If you have more than one reason to do something … just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
In Part 1 I argued that career satisfaction is built, not found. The implicit problem is that if expertise tends to precede true passion, and world-class experts spend at least 10,000 hours honing their crafts, where along the trajectory of career development can we say, “I have given it a fair chance, and it is time to move on”? Continue reading
Posted in Figure Stuff Out
Tagged About Me, Book Reviews, Happiness, Life, motivation
Word of mouth, then, is a prime tool for making a good impression—as potent as that new car or Prada handbag. Think of it as a kind of currency. Social currency… So to get people talking, companies and organizations need to mint social currency… There are three ways to do that: (1) find inner remarkability; (2) leverage game mechanics; and (3) make people feel like insiders.
– Jonah Berger, Contagious: Why Things Catch On
In 2005, the late Steve Jobs delivered a memorable speech to graduates of Stanford University partly on the theme of career dreams. “If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle,” said him, adding that “Money will come.” After the housing bubble burst and lots of dream-chasers their lost jobs in 2007, I stumbled upon a 2008 Business Week article titled “Personality and the Perfect Job.” Books titled along the same themes, such as Do What You Are follow a similar paradigm as well. For those who needed a faster fix, the internet offered solutions too. Stuck in life? Oprah has a 28-question quiz to find who you really want to be!
The implication is clear: if you failed, it’s because that was not your real passion; pick another dream.
Over the past year, I began to wonder whether the endless pursuit for pre-existing passions is missing the mark altogether.
Photo Credit: Urbanesia.com
Posted in Figure Stuff Out
Tagged About Me, Book Reviews, Happiness, Life, motivation