When you think about doing something remarkable, remember that remarkable results come from paths most people aren’t on.
Passion comes from hard work
Passion does not lead to hard work. So don’t tell yourself that you’re picking a path of hard work if you don’t know what you’re passionate about. Here are some examples in my life where this has been true:
My oldest kid didn’t choose to play violin. I chose it when they were three years old. But when they were twelve and I said they could quit, they didn’t want to. All that complaining about practice led to a passion for playing.
I didn’t choose to play volleyball. I was the tallest kid in my freshman class at college. The volleyball coach recruited me during orientation week. For the next two years I practiced on the side of the gym with a coach. No playing. By the time I graduated from college, all I wanted to do was play volleyball.
Many people who have exciting, engaging careers will tell you they “fell into it.” What that really means is that someone asked them to do something, and they decided to work hard at it. (One of the best stories of this phenomena is pro basketball player Khaman Maluach. An NBA scout in Uganda saw Maluach, age 14, and suggested he try basketball. So Maluach taught himself how to play from YouTube videos.)
Yearning for a result is not a passion
If you are not working very hard at something, you probably have a yearning (author, inventor, speaker, athlete, entrepreneur, influencer, etc.)
Passion is specific. Yearning is vague. Sometimes people say they are passionate about something so broad as to be meaningless. Like travel. Health. Writing. If you’re talking about something in such vague terms, then you have not spent a lot of time on it.
Passion is process
People who have a passion are constantly adjusting their process to get better and better at the daily tasks. Michael Jordan is famous for how he practiced. Mark Zuckerberg was writing code when he was a kid. Beyonce has been performing since childhood. When you focus on process every day, you are in the world of specifics and minutiae.
Passion and fun are not the same.
Going to a movie is fun. Taking a trip is fun. Fun people get invited to a lot of stuff. But passionate people are dangerous. They prioritize their passion before everything else. They are preoccupied. They are often a little crazy. This is why Michael Jordan wasn’t interested in his family, and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t interested in college. And Beyonce is performing at her kid’s school fundraiser instead of just donating money.
Growth mindset is a disorder
The world is obsessed with growth mindset. We know that growth mindset is a combination of grit and passion. Which means that people with a growth mindset are the crazy, preoccupied, distracted types. Humanity would die if everyone had a growth mindset because we need most people to be caring about each other. So we’re lucky that most people don’t have a growth mindset.
Growth mindset is misogynist
The origin of growth mindset was a professor who was obsessed with her research and concluded that everyone should be like her. Twenty years later, educators and executives are beating the growth mindset drum like their lives depend on it. And they fork over millions in dollars a year to train everyone to have a growth mindset.
Men are much more likely to have a growth mindset than women. Someone who does not have a growth mindset has a fixed mindset. Both have equal levels of grit, but they apply that grit differently. How much passion you have determines if you have a fixed mindset or growth mindset.
People with a fixed mindset prioritize stability over personal growth. In fact, a fixed mindset is protective against terrible parenting. Because it’s impossible to be devoted to your kids if you’re devoted to your passion.
So why don’t we all shut up about growth mindset and passion? The people who have that type of brain already know it. And the people who have yearning and a fixed mindset are the ones who are caring, dependable, and connected.
Book art by Jodi Harvey-Brown
Patty says she’s been reading my writing for a long time and she’s sick of reading about parenting. So I feel like the time is ripe for me to slip in stuff I’d normally leave on the chopping block:
The specialty of Gen X is to see a disintegrating mess and take advantage of it. Think: post-Civil War robber barons and their monopolies. Or the speculating and hustling during the morally precarious roaring 20s. If tearing down institutions is cyclical, so is the resulting opportunistic cynicism.
Gen X created a data frenzy and picked up everything they could get their hands on. But today it’s like we’re at a party where the piñata broke two hours ago; there’s not much more candy to find. Read more
Childcare is not a mystery, or a math problem for the elite. Every developed country except the US guarantees paid maternity leave, because science has shown that the majority of a baby’s brain forms after birth, and the baby needs a single, primary caregiver during that formation. Read more
Detail of Watermelon & Knife by Wayne Thiebaud (1989)
The setting: I’m buried—raising kids while running a startup. It’s 2010 and I’m one of the only female founders getting funded. I feel obligated to speak up, so I write blog posts telling women: startups are BS, just say no.
The Real Housewives of Venture Capitalists
Alexa Tsotsi said I was terrible for women. Jessica Wilson said I was tone-deaf to feminism.
So where are they now? Both married venture capitalists. Both talk about their amazing businesses—built with their husbands’ money and networks. If they get bored, they stop. They use their husbands’ money for schools and childcare, then write about their accomplishments as if they’re on a level playing field. Read more
We are way past professors using AI to write their papers. Now professors feed a set of papers into AI and ask where the gap is in the logic so they can write a paper to fill it. When submitting, AI tells them who will likely be reviewing the paper for publication so they can strategically cite that person’s work. Spoiler: it’s working.
And really, why does this matter? Academic papers were never known for stellar writing anyway. Read more
When I was younger and using my job to escape from the scary parts of my life, I did interviews all the time. I was always on my phone. So smart and scintillating.
I don’t feel that now. I used to think it was my job to make everyone like me. So I’d be really chirpy. I was telling a friend that I think I lost that zing, and she reminded me that I’ve always been a pain in the butt to interview. Then she sent me this post. Read more
I thought my post yesterday was absolute genius, and I asked myself if I shouldn’t hold off on publishing it so that I could submit it as an op-ed to the New York Times. Or as political analysis to the Atlantic. Instead I posted it here, because immediate feedback is like crack. And then the post bombed. Read more
In 2016 a sharp divide emerged in the US in baby naming, and this divide sheds light on why the Democratic Party is failing.
From the 1980s to 2015, androgynous names for girls surged across America. Taylor Swift’s mother perfectly captured the reasoning when she explained giving her daughter an androgynous name in 1989: “so she wouldn’t be held back if she went into business when she grew up.” This was hedge fund manager Andrea Swift applying the logic of her generation: if the world is rigged for boys, give your girl a name that lets her compete.
Read more
One of my kids’ credit cards is maxed out. I planned on paying it, and then I didn’t have the money.
I have mastered dissociation in the face of not having money for very important things. I mean, that’s been going on for twenty years. But this feels different. Worse.
I’ve never had a steady income. I surprise even myself with the ways I make money now: managing IEP meetings, getting kids research positions. Maybe we are all surprised by our work. Because it’s not just our earnings that top out at age 40; so does our sense of control over our career. If I’m being honest, I already knew that, but who wants to be honest about career erosion? Read more
Every single college-aged kid I know has a LinkedIn profile. You’d think: what’s the point? They have no career experience. But Gen Z treats LinkedIn like an extension of their college application, which makes sense since they worked hard to frame their accomplishments within compelling personal narratives for admissions. Gen Z sees that it doesn’t make sense to throw that effort away. And what’s a better receptacle for those carefully crafted stories than LinkedIn? Read more