Finding your passion takes 6 minutes. Here's how.
Discovering your passion is easy. Knowing what to do with it is not.
Petal #15
It took me 26 years to find my passion.
Well, kind of.
I always knew what kind of things I was generally interested in, but I didn’t really have a go-to answer if someone asked me what my passion was.
But last year, at age 26, that changed.
The most surprising part? It only took 6 minutes to find out using a framework shared by Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList. All it takes is an iPhone and some brain power. Read on to see exactly how, and find yours.
Defining the terms
First things first, we need to define what “passion” means.
We could probably spend hours debating on this topic, but I’ll borrow Naval’s words since they sit pretty well with me.
Passion is a subject matter that sparks your genuine curiosity.
Additionally, it should spark your curiosity for an extended period of time. So for example, I avidly followed the World Chess Championship this year (#dingchilling) and watched for hours on end. But could I keep this up for weeks? Months? For the rest of my life? Probably not.
It’s the kind of topic that always interests you, and you happily go down the Youtube rabbit hole for until you realize you’ll only get 4 hours of sleep.
So going forward, I’ll use these two terms “passion” and “genuine curiosity” interchangeably. Now that we know what we’re looking for, here’s the exact framework I used to find it.
How to find your curiosity in two steps
Step 1
Ask yourself this question.
“What feels like play to you, but looks like work to others?”
Really. Take some time to dissect that. I know it reads cliche, but the more you struggle with this question, the easier the answers will come to you.
Let me explain.
Before you answer this question, try to really put yourself in the shoes of your best friend or your mom. Just pick one, it doesn’t matter which for now.
Then, try to get in their head and ask, “If I were Sam (a close friend), what is something I do regularly that would make him think, ‘Man, that looks tiring and boring as hell. I wonder why they find this so interesting and not get tired”.
Let me give you a few examples.
Example 1
I love organizing events for me and my friends. I would create impromptu study groups in middle school where I invited friends to come prepare for upcoming tests. I would hold virtual hangouts on Discord with gaming buddies during the pandemic, where we would order food and hang out together. At work, I always organized our team offsites.
Not once did I ever stop to think, “Huh, this must be my passion, right?” Because it came so naturally to me. Even the “boring things” like calling a venue provider to book a room, to organizing the catering to make sure everyone has food in their stomachs were genuinely fun for me.
But it’s because this was so obvious to me that I could never see it. But if I put myself in Sam’s shoes? I might think, “Man, it must be a tough time managing 50 RSVPs, creating an event flyer, and ordering $400 worth of Chipotle. I wouldn’t want that job!”
Example 2
I’ll give another example of my friend. For the sake of privacy, let’s call him David.
David and I talk about video games all the time. In fact, there were times when we literally talked for 3+ hours straight deep into the night about video game theory crafting.
That’s right. Not even playing the game, but talking about how we would play the game.
And David’s superpower comes from analysis. He would go to the game’s wiki, pull out the numbers and stats, do some long-form conversion to make sure he’s getting the units correct, format it into a nice chart, and present a thorough end-to-end explanation on why some skill order is better than another.
Mind you, this might take him 30 minutes or even longer, depending on the topic.
An outsider might look at this and think, “Wow, that is so much work. I just play the game for fun, I couldn’t imagine going out of the way to do all that work.”
But that’s the point.
This kind of “work” is exactly what feels like play to David. It’s in the analysis, the details, and the creative imagination of putting together an argument in a game that he so loves that David finds interesting.
So take some time now. 5 minutes. And really role-play and try to get in someone else’s point of view.
Step 2
The second step is a lot easier. It takes one minute.
Literally, just ask your friends.
Here - I’ll even do this for you. All you need to do is copy this message
“Hey, I’m doing a quick assignment and needed your thoughts. Basically, what’s something that I do that ‘looks like a lot of work’ to you but I willingly do it for fun? So something that takes time and effort that you wouldn’t just do “for fun”, but I do it all the time anyways.”
… and send it to three people:
A family member
Your two closest friends
You’ll likely see patterns. And often, these things come extremely obvious to the people around you, especially if they’ve known you for a long time.
Step 3
And surprise, there is a Step 3 in this 2-step guide.
The third step is the hardest. And it’s about figuring out what to do with this knowledge you now have.
If you’ve actually stopped and followed Steps 1 & 2 (I’m not kidding. It’s 6 minutes. Go do it.) you probably have a few good answers in your mind now.
But the hard part is not figuring out what your passions are, but what to do with them.
For example, I’m a former Software Engineer at a big tech company. Now that I know my passion, what am I supposed to do? Go plan birthday parties for kids in the neighborhood?
And this is for you to find out. Plus, maybe it’s actually not the event planning itself that I find interesting. Maybe it’s the organization of different moving parts. Or maybe it’s not even that - I enjoy the social aspect of it and being the key component of a party.
But whatever it may be, in his original context, Naval said the true superpower of following your genuine curiosity was that it enables you to get really good at it. Since you’re happily investing hours and hours into this topic, if you do it for long enough, you’ll have more specific knowledge on this topic than 99% of the industry.
And with this knowledge and expertise comes a variety of opportunities, but it’s up to you what to do with it. Maybe you can monetize it through a course or some kind of software. Or maybe you do nothing at all with it. That’s up to you.
But that’s what your 20s are for: figure out the big questions in life before it’s too late.
Calorie-Free Snacks
💭 StarterStory - This is the best resource by far on startup ideas and case studies of successful founders. Loads of info on people, just like you and me, who went from a decent 5 or 6-figure corporate job to quitting and making a $50K MRR business.
📱Readwise - Third only to Notion and Kindle, this is one of the most beloved apps I use on a daily basis. It lets you highlight & export notes from a variety of sources and syncs them into one common database.
🖥️ Webflow - I’ve been using Webflow to build my business. It’s a no-code website builder that is super powerful. Would check it out if you’re at all interested in making your own website.
🗨 Wise words by (usually) wise people
“Safe decisions don't provide a payoff. Safe and clear decisions are actually dangerous for a person who's seeking the rewards of entrepreneurship.” - Daniel Priestley
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— Jayjen
P.S. After writing for 15 weeks, I’m finally deciding on “niching down” Petal Pedals for a more specific audience that I can help. Starting in Petal #16 or #17, I’m planning on shifting this letter “to help engineers in corporate jobs create profitable side income streams”. If you have any thoughts or feedback on this as well, please let me know!
P.S.S. Have you ever played the game Bloons TD 6? If so, this will change your life.