This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.
How to Really Pursue One’s Passion
Date: August 19, 2003
Age: 21
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Subject: Drop Everything For the Pursuit Of Passion
Hi Hannah. Why Google? I mean, congratulations, but I never really saw you as a tech person. I’m struggling to get out of tech and really pursue my passions. My mind is filled with the same wild thoughts I had when I quit Stanford eight months ago. This time I’m quitting for good. If you realize something is not your passion, why not just drop it?
After leaving the Registrar’s Office, I saw my reflection in a window, and I felt compelled to shave my head. And so I just gave into the feeling. I went to the campus barbershop, and when I told the barber what I wanted to do, he said no big deal and pulled out his clippers. For some reason, he started from the back and made his way forward, which was fortunate, because as I saw my haircut revealed in the mirror, it looked great with the bangs long in the front and the rest all cut off. And so I told him to stop and let it be, just like that. You should see how I look right now. I’m like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver.
I then went to Jawed’s apartment, and told him that I was done working for his start-up Trepia. When he asked me why, I told him point-blank, “This is not my passion.” He didn’t flinch, and instead gave a pep talk about the importance of creating disruptive technologies. Then he asked if I wanted to help him start a video-sharing site. I thought about it for all of 10 seconds. “Hmm, no thanks,” I said, again, citing my lack of passion.
When I got home, I wrote furiously on Philosophistry. I did about twenty pages in the span of an hour, faster than I’ve ever written before, and when I finished, I could feel my chest heaving and the blood flowing through my veins.
I want to write, I want to paint, and I want to live life. But more importantly, I don’t want to take any more tests or do any more homework. I just want to pursue my passions in this moment, and this moment, and the next moment, and so on and so forth.
- Phil
Jawed was a former employee at PayPal who eventually co-founded YouTube. I could have joined him and been one of their first employees, but had they not succeeded, I would have spent 1–3 years of my twenties working 60-hour weeks in front of a computer for maybe extra money in a 401(k).
Other letters from Dear Hannah about finding work that you love:
› How to Really Pursue One’s Passion
• Creativity and the Power of “Letting Go”
• One Way to Figure out What to Do with Your Life
• How I Found Work that I Love
• How I Got out of My Funk and Got Back to Work
This is an excerpt from my latest book Dear Hannah: 70 Methods I Used and Abused to Change Who I Am.
Before Philip wrote his first line of code, he tried to re-program his mind. For his 14th birthday, Hannah gave him Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which kicked off a life-long obsession with self-improvement. Follow Philip over 82 letters as he re-tells his journey from winning ThinkQuest, to quitting Stanford, to dealing with dating, happiness, and direction, to eventually making it as an indie iOS app developer. Dear Hannah is either a cautionary tale about self-improvement, or it is a filter for the 10% of self-help that may actually change your life.
PHILIP DHINGRA is a President’s Scholar from Stanford University, where he received his B.A. in Mathematical and Computational Sciences. In addition to authoring books on life change, he develops best-selling iOS apps including Nebulous Notes and The Creative Whack Pack (a collaboration with creativity pioneer Roger von Oech). Philip divides his time between Austin, Texas, and San Francisco, California.
