Original link: http://catcoding.me/p/passion/
On this day in 2005, Jobs gave that famous speech at Stanford University, which was the most viewed speech on Youtube, with over 40 million views.
The speech was certainly good, moving, and inspiring. Jobs shared three short stories, the most important of which was to encourage everyone to follow their hearts and passions:
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Follow Your Passion or Follow Your Heart is a piece of advice that young people often receive, especially some successful people like to give such advice.
But if we haven’t examined it in light of our own circumstances, such advice cannot be put into practice. For many ordinary people, the problem may stem from:
- I don’t know where my passion is
- Searching for passion all the time can make you anxious
- There is passion and vision, but the reality is cruel
- How to tell if it’s a whim or an internal drive
- When to follow and when to give up
If you also have such confusion, you can read Cal Newport’s book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” , the Chinese translation is “Too Good To Be Ignored” , this book allows us to think from a different angle. Cal Newport is a computer professor who has written several bestsellers, you may have read his Deep Work.
The advice Follow Your Passion makes it easy to think that if my work or life isn’t good, it’s because I haven’t found my passion, and as long as I find it and the problem goes away, I’ll be successful.
There are indeed some extremely talented people in the world. They discovered their passions and talents early, determined their career ideals, and made great achievements, such as Tao Zhexuan and Kobe Bryant.
But for most people, competence and passion are scarce .
Even Jobs, who didn’t show interest in electrical engineering and tech products in his early days, if he followed his original passions – art, dieting, Zen, meditation, the world might have one more great meditation teacher and less Apple Inc.
Then he met Steve Woz, one of the best geeks of the era, who originally sold assembled computers to make a quick buck, and in the process Jobs saw a bigger opportunity, which also sparked his enthusiasm to be able to Saying that Apple was created was a bit of a coincidence.
Newport’s book writes that many times it’s not that important to match a job with a hobby. Moreover, many passions cannot be directly related to careers. For example, many boys’ passion is basketball, but basketball-related careers are extremely rare, and to enter the professional league requires talent in addition to passion.
In conclusion, hobbies cannot be eaten for most people, and even hobbies can eventually become miserable. Regarding passion, Newport’s research shows:
- Professional passion is scarce
- Passion takes time to build
- Passion is a by-product of mastery
Workplace passion comes after working hard and getting good at something worthwhile, not before . The professional passion of ordinary people is often formed little by little after a long period of snowballing.
When people are young, or when they do not have enough career capital, it is more important to make a living, to master the scarce skills through deliberate practice, and to become excellent and unique, rather than finding passion.
When a person is good enough and can have value to others, this person cannot be ignored. This is the core point of Newport’s book, and the book also writes some specifics, such as craftsman thinking, autonomy, how to work correctly, etc. .
Later I saw a question on Quora, What controversial advice have people given to their children , and Richard Muller’s answer explained the same thing. At this stage of children, it is irresponsible to simply and rudely encourage them to Follow Your Passion.
Because when people are children, they are only exposed to a small part of the world, and the interests and passions they show are often imitations.
Some girls like dance since childhood, but they end up becoming dance teachers. It doesn’t mean that dance teachers are not good. If this person likes the profession of dance teacher very much, of course there is no problem, but her initial vision may be to become a dancer. If she can choose her Wish I had another job and just kept dancing as a hobby.
A more sensible suggestion is to do your best to get a good education, get in touch with a wider world, enter a better platform, explore more, and try to save the opportunity to choose to an older age, because at this time people will be more certain. , know what you want.
Exploring is an adventure. It is full of uncertainty. It is much more challenging to explore than it is to follow your passion; there is much more uncertainty. If you feel that you must avoid all anxiety, then it is a very uncomfortable way to go. You live with doubt. It is not easy; in fact, it is full of wrong directions, and when you find yourself on a path that is not going where you want, you have to be ready to get off.
I then pondered why so many successful people often give this kind of advice to follow their passions. In this video by Scott Galloway , he says that if a person advises you to Follow Your Passion, that person is already rich 
.
I think of a more vivid analogy. Suppose that life is a big maze , and Passion is in the lower right corner of the maze. Of course, the ideal state of people is to do things that they are passionate about. Of course, it is better if they can generate social value.
For an ordinary person, many times there is only one choice. For example, for the vast majority of Chinese high school students, the college entrance examination is a threshold that must be passed. In this case, it is unrealistic to use the strategy of Follow Your Passion to preferentially go to the lower right direction (such as the A* algorithm), which may lead to more detours or more pain.
But when a person has enough choice capital, the following maze randomly demolished 200 walls, such as Gu Ailing, she has almost multiple choices in every step, at this time, as long as you follow the strategy of Follow Your Passion, this is undoubtedly is the optimal or near optimal solution.
So this kind of advice given by successful people is obviously “correct” advice to them.
In the absence of enough choice capital, what we need to do is try to explore, accumulate, improve, remove those walls, give ourselves more choices, and try to turn the first maze into the second.
The above discussion is somewhat rational, and the conclusion sounds a bit chicken soup. In the cruel situation of reality, should you still insist on following your heart and dreams, or should you abandon everything in the world? For example, Wang Cailing in “The Beginning of Spring” , such as “The Moon and Sixpence” Lister Kland, some people say that it should be, life should be so pure; point.
This is a matter of opinion, ideal and reality, reason and enthusiasm, there will always be some conflicts and tears. Gibran said: resting on reason and acting on enthusiasm is the best state.
I have a friend who said that after earning enough money, we will find a small island to write code well, we will stare at the pennies on the ground, and occasionally look up at the moon, this is the way most people choose. And those who have ideals and follow their inner dreams desperately are always worthy of respect.
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