Follow your passion is common and fucked up advice. The unfortunate but realistic state of affairs is that most people don’t know what their passion is. Imagine how frustrating it can be when talking heads preach to follow something that you don’t know what it is or where it is leading.
There is an audio book I listened to recently, which while I found it quite painful to listen to with its airy fairy wafting, did give one golden nugget of advice which I want to pass on to you.
If you are one of the lucky few who have a passion and know what it is, go ahead and embrace it. Grab it and ride it.
But, if you are one of the many who don’t have a clear passion then the more sound advice is to follow your curiosity. It might start out as just a little inkling. A little nagging. Not much of an interest, but something worth of further investigation.
So, like Liz Gilbert advises in “Big Magic”, follow this curiosity. Do some digging. Curiosity may lead to nothing at all. But sometimes by following your curiosity it can bloom into interest. And interest can bloom into passions. But it is critical to let yourself explore lots of interests and see where they lead you.
I can’t agree more with this advice.
This is very much in line with my belief of how entrepreneurs should start or even grow their businesses. Throw out little experiments. Hedge your risk, make sure your downside is capped, but test in lots of directions. Most will be misses, but once in a while something will meet a need in the market and then you have a business on your hands.
That’s how I started out in apps. My first app (apart from Make App Mag) was a little novelty app. It cost about $300 to make, maybe $500. I framed this for myself as an educational expense. I hadn’t gone to business school after all, I had no business in business. So instead of investing in an online course or some fancy university MBA toilet paper, I figured I would rather invest in MAKING something and learning from the process.
I was CURIOUS.
I wanted to understand what was involved in making an app.
I didn’t care too much about the outcome (of course, secretly between you and me, I was hoping this app would hit the top charts and would make me millions… didn’t happen…)
And this curiosity grew into my current business, which I am wildly passionate about.
If you don’t care much for business, that’s OK. Doesn’t have to be about business. Could be a hobby or a skill.
Take this 30 Day Blog Writing Challenge, for example. I’ve been curious for a long time about writing and blogging, but haven’t done much with it. So I set up this challenge to investigate my curiosity. Who knows where it may lead…
So, if you don’t have a passion DON’T WORRY!
Just let yourself be curious and actually follow up on your curiosity. That is the way to go!
And if you’re not curious about anything… Then I pity you, really I do.
