Member-only story
Don’t Find Passion, Build It
The artificial reef approach to creating work you love.
Too often we get stuck, standing at the threshold of starting something new because we’re not sure if we truly have the passion for it.
We hear again and again to follow our passion. That building a business around the work we do is hard, that our passion is the thing that will keep us going when we’d rather not.
And so we second guess. We take a step back. We decide that we’re better off waiting for the next idea to come around. Maybe we’ll be sure about our passion for that one.
As a result, we do nothing. We maintain the status quo, perhaps living a life we’re not truly satisfied with as we sit and wait for our one true passion to reveal itself before we take the leap to pursue something new.
What if instead of waiting to discover our passion, we decided to create it?
What if we took one of our ideas and ran with it, stepping over the threshold and committing to putting in the effort to make it work, even if we didn’t yet feel outright passion for it?
What if we decided to use the work we’ve chosen to do as a frame to build our passion around, like an artificial reef is built around otherwise boring old hunks of concrete.
