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Comment by kharak | Hacker News Reader

Being passionate about something for a long time (not just a couple of hours or weeks) seems to be a rare quality. Too bad for those who lack it, as it seems to be a requirement for success in everything. There are so many posts that try to tell you how to get the most out of your passion, I haven't seen one that explains the origin of passion or whether it is possible to become passionate.

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"stop starting and start finishing"

On the other hand, we have so little time here. Who's to say whether narrow and deep is always more rewarding than broad and shallow?

You know, be mindful of doing the wrong thing well instead of the right thing poorly.

So learn to forgive ourselves for pursuing things that fizzle out or lose our interest. Leave space to preserve passion to the benefit of our health and happiness. More interests might also mean more opportunities to align shared passions with others.

Exactly! Few people espouse the downsides of being very passionate about something. It can often lead to missed opportunities and a narrow view of life. Not to say it can't be balanced, but a lot of very passionate people I've met are difficult to arrange things with or have neglected other parts of their life, such as learning to be organised or social skills.

Opposite of passion is contentment, which is also very desirable for many.

You just can't have both, because with a burning passion, comes a sense of imperfection and constant struggle to get better but never enough, or worse, fear of decay and irrelevance, an inevitable outcome as one ages.

You can be passionate and content.

There are plenty of passionate artists, athletes and engineers who don't care about going pro, getting famous or changing the world.

For example, I'm passionate about software development, but I make simple things that don't matter. I'm passionate about cooking, but only for myself and the occasional guest. I'm also passionate about the website I live from, but I don't worry much about its growth.

I like to build stuff, but I don't want an audience or its recognition. I don't want users nor money. I just do it because it's nice.

I think this is just a simple semantics distinction.

I believe what you mean by passion is interest, and what OP means by passion is drive. I think you're discussing slightly different things.

I don't believe it is possible to be driven and satisfied at the same time. But I believe it is possible to be interested and content simultaneously.

But I am driven. I wake up in the morning, make coffee and code all day, for fun. I go to special grocers to find the right ingredients.

I'm just not driven by the desire to be successful. I'm content with home-cooked meals and their software equivalent.

What also isn't talked about:

__Burnout and Passions__

Here's a comparison: I once build a computer graphics engine in 2 weeks and a few years prior I played WoW for 2 weeks.

In both cases I spent between 16 to 20 hours per day on it. I got ill, had an angry girlfriend (in the computer graphics timeline), and I did everything I wanted to do (it was done).

__Passions and Interests__

I have a genuine interest in security. Once every year I become super passionate about hacking/red teaming for 2 months. I'm like a cat in heat or something, but then with security. I play hackthebox, I follow security courses and clock 12 to 16 hours per day on it, 7 days per week. Converted to working days, that is around 5 months of working days.

Yet, people mistake this as me having a passion for it. I can assure you, if the article is technical and I'm in the other 10 months, I'd need to apply quite some self-control and discipline to be able to read it.

__It's not always the subject__

I have this weird trait. Whatever my friends are interested in, can become a passion of mine. One requirement: I need to do it with them. If I do and I'm having a positive interaction with my friend, then I'm passionate about it. However, I know it's not the subject, it's simply being with that friend. I figured it out by first noticing this in video games. It turns out I don't care about video games, I simply care playing them with friends. It turns out, it's true for all activities I have an interest in.

__Passions and linking to other topics__

I love imagining music. It's a compulsion I had since I was 4. Because of this, I quite like making music as well. However, I also like not being poor. I've seen quite a few poor musicians, so I've never focused too much on my music creation and I think that's quite a sad fact about my life.

But! It turns out, that (web) app development for things that I find cool or useful scratches exactly the same itch. So that means that passions are wider than your interest alone. It turns out that passions might be able to transfer to other passions if they have the same properties.

Unfortunately, I don't feel passionate about (web) app development for corporations. This is mostly because a lot of the creative freedom isn't there, but when you make your own stuff it is there.

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My 2 cents.

I found your introspection valuable. I work as a presales engineer. When a customer has a problem and is stuck on something I become obsessed with it. But as soon as we have a fix or a workaround I lose interest in the area. This makes it hard to generalize the solution or publish it as a blog post.

> Being passionate about something for a long time ... seems to be a requirement for success in everything.

