How to Find Your Passion & Make Time for It
Jumping from path to path has been the story of my life so far. Leaving school I studied chemical engineering - which was no picnic. Upon graduating I knew I wanted to learn something different, so I got a Masters in Energy Science. This was much better, but opportunities seemed few and far between. Struggling to find a job that I wanted to, I took a job that was not my first choice, but did seem interesting. Two years later I was starting to feel burned out and in need of a change, so I got into sustainability consulting.
During all this I moved from Scotland to England, and then to Ireland, on top of all the other changes.
Most of the changes over the last 6 years of my life I could never have seen coming just a year prior. And most of the time I was not totally aware of where I was going.
You’re reading this because I am starting down a new path once again. I’ve started writing online in the hopes of building something purely my own. I want to create a space online where I can write about the things that interest me, and share them with people who want to hear it, and who need to hear it.
You may be having the same feelings that I have been having recently.
Anxiety. Curiosity. Feeling out of place.
These nagging feelings can stay with us for a long time - they did for me. They are easy to overlook, to put down to something small. But ignoring them is not only unproductive - it's downright unhealthy.
These feelings are symptoms of an underlying problem and pushing them down is like putting a plaster on a broken leg. You can ignore the problem for a while, but it will still be there, waiting for you.
Facing these problems is not easy. In fact it can be downright hard, especially if it centres around something you are heavily invested in, or something you strongly identify with. Unwinding yourself from these narratives takes the investment of a lot of time and consciousness - which is where most people fall down.
Facing the Problem
The majority of people, even if they become aware of a problem, are not willing to put in the continued effort to remedy it. They resume walking the default path. Burying their heads in their work, drowning in distractions like Netflix and alcohol they blind themselves to their potential.
For me, I realised there was a problem at some point during the COVID lockdown.
Work was not fun.
Every day I had to drag myself to my desk and force myself to get through the tasks appointed to me by someone else.
The tasks were small, repetitive, and insignificant. I couldn't help but feel that I could be spending my time in a better way - that there must be something more fulfilling than this.
These thoughts seeped into my everyday consciousness more and more.
When you have thoughts on a daily basis it's hard not to do something about it. If you don't you'll go mad. So I listened.
These thoughts bred curiosity. A curiosity for how other people solved this problem. I asked myself questions like:
- Did other people feel this way?
- How did they move past it or change paths?
- What problems did they face?
- How did they get the courage to make a change?
- What other ways did people live their lives?
These questions spiraled through my head, and I had NO IDEA what the answers were. When you don't know the answers to something, you have to search for them. That's exactly what I started doing.
I searched YouTube videos, podcasts and articles about people who left their jobs, or that started new careers. Very quickly I stumbled onto an audiobook that changed everything for me:
The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.
Feeding the Curiosity
I'm sure many of you will have heard of it, if not read it yourselves. But at the time I had never heard of Tim, the book, or even the notion of working less than 40 hours per week.
This title immediately grabbed my attention - and admittedly, it was for all the wrong reasons. I was feeling burned out at work, and desperate for something to change. That title drew me in like a black hole. And far from pulling back I dove into it - I needed to hear more about this idea.
The next week or so was an incredible time for me. I spent my entire 1 hour lunch breaks walking and listening to the audiobook - taking copious notes on the alien ideas that Tim described.
Working abroad, controlling your own hours, focusing on results rather than being busy, starting your own business.
It blew me away. I'd never opened my mind wide enough to consider these possibilities. But this book came at the perfect time in my life - a time when I not only needed to hear it, but when I was desperate enough to listen.
Sometimes that's all it takes to make a big decision in life - being so unhappy with your situation that you will do anything to get out of it.
I used the negativity I felt in that moment to educate myself and learn about other ways of living. In the 2 years since I read the Four Hour Workweek, whilst I still work a 9-5, and don't run my own business, I have opened my mind to many more possible paths that I could take in life.
I have started writing online, reading more (and reading a wider variety of books), take more walks, and have gotten back into the habit of exercising. I am happier with the trajectory my life is taking. I am happier with who I am.
Moving Forward - The Finder Framework
So, how can you start to take action towards being the person you want to be? How can you become the person you want to become? These 5 steps (what I call the Finder Framework), will help you think more clearly, gather information, and move you towards the person you want to become.
Step 1: Create Space
The modern world is full of distractions. Smartphones give most of us access to unlimited television, YouTube videos, social media and games.
Managing the dopamine hurricane that comes along with that is incredibly difficult - particularly if you're not even aware of it.
Finding yourself watching hours of Netflix after a day of work or classes and letting the evening slip away is not uncommon. We don't realise how much of our time we actually spend on activities like this.
I'm exactly the same - to this day I spend more time than I would like watching TV.
When we are watching TV, it's like our mind is on standby - we are not taking useful information in, not learning. Neither are we processing our own thoughts or feelings in our heads.
Never processing things is how our minds can end up feeling cluttered and foggy. It also means we don't process painful emotions or experiences, which can cause them to linger.
We need to make time to process thoughts, feelings, and ideas. It's no wonder that people have random thoughts or ideas in the shower or when falling asleep - it may be the only time that their minds are left to wander.
