Passion?

ixnb

My curiosity persists me to ask. I have been reading posts on here for sometime and the question kept popping up about if you don't have passion you won't make it. For example from what I see (not on this forum) "I work with computers during the day, when I get home I want nothing to do with them". Few have mentioned that you see five young guys out of those, one will make it and really wants it?

My question is what is considered passion, why won't so many make it? Give some experiences of your own if you please.

N2IT

There are several ways to make it. Passion and hard work is only one way to be honest. If you are born with a high level of aptitude that can out rank passion at times. Right place right time, in other words timing plays a huge role. Most of my friends are far from passionate about their work. They take it seriously and deliver when they are supposed to but I wouldn't use the word passionate to describe them. ***I don't see a direct correlation from passion to success.

I think grinding day in and day out and patience pays off more than trying to microwave skills. That's just from my perspective though. The classic cheesy cliche everything in moderation is a good model to follow. I think certifications are fantastic way to start a career and they also can help bring you up to the next level. However, they aren't the only thing that helps.

Personally for me I think being even keeled and steady throughout the workforce really is underrated. Spazzing out when something goes wrong or melting under pressure is pure crap. Being able to shake off a negative comment from a manager or peer is a far great skill.

Just my opinion.

docrice

IT work in general can be very tedious, very demanding, and very fast-paced. It requires constant skill set upkeep and juggling multiple priorities at once. In other words, working in IT can really wear you down and unless you enjoy cleaning the complex digital sewers, it could be difficult to stick with it. This is why having a passion for technology helps, especially since most people don't understand what's involved and can't relate to your efforts in building and troubleshooting. They might expect a router upgrade in a large infrastructure to be as simple as upgrading the software on their phone and you might have an uphill battle fighting against that perception, especially with management.

"Passion," of course, is a matter of degree. There are people who consider themselves passionate but relative to others, it's just a job for them that they really enjoy. Then you have nutcases like me who will take vacation time in order to go to more technical training classes and spend his evenings catching up on tech articles. Sometimes I hear co-workers say they have passion, and I might look at them and think, "Hmm, that's cute." It's not exactly a fair assessment though since most people have responsibilities outside of work that take priority, obviously.

Passion certainly doesn't make you successful by itself, but can be a huge factor in your willingness to excel in this world because you have a vested interest in putting more effort.

Antonio72

I don't think you necessarily have to be passionate about something to make it a successful career. Like docrice said, it can be very tedious and demanding, but there's always that one problem that comes up that you've never seen or it's been a few years at least. The ones where you follow all the right steps and it's still not working and after hours of searching and fine tuning it finally works. Those are the types of things that reignite my passion for the job.

It's pretty similar to my mechanic days, I used to be a mechanic for a bowling center working on the A-2 pinsetter. Though most of the time it's just doing maintenance and cleaning, every now and then something would break (always during a full house of league play), and I'd have to fix it asap. Just like in IT, no matter how much you maintain your servers and keep things up to date, there will always be those times when something goes down and you have to fix it like an hour ago. But that feeling of satisfaction after everything is said and done, when I know that I gave it my absolute best and got the job done, is the absolute best. As long as that feeling never fades, I will always love it.

linuxlover

I am a definition of a passionate man and I'm not shy about saying that at all because I'm slowly getting tired of the grind. I've been trying to break into IT for 14 years now, since I was 15 years old. My luck of growing up in a country with very small to non-existent IT sector. I think I've done pretty much everything a person can do. I've put myself through IT education part-time doing all kinds of jobs, spent a lot of money buying books, courses, learning programming, systems, setting up hobby projects, participating in forums, trying to volunteer, going on all kinds of BS interviews, working more jobs thinking about my next step, getting certificates, moving to a foreign country to make it, trying everything to get that foot in the door, I gave my life to this. Anyone of you has this much motivation to keep trying for 14 years? I would like to meet you.

I live and breathe computers, this is who I am. I enjoy the smell of computers, I enjoy everything about them, I like operating systems, I like the CLI, I'm happy just to type something in it even if I don't really need it. The only time I don't think about this is when I go to deep sleep and Theta waves take over. Yet I still can't find someone who will recognize my passion and dedication and realize that I'm a capable tech guy and really worth the investment because I'm not looking for a job, I'm looking for a career. People can't recognize a good opportunity, I don't even care about the money. Money doesn't mean nothing to me if I don't enjoy what I do. I'd work for minimum wage my entire life for a job in IT over a high paying position doing something I don't like, because I get paid every moment sitting behind that computer typing in commands and working that config. Still haven't given up, still trying. It's been 14 years now, I don't know how much more I can take it, but even if I one day call it quits because I'm not getting any younger you know, I will still passively keep trying because that's who I am. I'm a computer geek and this is my life. I enjoy this from the bottom of my heart, I dare anyone to challenge me and prove that they're more passionate than me. I am a definition of passion. But where has this gotten me?

DevilWAH

Hard work, Natural ability/ learning and passion.

These three things can all individually make you successful at a topic. But to really excel I think you need all three.

Ability - well this goes with out saying you need to be able to learn, Some people have mathematical minds, others are artistic, others are good at English. Now you can learn things that you are not naturally gifted at, but you will never develop to the same level if you struggle to understand things.

Hard work - To become gifted at anything you have to put in at least 10,000 hours of practice/study. Its no different if you want to play an instrument to concert level or become a CCIE engineer you need to apply a lot of hours of directed study to reach those goals.

