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Comment by pototo666 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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)

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