Crafting a career: From passion to profession
Who are the happiest people of them all? I reckon, the happiest are the ones who are enjoying every moment of living. Since living involves, in large parts, working, the happiest are the ones who are enjoying working.
When does one enjoy working?
The famous psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, once quipped:
If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.
This piece on paying attention to what you really enjoy doing (read passion), and what gets you paid (read profession).
I reckon that enjoyment, and eventually excellence, happens when your passion becomes one with your profession, or what you love doing is what you end up doing.
A profession where you are following your passion makes one excel, just like Narendra Modi in politics, Virat Kohli in cricket, and Leonardo DiCaprio in movies. However, it’s not always easy to understand and appreciate Passion, Mastery, and Money elements. Let’s give it a shot.
Passion
We all intuitively understand what passion is, or how it feels, but let me offer a working definition or two.
Passion is something you do and continue to do without any external incentive.
The corollary is that a typical job is something that you do and continue to do with a clear external incentive.
Another definition of passion is something that you do not get tired doing.
It could be reading, writing, singing, gardening, watching TV, gossiping, walking, chatting with friends, etcetera. Some of these passions may sound non productive to some, but that’s the sheer variety that nature embeds in us all.
Here’s a brief video on how passion drove Pichai to eventually becoming the chief of Google.
Passion is difficult to discover and don’t stop till you find one. Can it change with age? Yes, of course. But living without passion isn’t worth either.
Mastery
Next comes mastery — what you are genuinely good at.
Being good at something doesn’t come easy. It calls for serious amount of investment, discipline, and focus.
Are there things you can confidently call as being excellent at?
Again, it can be the same list: reading, writing, singing, gardening, watching TV, gossiping, walking, chatting with friends, etcetera.
But now, you have to be really better than most at it.
Here’s a blurb from Jack Ma on the importance of being good at something significant.
Passion + Mastery = Hobby
If you are good at something and you like doing it; it might just mean that you have a hobby that you are following. It doesn’t still qualify as a profession. For a profession to happen there must be a monetary proposition.
Money
The final question is — is someone willing to pay for your passion and mastery?
Is your drive and expertise of value to someone beyond you?
That’s the economic dimension, which (fortunately) is the cornerstone of a true profession. Money is the chief of the external motivations. In certain cases, money can be substituted with other rewards, such as accolades, prestige, pride, etcetera, but that calls for an overarching purpose to be in place.
Money, luckily, remains a largely used and well understood measure of significance for both the buyers and sellers.
But, money can’t be the real measure of professional success either, just as Jeff Bezos explains in this chat. However, for most, it is.
Passion + Master + Money = Profession
So, where do you start?
The current state of the Indian IT industry (flat growth, rapid employee churn, and limited differentiation) can well be attributed to the fact that a lot of people, including yours truly, started with where the money is (or was). Mastery, let alone passion, was out of question.
Money was the driver for civil engineers writing codes, non-engineers debugging codes, and a host of salesmen acting as consultants. With easy money (and weak Rupee), nobody cared about mastery, till recently. Passion had hardly any place under the sun.
Those who forked out, including yours truly, got dissonant somewhere along the way, and passion took over their lives; followed by mastery (to remain afloat), and then money followed..
So, start with passion, raise the imitation barrier by building mastery, and finally, make it count.
Why money?
Let me seal this one with my favorite quote from a role model-like person- Joker.
Hope you found it useful. Do reflect.