knowing myself

a systematic approach to finding your 'passion' [45]:

Illustrations from Love-Knots and Bridal-Bands, courtesy of the British Library

Hi friends,

This is week 45 of my newsletter, meaning 45 of my essays have been sent out into the world of substack and into your inboxes my dear readers. This week’s essay is about finding your passion and getting to mastery, both of which I want to do with my writing.

And I have an ask for you, let me know your single favorite essay from my publication. Reply to this email if you are reading this in your inbox or leave a comment if you are on web/app. I want to become a better writer, for me and you.

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Life initiates art

I got into an Uber last Friday to my driving test site and started a conversation with this spirited woman from Colorado. She asked me about my test and we started talking about teenage reckless driving, crazy Austin roads, and of course the head-scratching Texas speed limit. She was incredibly kind and gave me tips on how to pass the test as I had failed it the first time a month ago.

At some point, she said she think I would do well as I seem to be a very cautious and intentional person. I was pleasantly surprised as I always appreciate highly observant people and don’t meet a lot of them. In fact, in my freshman year of college (lingo for the first year for my non-Americans), my school gave us access to take a strengths test that measure our strengths across 34 characteristics and spit out the top five. I remember vividly one of my core strengths as Deliberative:

According to the test provider,

People exceptionally talented in the Deliberative theme are best described by the serious care they take in making decisions or choices. They anticipate obstacles.

That describes me to a T. I assess and weigh the pros and cons of everything I do, from choosing a major in college to a career path, what friends to keep and what friends to not, etc. I spend an uncanny amount of time perusing what is worthwhile of my time and effort. In a lengthy and ongoing effort to define said worthwhile endeavors, I present to you my current approach:

1. Narrow down your choices

I recently wrote about optionality and how I have an undying love for them (recovering from it currently). I am open to many opportunities - career paths, art forms, friends, etc. I do think I have a blind spot when assessing whether something should be worthwhile to pursue when I am unusually flexible with my options.

On one hand, common knowledge stipulates that mastery of most endeavors follows the 10,000 hours or 10-year rule by Anders Ericcson, whereby a skill or knowledge base should be sufficiently developed in that amount of time give or take. This rule nevertheless requires one to pick a specialty or area to focus on. Personally, I think it’s misguided to pick a random job and drill down on it for 10 years. More likely than not, one will quit before the end of 10-year mark if they are not inherently interested.

In the modern world, there are two main camps of thought:

1. You find your passion by doing.

2. Somehow you stumble upon your “calling” and decide to dedicate your life to it.

It’s not as straightforward or binary as that because we are imperfect, fickle humans. In the book Grit by Angela Duckworth, she divides the paradigm of grit into three components:

• Interest

• Practice

• Purpose

Ideally on the way to mastery, one should fulfill all three of these categories. Adam Grant, a psychology researcher and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted research on firefighters who said they were externally motivated to help others and expected an increase in overtime hours in these groups. It turned out that these firefighters who expressed their desire to help others worked on average 50% lower hours than those who both have prosocial motives and intrinsic interest in the work (they genuinely enjoy it).

internal interest + external motivation = GRIT (to pursue your passion)

Another research by developmental psychologists David Yeager and Matt Bundick arrived at the same finding. Kids who showed both intrinsic and external motives (self-satisfaction and desire to benefit others) found more meaning in their school work than kids who only have self-oriented motives (I want to be a fashion designer because I like fashion) or external-oriented (I want to become a doctor because I want to heal people)

Applying this same line of thinking to our life, it would be wise to find an interest, activity, or endeavor that naturally feels comfortable and at ease. They don’t have to be the easiest activities but they should feel good enough so you are willing to work through the hard times. These activities don’t have to be something you lose sleep over or are compelled to squeal with excitement every time you work on them either. They can be a consistent component in your life but have not been acted on for various reasons - music, doodling, design, etc.

For example, I started learning the piano when I was in 6th grade. I was in no way precocious or especially talented, in fact, I fretted the lessons quite frequently depending on the instructors. During my lessons, I was taught classical piano - essentially consisting of reading music sheets and playing off existing work. This was not something that I was particularly interested in, which I suspected was the main reason why I never followed through with learning the piano properly.

There is another style called contemporary, aka learning more by ears and improvisation. Contemporary revolves more around chords, which are the bedrock of modern pop and jazz music. I didn’t know this then but I was already learning contemporary style by myself when I was in middle school - picking up chords and melodies of my favorite pop songs at the time from Youtube videos and free sheet music online. I stopped learning formally when I got into high school but continued to dabble with music for fun here and there throughout college. I recently got myself a keyboard and have been learning again.

The key takeaway here is even though I never found the extraordinary motivation or talent in playing music, I had a natural draw to it because I enjoy how the practice and mastery of a song make me feel. What feels good for you will always find a way to come back into your life. I am convinced that if I had noticed this earlier and put in deliberate practice and commitment to the art, I would have been far in my piano journey now. It is, however, never too late.

2. Bias for Action

After you have narrowed down the area(s) you want to explore, it’s time to test your hypothesis. I would advocate for as much hands-on involvement as possible.

Sign up for volunteer work, enroll in free courses, and start your own project to see if a certain field/role/area fits your interests and intrigues you like you thought it would. I for one had chased down multiple career paths that I thought would be fitting yet don’t mean much to me. I know I could pursue them fine if I made myself fit into those shapes and molds but at the end of the day, they never feel right.

e.g: If you are thinking of becoming a Youtuber, begin filming and editing right away in place of reading up too much on how to become one. You can always launch a private channel, practice editing, and post them as a practice run. See if the process is genuinely interesting. You wouldn’t know until you have hands-on experience.

3. Reflect and repeat

Listen to what your head and your heart are telling you during the process too. Do you have a sustained motivation to continue to learn and improve or does it come in extreme excitement and frustration waves? Do you find yourself discussing those topics outside of your practice time? Do the learnings feel like a chore or intrigue your mind? When you meet experienced people in the field that you are considering, do you want to be them in the future?

The breadth of discovery and personal assessment questions can be boundless. Yet the above are the ones that have helped me determine if some choices are wise or ill-advised to pursue.

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