling for ‘passion’. You cannot be max 100% passionate about something. Basically, the more passionate I have become, the higher my ability to feel passion. Ie the ceiling just gets further and further away… yay! I life where beauty begets beauty :). I don’t want a AAA life, I want a BBB life ;)
Having said this for the purpose of this story, let's say that one can be -10 to 10 passionate.
-10 you really hate something
0 = indifferent
10 you are turbo passionate about something
Believe it or not I started out 1/10 passionate about Edrolo. I didn’t dislike but I was like ‘yeah, let’s do this’.
Now I am 10/10, Edrolo is the biggest component of who I am personally. I love working at Edrolo because I think it we can have a massive massive impact to humanity (hopefully bigger than any other business ever).
Basically, I thought that the impact to humanity in the beginning was there, but it was ‘replacing revision lectures in term 3 holidays with video versions of this for Year 12’. Ie a small 1/10 impact to humanity = small passion.
I now believe that through our next generation product named ‘Mustang’ alone it’s possible for Edrolo to have a bigger impact to humanity than any business ever. Ie 10/10 impact to humanity = turbo passion.
This is why ‘doing work that makes the world better’ is the best life hack I know of!
Summary:
Working on making the world better has allowed me (Duncan) to become passionate about work. Ie passion has been derived from the output side of work.
Story 2: Rex Roseman’s story for Edrolo (written by Rex) - having finished a Science degree at Melbourne University and starting out in video production in (ie not a job that was related to his degree) to now being passionate about Edrolo and really enjoying work that has nothing to do with my degree
I started working at Edrolo after finishing my undergrad and feeling rather passionless about where I wanted to go with my career
My plan after finishing uni was to work while I figured out which other degree I should rack up more HECS debt with and ultimately get a job
I was lucky enough to catch wind of a role at Edrolo in Recording and Editing Team (former name of MPT) where I put my self taught video editing skills to the test
Prior to starting at Edrolo I had never worked in an office environment and barely had an idea of what a startup really was
At the time I would say I was indifferent to Edrolo’s mission (I definitely didn’t hate education) and was motivated mainly by getting exposed to new skills in video production
This all quickly changed once I moved into management a little under a year into starting at Edrolo
Since then I have faced many challenges and have had many opportunities to make meaningful contributions towards Edrolo’s mission through my work with the content side of the business
Working on improving education is a noble pursuit, making it very easy to derive meaning and purpose from my work
Having the ability to make a meaningful impact on education through my work at Edrolo has certainly converted my indifference into passion
I feel lucky to have only ever worked in an environment where passion and meaning has been easy to derive from my day to day
Not including my brief time at Woolworths, that was a super passionless vacuum of meaningless shelf stacking…
Summary:
Rex started off indifferent (not passionate) about working at Edrolo.
Working on making the world better has allowed Rex to become passionate about work. Ie passion has been derived from the output side of work.
Story 3: You have a passion (eg film, eg fashion) but are working in a role at Edrolo that is not related to your passion. What is possible to happen?
There is nothing wrong with working on your existing passion. More than that, great you have a passion!
But IMO there is another way to be passionate about what you work on! It is possible to become passionate about work from making the world better.
Work on your passion (eg writing) while working eg at Edrolo and see what happens.
What is key is that I didn’t understand it was possible to become passionate about work because of making the world better. You don’t have to kill off your existing passion, but open yourself up to the idea that passion could come from making the world better.
The other point to make is that you might have preconceived notions of ‘what you like / don’t like’. For example you might think ‘I’ll never like spreadsheets, I don’t ever want to go near them’.
What I’ve found is that spreadsheets as a tool to ‘improve the world’ the world are great great fun problem solving.
However, spreadsheets for spreadsheets sake are super boring!
So basically, I try not to think of ‘will I like something / not like something?’ but more ‘is this something that will better help me improve the world?’ I’ve found that I basically like anything that will help me improve the world!
It is of course possible to have more than one passion that you pursue, hopefully though you can cultivate a lot of passion from your work, considering how much time we will dedicate to our careers over our lifetimes.
Story 4: You have a passion for education and come to Edrolo
Ex teacher at Edrolo: “Duncan, I’ve had more time to think about improving education here in 3 weeks than I did in 10 years as a teacher.”
As a teacher there are so many things needed to ‘just keep the wheels on’.
You might have a passion and be trying to actualise it in one field (eg improve education by being a teacher) but find there is a better avenue to make progress on you passion (eg by making education resources at Edrolo).
At Edrolo there is the space to spend a lot of your time figuring out how to improvement Education and affect change for thousands and maybe one day millions of students, the canvass we have to work with is much much bigger
With the ability to make a much bigger magnitude of change in improving the world, you will cultivate much more passion than otherwise was possible
Conversely, you might also find that Edrolo isn’t the place for you to actualise your passion, that there is a better avenue. “A place for everything and everything in its place.”
Summary:
You can create, grow and sustain passion. Passion doesn’t have to be something you are born with. Some innate “calling”. We are using examples from Edrolo here but IMO it can come from anything that is helping the world. Eg climate change, eg human rights, eg mental health, eg helping humans relax with wonderful art (I want 10x seasons of Rick and Morty please!).
Here are some ways to improve the world from the UN if you are interested
