Follow your passion is outdated, Do whatever interests you.

Follow your passion is outdated, Do whatever interests you.

Multiple Interest Good or Bad?

Since childhood we have been asked, what you want to be when you grow up? We were always forced to pursue one profession / interest. But what if I get bored with a particular profession or subject after some time and get interested in other. Is something wrong with me? For a while, I thought I was alone. It seemed like everyone else had it figured out. They all knew the one thing they wanted to do every day for the rest of their lives.Of course, now I realize that isn’t the case. A lot of people struggle with their vast interests and passions wondering which ones to follow through and which ones to let go. I want to tell you that you are not alone. This happens to lot of people and it’s perfectly natural.

I know I may incite a lot of disagreement for saying this: but I believe that it’s completely okay to have multiple passions and to pursue all of them.

The notion that you have to commit to a single trade for life makes sense if you want to live like a robot doing the same thing again and again. But then you’re just filling the role of a machine.

Can you be an expert at multiple things? Or, do you need to do the same thing every day in order to master it?

These questions have been on my mind for a long time, and this idea is constantly discussed. My parents taught me that I needed to choose one profession and do that throughout my life. This was the mind-set that they had grown up with, and they wanted me to be financially stable. They thought that consistency was the key to financial stability.

But as I grew up, I found myself interested in multiple fields. I started cycling and was passionate about that. Then I started a retail store and thought that this is I want to do throughout my life. After some time I got fascinated about roof top farming and started growing vegetables at my roof. Now I am passionate about Lawn Tennis. I am taking all this knowledge which I learned from different interests and using it as I move forward. I am not putting pressure on myself and enjoying whatever I like and got fascinated too.

Many interests = faster growth = becoming smarter

The benefit of having lots of different interests is that you train your brain to learn many new patterns. The patterns you learn in one field can then be applied to totally different fields to solve problems creatively.

Often the people who do the most innovative work are the outsiders who arrive with fresh patterns that the existing experts haven’t been exposed to. This is great because these outsiders can stimulate lots of growth.

You’ll be surprised at how many opportunities there are to use insights you learn in one field to solve problems in a seemingly unrelated field. The long-term benefit of cultivating many different interests is that you build a powerful toolkit of problem-solving patterns. This gives you more flexibility when facing certain challenges. Like Lawn tennis taught me to be positive in life. As you cannot win the game each day, so you need to introspect and come next day with better strategy and belief that you can win. This helped me in real life also to be more positive and even if the things are not going right, keep trying.

Multiple interests are like a  stored potential. Like a dormant seed -- it's waiting to bloom!

Vicious Job cycle :

The entire educational system is based on the premise that you must pick a field and specialize. Expertise, they tell you, is the key to success. If you want to stand out in this vicious job market, you had better be the very best in your specialty.

I would agree with this at some extent, what’s often overlooked — is the value of being “good” in many fields. Yet when it comes to do things out of box or to venture out in unknown fields, being slightly competent at many things will often get you further than specializing.

Follow your heart and trust that the dots will connect

You never know where those odd skills you picked up from a passing interest might come in handy. After all, Apple wouldn’t have the beautiful typography it’s become known for, had Steve Jobs not stuck into one completely random and “impractical” calligraphy class when he was eighteen.

So next time when you got interested in something, do not stop yourself and explore that.

Remember

Many interests = faster growth = becoming smarter