powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements.
Don't you agree? And how is this possible? It is possible if you do the best of your work. And how can you do that? You can do that if you love what you do. So that is how I started about this quest of finding out what I love to do. So I turned to my faithful friend Google and found one asking to just keep writing till one thought just hits you in the heart making you ask how is it that I didn't know this till now and another asking to write down my strengths and weaknesses and find that sweet spot of what you love and what people are willing to pay for. I did try the first method but couldn't get much far. The second one yielded some options but actually may be my mental chatter was too much that I couldn't converge on one thing. And then of course, I drifted off. But whenever I didn't feel fulfilled, again my thoughts would come back to this question. After all, Steve Jobs has said -
"If you haven't found it, keep looking. Don't settle.As with all matters of the heart, you will know when you find it."
So I kept looking. I have a job writing and maintaining software and I do it quite well. But it feels as if I only do it for money. It is not satisfying very much, though I would get occasional spurts of contentment in solving issues or exploring new technologies. So what is that I love. I would love to develop an android application for an idea I have. But I am not able to do that. So do I really love it? So how much should we love something. Here Paul Graham has an answer -
As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of "spare time" seems mistaken.That is it. But I have a lot of spare time but I spend it watching movies online.But if I think more, I would love to do that. But why I am not doing that? Because I am lazy and more than that I am procrastinating. And now here I have a dilemna whether I really like it or not. And PG has a solution too. That is to 'always produce'
"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
So I will apply that and see if it works. Another person I respect a lot, Rajagopal Sukumar, the CIO of Cognizant, says that we can learn to be passionate in this excellent series. Sukumar says that if you have the aptitude, by constantly producing, you will become passionate about it. And Paul says that if you don't love it, you will not be able to produce it. So this is the ultimate test.
First find out what you like. Then try to grow passionate on that. You will either become passionate about that or you will drop out of that.
So dear readers what do you think of it? Lucky are those who know what their passion is. Are you among one of them or did you discover it? Share your stories of how you discovered it.
