Pursue Your Passion?

I am reading a really insightful book by Paul Jarvis, Company of One: .  It is geared towards the solopreneur, and there is some interesting advice in there for people running or leading within larger organizations as well.  There was a real gem in the book about pursuing your passion that I wanted to paraphrase and discuss.

In short the idea was that one ought not pursue with total commitment a passion before they actually get reasonably good at it; don’t even get that passionate about something you are doing until you work hard at something for a little while and get good at it and let the passion emerge.

I think this is sound advice and mostly contradicts the banal advice given to teenagers to “pursue your passion”.  I can tell you in my late teens / early twenties I was not “passionate” about chemical engineering, water treatment nor leadership.

It wasn’t until I was in grad school that I got really passionate about chemical engineering.  By that point you really are deeper into it.

When I worked at Barnes Huntington and Associates and first got into engineering of high purity water treatment systems I thought “hey this is kinda neat”.  It was later on while at Cheme and I had worked in high purity water for almost a decade that I became passionate about it, enough so that I volunteered time to the ISPE’s critical utilities community of practice steering committee, eventually chairing the committee for a time and co authoring a good practice guide (GPG).  Truly, co-authoring a consensus based document with contributors from around the world, navigating and refereeing differences of opinion, etc. is a labour of love.  High purity water was a great gateway into developing expertise in other area of the plant as to do it well you have to be a bit of a generalist and a specialist.  This was also a gateway into project management and leadership. 

At Cheme I took on the leadership role of President somewhat reluctantly and was certainly not passionate about leadership until a few years went by and I got reasonably competent.  Since then I have not looked back and I can say that now without a doubt I am pursuing this passion for leadership having developed expertise.  I’ve always been on a lifelong journey to expand and deepen my knowledge and wisdom, now especially with respect to leadership.

I think Jarvis’ advice to first put in some work and letting the passion emerge is great advice, and as with a lot of things in life you shouldn’t force the passion, but rather let it emerge.  I’ll even take it a step further: those teenagers that hear advice to “pursue your passion” may actually feel pretty discouraged by that advice if they aren’t passionate about much, or even worse self destructive if they are passionate about something at which the odds of success or making a living are slim.  I’ll use myself as an example.

What I was passionate about as a teenager was rugby.  I did pursue it, but not in the sense of “pursuing your passion” where it was THE focus.  I trained hard and was very committed in the off season.  I played hard and at a high level, but not to the exclusion of my studies in engineering and my work in engineering.  Had I pursued my passion I would not have had the wonderful career I’ve had in the world of engineering.  I would have even more bodily dysfunction than I already have (mostly a lot of arthritis from old injuries), and I would not have been able to make a decent living at the sport.  Most kids aiming at professional sport don’t make it there, never mind a poorly paid sport like rugby.  I am grateful for the lessons I learned from having played and refereed rugby, the friends I made, and most of all for having met, courted and married Ange.

So: Pursue your Passion?  Yes, and only after you’ve worked at it for a while and in accordance with the Japanese idea of Ikigai.  There will be more on Ikigai in a forthcoming installment of Grounded Service.

 Nik

PS: I got to see the Warrior win in the quarter finals at the old stomping grounds and to say hi to a few old friends. The boys will have a real challenge this weekend at Guelph. Go Black and Gold! (photo from the team Instagram)