Passion - This I think makes the difference between some one who is simple gifted and understands a subject, and some one who pushes the boundaries. some one who thinks about what they are doing and wants to make it better. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Einstein, etc. These people had passion, and to be the leader and the inovator you need Passion.

Some people go to work to make money, hard-work and ability will get you a decent amount of that. Other people go to work because the enjoy what they do and there work is as much there hobbie as a job. Some people Judge success by money and position. Others judge it by do you come home feeling satisfied with what you have done and do you look forward to going to work the next day.

My though on success is.

Success is not measured in the money that you earn but the quality of time that you spend.

So for me its important to be passionate about my job, I look forward to going to work and look forward to coming back home to the family. I think people who are more passionate are more initiative and more likely to look for how to do things differently to get a better result. Mainly because they continue thinking about things out side of work, not because they feel pressured to, but because they are interested in it and look to understand how, and why, which leads in to asking "what-if we did this instead". Where as people who are not passionate tend to just follow the process, do the job and move on.

But it comes down to how you judge success? You can make it with out Passion, but will you work be work, or will it be a hobby. I think that's the difference Passion makes.

N2IT

I care about the company and the people around me, that's what drives me. Not passion for computers or servers that to me is the boring part. The relationships and helping people is where my passion is set towards.

DevilWAH

Oh I don't think you have to have a passion in computers, just passion for some part of your job, a reason to do more than just carry out tasks for money.

N2IT

Agreed +1

egrizzly

to be passionate about something means that you want to do that thing so bad that you get an erection. This is just a metaphor of course but it just means that you like doing that thing so much that the fulfillment is as great as having sex (or close). Some people have a passion for mountain climbing so u see them climbing mountains even in the rain (when most mountain climbers take a break), others have a passion for solving crime so you see them spend hours and hours of research to solve a case (when most detectives just give up), yet others have a passion for computer networking/programming/database so you see them stay extra hours trying to solve a problem (when most programmers, network engineers pass it on to tier 2, or give up). This is because they like it. To them doing it is pay enough (although they still get paid for it) ....so that's passion.

paul78

Despite the crude analogy, there is an element of truth in @egrizzly's description of passion and it's contribution towards a successful career. I was fascinated sufficiently that I just spent the past 15 minutes googling on the relationship between passion for a subject and how endorphins can play a role. Passion is certainly one of the drivers - it's the passion that pushes one to work harder to solve a problem or to concentrate harder to grasp and learn a concept. It's what drives people to continue the work when others give up and gain that experience to be better at their craft.

@ixnb - I'm sure that there is no lack of examples here on TE. Like @docrice, I also take vacation time to pursue tangentially related career training or attend conferences which I cannot justify as a business expense. A good source of examples is a book that we have discussed here on TE before - check out Malcolm Gladwells book "Outliers'.

I like the way that @DevilWAH described it best. It's a combination of Passion, HardWork, and Natural ability. Gladwell - BTW - doesn't believe in natural ability but that it's more about hard-work. But I do think that natural ability or as I sometimes describe it as having the knack - plays a role.

DevilWAH

My view on natural ability is this.

It takes 10,000 hours to reach the top in any thing. I also know that if some one is born such as Usain Bolt who when studied is shown to have physoligical difference such as large lung capacity and about 80% fast twitch muscle (compared to the average of 50 most people have). Means that his body is in a better position to exploit any training he does.

The brain is no different to the rest of the body from a physical point of view, different areas are shown to deal with different things, and every oen has slightly different structures. These are primary influenced by genetics and development with in the womb, and just like any other part of the body practice can improve, but it cant over come every thing. Some bits of the brain are set in stone pretty much, just like a computer people have areas of working memory (the CPU cache / ram of the brain). These are pretty much set in size very early on in development and no amount of practice can change them.

So while a person does not have "natural abilities" at a particular subject, they brain will be better at some tasks than others. They might be good at logic, or creativity, or remembering detail, Maths, etc.. And different subjects require these skills in different amounts. So you still need to learn a subject, its just some will be easier to lean than others.

Chitownjedi

My Passion allowed me to go from A+ to

A+ and the rest.. while my buddy had A+, and didn't get anything else until our equal pay, became me tripling his. I did it because I have a passion for learning, I like IT, I don't love it... I really really Like Computers. I don't love them. I am passionate about learning... so that overcomes my lack of love for computers.

If I was writing or doing music, I would put just as much time and energy in it... or anything I was interested in... fortunately... my passion is learning... and helping others... so I actually have lots of issues with families and friends who still act as if the world owes them something. I've bought training, books, guides, have written plans out and asked people I know about their passions and have urged them to follow them... what's the point of not being satisfied when you can at least try to be in the thing you actually give a crap about. If you going to feel disappointed.. might as well feel it breaking your back trying to do what you love versus... giving up on it because it seems like a lot of work.... But yeah.. I don't think that until someone finds a part of their passion in their work, they will never be dedicated to it, and go above and beyond the way you need to to excel.

And harping on DevilWah said.. I actually know for a fact and have been told by my professors that I was one of the best re-callers of written text (I am a writing major) they have ever seen. We had classes that actually teach how to remember what you read better.. so I believe my natural ability to remember things I've read was significantly trained with my Major, and I also was taught how to see it visually,which aids my ability to read and learn things much faster than regular folks.

I also was a classical performance major in piano for a bit, and muscle memory is definitely apart of it.. not just arms, fingers.. but brain... as with most pieces.. you literally forget them and play them via "muscle memory" after you've put in countless time and hours.