Where Does Passion Come From? by ZURB

Where Does Passion Come From?

I was sketching out a mental model of the final chapter of Geoff Colvin's Talent Is Overrated on a late night flight on Sunday, when the woman sitting next to me asked about what I was sketching. She is a product manager for a large company, and appeared burned out and unmotivated. We started talking about passion, and more specifically where it comes from; she seemed to favor the idea that most people are born with a gift that makes them passionate about what they do. I disagreed, arguing that passion was developed over years of practice. Here is the sketch I made of the two alternatives:

Why the heck would I spend 3 hours discussing the origins of passion with someone who seemed to be unmotivated? Well, since I believe that passion can either make or break a product, I became concerned that she was doomed to create products that would fail. A product idea stands no chance without passionate and motivated individuals behind it, so it was interesting to discuss where passion originates with someone who seemed to have lost that spark.

During our chat we kept coming back to the definition of passion. I really liked the way our Partner, Jeremy, broke this down. There are three kinds of passion:

Purpose – a calling in life, the reason you get up every morning
Flow – getting into a rhythm with your activity, losing time, performing
Pleasure – savoring and mindfulness of where you are at right now

After defining passion we kept talking about where passion came from. We never did agree on the origins of it but did agree that every person who wishes to build a successful product should check their passion meter before they start building it. How would someone check their passion meter? Per Colvin's advice, ask yourself the following questions:

What do you want?
What do you believe?

10 comments

Ricardo says

Nice article! Passion is everythin in life... you need passion to create great things! Cheers

Dmitry (ZURB) says

@Ricardo - Totally. However I found that it's tough to figure out how passionate you are about something. I think those two questions above are right on when it comes to gaging your passion meter. What's your take on it?

Ricardo says

@Dmitry - Well, in my case, I feel passion for many things, as my relationship with my girlfriend, surfing, and my personal project (tonkalabs.com), which it's something I love doing, even though I'm doing it in my weekends, nights and vacations. And the reason I'm doing this is because I want to be happy, and one of the facts of being happy for me, is having the job I ever wanted. So I don't care spending my vacations, nights and weekends working hard, because I believe that I can make it real, because I've got that feeling deep in my soul, that you can only feel with passion. I hope this answered both questions, and sorry about my english! :) Cheers!!!

Dmitry (ZURB) says

@Ricardo Make sense. It sounds like your business/product is what you really really want and what you really believe. Curious to hear how you became so passionate about your business/idea.

Sean says

I just finished that book a couple of weeks ago - it was excellent. I wold also recommend The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and Mindset: the New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck.

when you read all three of these books (and some others) everything starts to synthesize together. I would also suggest reading some of the original material on expertise by Ericsson - it's really fascinating - read that about 7 years ago during graduate school.

Dmitry (ZURB) says

@Sean Thanks for the recommendation, will have to check these books out. Curious what you loved about these books? Also - which one of the alternatives do you believe: passion developed or born with it?

Jason Spencer says

Dmitry, did you ever read Ken Robinson's book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything? I think that this might be a great book to support both her "born with it" theory and your "developed over time" concept.

Personally, I think that you are born with it. However, you don't really know what that passion is until you start to become excited about it.

Dmitry (ZURB) says

@Jason Have heard of this book before. My grad school professor discussed this book with me a few years back. Been meaning to get my hands on it actually. So this is a good nudge. Which alternative does the book side with?

Bryant says

Great article, I have this talk with friends and colleagues all the time.

I think finding your passion is 70% developed through hard work, 20% talent, and 10% luck.

More than anything I think passion starts with a high level goal and is the mental process of aligning your personality and life around what it takes to achieve this goal. To some extent its almost like coming to terms with the hard work you have to do to achieve a goal, and re-naming it passion. I don't mean to say that the hard work people put in is not something they don't really enjoy doing, but I think too often people without passion simply think people who have it are lucky to have "found" or "stumbled" into something they are passionate about, when in actuality that person usually took particular interest in something and developed it into a means to an end. Don't get me wrong I enjoy what I do (web developer), but do I really like sitting in-front of a computer for 8,9,10 hours a day...no...but I know that if I work hard and remain passionate about it, it will eventually lead me to some of my lifelong goals.

Dmitry (ZURB) says

@Bryant - thanks for chiming in. So you're more of a "developed passion" guy. Can totally relate. Yet I'm curious (after reading your personal example) was there something which sparked your interest in design? When was the first time you became passionate about it?

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