There’s a book that attempts to debunk this myth by making the case that generalists are typically more successful: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Range

There's a difference between being passionate about a skillset and passionate about a field. For instance, I can be passionate about renewable energy and still be a generalist in terms of my day-to-day work.

> Too bad for those who lack it, as it seems to be a requirement for success in everything.

There is no shortage of evidence to the contrary.

Passion talk is out there because it works in fooling people who don't have what it takes to be 0.001%, into believing they might, long enough to buy self improvement seminars/tapes/programs/etc.

Here is an easy way to get success - define success to mean something realistic and that would work for you. For most people, that's working a stable job, finding a husband/wife, having a couple of children and living in a safe neighbourhood. That's completely attainable for most people and it doesn't require any passion - a little planning and perseverance will do just fine.

Here is a comment:

Passion is a direct result of three things:

1. Awareness of a major problem that affects a lot of people

2. Becoming convinced of a certain solution that is currently not being implemented

3. Having your needs met for a long time, also known as financial freedom

To the extent you find people with 1 and 3, you can recruit them with 2.

I think you are switching the order of things. Passion often comes after doing something for a long time. The trick is that you have to mindfully analyze what parts you enjoy about the thing, and how you can enjoy or tolerate the parts you don't like.

I haven't seen one that explains the origin of passion or whether it is possible to become passionate.

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As Bezos said, you can't choose your passion, your passion chooses you.

I disagree - passion can emerge after you’re much deeper into something. I liked building things but wasn’t passionate about engineering until my last year in undergrad. It took 3-4 years of grinding away uncertainly until I had enough skill to make it really fun and interesting. That knowledge snowballs.

Plenty of people are passionate about work which appears arcane. Few of them started with that.

Agree with what you said.

Liking is also a great signal for passion. If we like something, we are more likely to do it for years and then have the passion. I don't think we can choose what we like.

There are of couses cases when children are forced to do something early and later fall in love with it.

Cal Newport has a book that discusses this this called So Good They Can't Ignore You, which I found really interesting. His thesis is basically that the people who are most satisfied with their work are those who stuck with something until they got really good at it, regardless of whether it was the topic they were "most passionate" about (passion can be fickle, IMO).

Does this not imply that they are satisfied with their work for largely social, extrinsic reasons (as opposed to intrinsic ones)? Cal seems to argue that people can only be most satisfied if they are better than everyone else at some niche task. I wonder how this is any different than winning at the "rat race" that so many people seem to harp against? Is Cal then in support of the "rat race" ?

I don't think that what I said implies that, no.

Even outside of work, don't you find it satisfying to do something you're really good at? A dumb example: I love skiing, and the better I get at it, the more fun I have doing it. It's not because I enjoy showing up the people around me -- using my skills just becomes more enjoyable the better I get.

I have been doing coding for some years now. Went from terrible to average and sometimes even good. Still no passion. And I'll never be one of the really good devs, my learning speed during work isn't high enough. I know what to do to get better, how to practice. But that would require huge time investments during my after work hours.

And for what? Doing more of the same I don't really like, so that my employers profit even more of my work? I can't convince myself to spend time that way and don't believe I could do it for more than a couple of weeks before burning out. So, maybe you start liking what you do if you become really good at it. But there is an assumption, that anyone can become really good at what they are doing. Or if I remember that book correctly, that case was covered by noticing that everyone else is going to drop out of the profession. In any case, not everyone drops out of the profession who isn't good at it and not everyone who stays inside the profession will become good eventually. But sure, whose who are really good will properly enjoy it.

I agree that it's not necessarily true that everyone can become world-class at their job, but I think most people have the intellectual capability to become really good, if expending the necessary effort is worth it to them. In my opinion, a lot of being good at something is just being conscientious about it. Most of us will never be John Carmack, but there's a lot of space between "good" and "world-class."

It seems like maybe your goals in life don't line up with becoming "so good they can't ignore you?" I don't intend that as an insult in any way -- everyone has different priorities in life, and I don't know you, so it's also possible that you _are_ "so good they can't ignore you," and the book is incorrect.

yep, i suddenly felt in love with music after my dad passed away - was in college studying materials engineering, and made a living out of music for 6 years (until the pandemics)

Scott Alexander’s the lottery of fascinations is a good read in this area: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascina...

Good read, thanks for sharing :).

I will keep the article in case one day I want to persuade my child to love math.

Jack of all trades here. I'm fine not being rich because of doing jack of all trades.

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