Jan Jachimowicz

I was working on other papers at the time.

Just because I'd finished one paper, it doesn't mean that other papers didn't need to be written on and didn't need to analyze data for.

But then showing up to my office the next day and coming back and trying to analyze data or write a paper when I knew this didn't really make a difference the last time.

Why would it be any different this time?

That was really, really challenging.

Yeah, so I think the key insight that I learned in that time was that passion isn't something that you have, but something that you have to sustain.

Meaning that passion, kind of like a delicate flower, you have to look after it.

You have to water it, you have to prune it, you have to make sure it gets enough sunlight.

It doesn't just grow and bloom beautifully by itself.

But when I was starting this project and really starting to think about my research on passion, I looked at passionate people as if they were different from me, as if there was something different about those people, that they were special, that they had something that I didn't have, and that as a result, I might never be as passionate as they would be.

Meaning, if I lost passion for something, the inference that I draw from that is that there's something wrong with me,

and that in turn I will never become someone like them.

But what I ended up actually learning is that almost everybody that I talked to had an experience of having fallen out of passion, of having to learn that passion is something that they have to maintain, and that there was a wide variety of practices that they had all learned for themselves because there was nothing really codified.

but strategies that they now engaged in on a regular basis that allowed them to sustain that passion day in and day out, as well as an acknowledgement, kind of an acceptance internally that it's okay if you don't feel that passion every single day.

That's a great question from Julio.

And I think there's two things really to tease apart there.

I think one is that in many jobs, the majority of the tasks that we work on aren't in and of themselves gratifying.

This is what research calls intrinsic motivation, that the task in and of itself is really gratifying, that we get a lot out of just doing the task in and of itself.

When I do research, the vast majority of my time is not really fun.

I write, I analyze data.