[Video] Why you will fail to have a great career.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by IKE

The latest videos posted above do a great job differentiating between what I was confusing as "passion" and what the speaker considers passion. Those are some very powerful messages.

I think passion is a character trait and not tied to specific fields. Last week I was taking a friend on a tour of the Museum of Flight, and in case my stream of WAI's with airplanes has not tipped anyone off, I am a huge plane dork. I know more about airplanes prior to 1920 than is probably healthy. After spending the better part of 2 hours in the parts of the Museum that house the old stuff, he mentioned that we'd have to do this again and he could bring some more of his friends. I asked why, because I'd already talked his ear off and most of his friends are theatre enthusiasts, not engineers. He said, "Oh no, they'd love it. I'm not friends with people that aren't curious."

And that got me thinking -- I'm really into old airplanes but I've been really into a wide variety of things in the past 21 years. When I was little I got really into kayaks, we got some kayaks. When I got a little older I got into sailing, and we got a sailboat. I worked at an antique car auction and got really into cars (still saving up for a Model A). I was really into commercial space for a while and knew basically everything about the small space start-ups and I was reading the SpaceX blog in 2006 (/space hipster?). When I got hired by Boeing I got really into the history of commercial jets and the business dynamics of the duopoly that comes with selling wide bodied airplanes. There is an awesome Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle that I got introduced to and it looks like that might be the next obsession.

(My favorite book is Endurance by Alfred Lansing, and since reading it I have always wanted the James Caird.)

Adam Savage's TED talk about the Maltese Falcon really resonates with me. Some people just have this drive to do great things, and it really doesn't matter what. Adam's prop replicas are clearly driven by this great internal spark, Warren Buffett's fortune was driven another tireless internal engine, and I have another friend who has been working tirelessly for the past 8 years to build what will be the world's only flying Klemm motorglider. (First airplane flown solo "around the world"). But Adam is into just about anything cool, Warren is aggressively into philanthropy and bridge, and my Klemm building friend friend has a couple of another interesting projects in the works too (like running a Model A on french fry oil).

So in my mind, that question is still unanswered. Can you teach passion? Sure a really passionate person is capable about making someone else care about something for half an hour. But if you're in college and have never had something pique your interest -- can it be piqued?

Just saw this: You can tell Cookie Monster's passion.