If you often struggle falling asleep because of bad memories or feelings (for example, embarrassing moments), then chances are you haven't taken time to properly process those thoughts and feelings. Your mind is trying to, but you never give it time because you constantly fill the empty spaces between work and sleep with noise.
It's surprisingly easy to create space for these thoughts. My favourite ways are:
- Going for walk
- Meditating
- Journaling
When doing all these things, deliberately do not focus on anything in particular. Let yourself be open to ponder things that come to mind. Explore ideas, think about things that have happened recently, process situations or problems that you have encountered.
Giving yourself time and mental space to think openly will allow your mind to work it's magic. We are all creative - much more so than many of us give ourselves credit for.
I have often found ideas to problems I am not even thinking about will spring to mind out on my walks. The subconscious mind is extremely powerful in this way.
When you cease the endless consumption of entertainment and allow ourselves to think freely, you will surprise yourself by how clear things can become.
Step 2: Set an Exciting Goal
With the clarity that you gained from the previous step, you should have at least some direction that you want to go in.
If you are struggling to find a clear direction to go in - don't worry! It's not realistic to go out for a couple of walks and expect to know your life's calling - life isn't that easy (and it would be boring if it was).
To get you started, think carefully about the things that you DON'T like or want to do. Using these as your bearings to search for something else.
Be very curious at this stage and listen to your intuition - what are you interested in doing more of right now? Pursue it.
Now that you have something you are interested in pursuing, we want to set a big exciting goal related to that.
- If you want to start writing online - aim to write 50 articles
- If you want to learn graphic design - aim to create a profile banner for your favourite YouTuber
- If you want to learn an instrument - aim to learn your favourite song on that instrument.
These are just some examples of things you might want to do, but there are many others, and the goals can be totally different as well.
However, it is crucial that you feel excited about the goal you set. There's no use in setting a goal that stirs no emotion or enthusiasm - you need your goal to fuel the energy you are going to bring to the work required to achieve that goal.
Step 3: Create a Project
Achieving your goals is not going to happen overnight, or even within a couple of weeks. If you do achieve them in a few weeks, you probably didn't set your sights high enough.
It can take a lot of work to reach your goal, so to make the process smoother and more enjoyable, you are going to break it down into a number of smaller projects that you can complete along the way.
These projects will essentially act like milestones you follow to your goal. They should get increasingly difficult or advance you closer to your goal at each step.
For learning graphic design, your projects might look something like this:
- Use a photo editing software to design your own social media profile picture
- Design your own profile banner for Twitter or YouTube
- Create a YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram thumbnail / banner / post for friends or small creators.
- Create a banner for your favourite creator
These steps should give you a clear purpose at each stage, so that you know exactly what you need to do.
Along the way you will inevitably run into problems, which you will need to seek specific advice on how to solve.
Step 4: Take Immediate Action
You should have decided on your first project by now. Now all that's left is to start taking steps to complete that project.
Do something right now that will take you a step closer to completing the project. It doesn't matter what this is, just be sure to do something that moves you in the right direction.
Continue to do something every single day until the project is complete.
"Changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound and turn into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years." — James Clear, Atomic Habits
Step 5: Consuming Educational Content & Finding Role Models
Identify some of the problems or challenges that you are facing. Where do you want to be, and what is stopping you from getting there?
These are good questions to ask yourself when you are out on your walks.
Look for people who have solved these problems before, or are just a little further down the road than you. You may already follow some of these people on social media, YouTube, and so on.
We are a product of our environment. If we surround ourselves with information and people that shows that our problems have been solved time and time again by people like us, then it makes it that much more believable that you can solve them too.
Trying to do something that no one has ever done before is infinitely harder than doing something that has been done many times before.
Finding these people and having living proof that these things are possible will help convince yourself that these things are possible for you too.
Learn from these people. Study their work, look at their tutorials, look at who they follow on social media (and follow some of them yourself).
Anything can be learned online these days - you just have to know where to look. If your mentors have achieved what you want to achieve, then they will know where to look if they don't provide that information to you themselves.
And remember: DON'T START LEARNING UNTIL YOU HAVE A PROBLEM TO SOLVE.
If you are learning for the sake of learning, then you will not learn as much or as quickly. We learn much faster when we have practical problems that we need to solve.
I use Microsoft Excel a ton in my job - but I have never had any formal training in how to use it. Any time I ran into a problem (solving equations, conditional formatting, searching for specific items within data sets) I would search online for specific answers to my problems.
Over time I have picked up knowledge in this way, and before I knew it I ended up being proficient at using Excel.
Conclusion
And that's it. We would all have interests, ideas, and passions that we want to follow, but sometimes we just need to give ourselves that extra nudge before it can happen.
I hope this has given you that nudge, but if not just remember that we all have our choices in life - we can choose to continue living the status quo, moving aimlessly and only doing the bare minimum and what others assign to us. Or we can move forward on the path of our choosing, where things really get exciting.
Call To Action
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Thanks for taking the time to read this my friends. I hope it helped you make a little more sense of our crazy world.
Jack