Pursuing my passion

There's a couple of myths from my perspective. I think one is just follow your passion. I think that's great to an extent, but I think you actually rightly pointed out where your interests meet the needs of the world. I think that's quite important, right? This is not a hobby. To the extent that actually your passion still needs to create some sort of value for society or for markets or anything, so you can generally get paid for it. I think that's actually still important, because I think oftentimes we say, "Just follow your passion." But being mindful of like, is that a passion that also has intersection with needs of the world? I think that's incredibly important. Otherwise, that's a hobby. Hobbies are great, and I actually don't think that's a bad thing, but sometimes mixing them up can be dangerous in a way, because you can often take you down to weird paths.

I’m basically motivated by doing what I like to do or what I want to do. If this feels right to me, I really want to do it and that brings motivation to me. I know that sometimes that's not the best equation to grow. Sometimes you have to do things that you don't like to do. But if I look at the bigger picture: is this something that I'm going to be happy about in 20, 40, 60 years? Did I do that? Did I not do that? This is the thing that keeps me motivated and pushes me to change a bad day into a good day. If I had to do groundwork for a week that I don't like to do, I just look at the bigger picture, be happy about it and continue doing it.

One way that I try to approach things is, well, I guess, first of all, there's this belief that you have to really commit to one thing, and that is somewhat true, but at the same time, you can actually make a decent amount of progress on different other things just by making little side projects. And I think that this age of media that we live in, where you can make a little Twitter account for your project and just have it sitting on the side and tweet things and grow things and play with it. And then maybe that feeds your original project. And then maybe someday that has grown to an extent where you jump into it. You can actually have a lot of different things going on at the same time.

If you're not careful, doing what you love can make you fall out of love with it, if you do it for too long, or you're not good enough at it versus doing what you're really, really good at. And then you'll probably find you get a lot of energy from that. We all generally enjoy succeeding and being good at stuff. And so I also thought, "Is there a risk that I stop loving this thing that gives me so much energy and joy?" Versus trying to discover stuff where I can make a really big impact on the world or the people around me and do that. And it's probably not going to be skiing, but it's probably going to be something else that I'm good at that maybe I don't even realise I'm good at, unless I try and I find what that is, because I'll get a lot of energy from really succeeding and helping other people succeed.

I think if you're really passionate about what you're doing, for me in particular, it's hard for me to sometimes stop at the end of the day and not think about work. But then especially I have limited energy supplies. I could then end up burning out as a result because that can get quite overwhelming if you are taking energy from the next day, and then eventually that energy's going to run out. I think also, you should always be able to do meaningful work with purpose, but your purpose should also lie away from work as well. You need a balanced life. So I've got balance in other things of my life that work's not the be all and end all.

And I think if you are passionate about something, there is that fear that it could sometimes encompass too much of your life and you need to go, "Hey, actually, remember I've got this I need to invest time in, this I need to invest time in." And that's a good way to get perspective. I find I do that quite often by going out of London. It's a really good way to get more perspective and balance, and as soon as I kind of leave that London bubble, I feel like, "Ah, okay, remember there's other things around." And like that's a really good way I found of kind of trying to remember that your work is meaningful, but it's only one lens in one part of your life as well.