Have More Than One Deep Interest
If one interest takes a back seat. You always have another to pursue.
Turning your passion into something that pays you is great. But, I am talking about something you do outside your work(even if your primary passion is what you are working on).
Your work has so many variables and always not in your control. Let’s say you are a marketeer, you cannot predict the exact outcomes until the campaign is done. If you are an artist, you cannot always sell immediately, even worse, it takes a lot of time for a few art pieces to sell.
You need to do something every day that is in your control. So you can have
- A feeling of grip on your life since you know you put in work for things in your control.
- See the progress every day.
If you have a deep interest outside your work. That’s a great start and I appreciate you. The problem comes when you won’t be able to pursue it for whatever reason. For me, last year I got into Endurance sports and as a beginner, I did a few rookie mistakes. Like not doing strength training. I am paying for it now. Probably I would have a total of 4–5 weeks break even from walking.
When you want a sense of progress every day and had to skip what you are doing, you won’t feel great and probably will be lost too. This is because you are so used to getting the adrenaline rush everyday, now you don’t want to miss it. The Idea of sitting Ideal is a bit haunting. So I got back to writing on Medium again and now I feel more alive. I feel blessed to be able to do something out of my deep interest in more than one thing now.
I don’t want to back out from endurance sports, but when things like this happen(long recovery breaks). I still have something that I can pursue and have a sense of progress every day.
We cannot connect the dots looking forward(Steve Jobs said it). It’s good to have more than one deep interest because it makes you have a unique talent and it will put you in a niche.
In my case, I am not expecting to make money or anything with the endurance + writing combination. But the simple joy of able to share things in detail about my experience is a reward by itself, and hopefully, it would be helpful to fellow athletes. Like my recent article on my Marathon Checklist, I prepared the checklist for myself. After my marathon, I posted it online for others hoping it will be useful to them(at least in my local community runners to read).
