How To Find Your Real Interest
An obsessive interest in a topic is both a proxy for ability and a substitute for determination. And when you’re obsessively interested in something, you don’t need as much determination: you don’t need to push yourself as hard when curiosity is pulling you.
Interest helps you discover new ideas.
— Paul Graham
To do great work, you need both talent and determination. But there’s a third ingredient: an obsessive interest in a particular topic.
Naval Ravikant says on Joe Rogan Experience #1309:
No one can compete with you if you love to do it. Your real resume is just a catalog of all your suffering. If I were to ask you to describe your real life to yourself, when you look back on your deathbed, you’re gonna go back and say what are the interesting things I’ve done and it’s all going to be around the sacrifices that you’ve made and the hard things that you did. Anything you were given doesn’t matter.
You know, you have your four limbs, you have your brain, you have your head, you have your skin. That’s all for granted. So you have to do hard things anyway to create your own meaning in life. Making money is a fine one. Yes, struggle. It is hard. I’m not gonna say it’s easy. It’s really hard. But the tools are all available. It’s all there.
Interest gives you the capacity to endure infinite pains.
Most of us don’t have this obsessive interest in something like Ramanujan in series, or Van Gogh in paintings.
If one of the possible reasons is you're burnt out. Then it is a matter of healing, recuperating, the fallow. It is inaction for complete future action.
Or else keep trying different things.
Keep producing output rather than consumption, the real interest will show itself.
In Paul Graham’s essay on love:
Always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don’t take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you’re producing, you’ll know you’re not merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write one day as an opiate. The view of it will be obstructed by the all too palpably flawed one you’re actually writing.
“Always produce” is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. “Always produce” will discover your life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
Don’t spend your energy trying to find the right interest; which is comparing/judging between interests. This serves no purpose. We have a tendency to talk too much and debate and discuss and so much bullshit. The action itself will reveal the truth. Too much thinking is always pointless.
When I don’t like something my whole being rejects it. So you need to be aware of what doesn’t interest you. It keeps you going. Don’t worry that if you’re wasting time because it is probably a requirement.
Ask: Would I still be interested in learning this thing if I couldn’t ever tell anybody about it? That’s how I know it’s real. That’s how I know something I actually want.
Don’t make something harder than it has to be; meaning eliminate distractions while you’re doing it, don’t judge it or compare it. The first few hours of learning are always the most brutal, because you’re instantly confronted with the fact that, as a beginner, you suck. So the more fun you can have with it, the better.
Passion comes from success
All of our emotions exist for good reason. We feel hunger to ensure we don’t starve. We feel full to ensure we don’t burst. And we feel passion to ensure we concentrate our efforts on things that reward us the most.
Imagine you start a dance class. You find it easy. You realise you’re getting better than others, and fast. That rising excitement you feel is your passion, and that passion makes you come back for more, improving your skills, and compounding your strengths.
Nearly everything is interesting if you go deep enough. So pick something and give it the first 20 hrs. Start from the fundamentals and go deep. Remember the real interest will show itself.
Fun shall be the focus.
You got to have fun with things or you’ll drain yourself. This is really important. Fun is a necessity. You have one life, don’t give in to the belief that life is something to be suffered through, rather it is to enjoy it. Fuck the belief that if you’re having too much fun, then you’re not doing enough ‘stuff’.
“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
— Feynman
There’s value in boredom
Elon Musk started reading encyclopedias because he ran out of things to read. TV was bad at the time in South Africa. Boredom is a kind of necessity for interest.
If a pencil is being sharpened all the time, soon there will be nothing left of it; similarly, the mind uses itself constantly and is exhausted. Give your mind space.
Then the practical approach is Meditation. And cut off Netflix and put limits on your Social Media usage. You want space in your head. This space is necessary for interests.
When you feel bored, try to not turn to your phone.
You don't want your life to be like a sine wave. Acquisition and boredom. You watch one Web Series; it ends, and now you’re back to where you started — bored.
Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom.
Thanks for reading…
