How often have you heard the following from successful people:
Interest is the best teacher.
Follow your heart
Follow your passion
I want to say, as human beings we must not blindly believe, if we do this completely, it will make us quite dangerous.
We see a lot of successful people who, when they say this, actually find that they are passionate about what they are doing, and it seems like they are. But have we thought about the question? Is it because they’re more passionate about what they do when they succeed? Or are they just interested in doing it and doing it?
I’m sure most people are in the latter category, where you become more passionate about an area after you succeed in it.
Interest is the best teacher, is a very big deception
Why is that? Because this assumes two premises:
First, we know our interests.
Second, our interests are constant.
Obviously, neither of these premises is true.
Most of the time, before we see more things, how do we know that that is our interest, that is the pursuit of life? When you live in a small mountain village for years, you may not know what your real interest is. When you suddenly see the world, you may be interested in many things.
Secondly, our interests also change with age. Let’s think, when babies, our interests are drinking milk, when children, our interests are toys, is delicious candy, to adults, our interests may be music, art or travel.
Interest is not food
This world, can turn their interests to work less, for example, do you like basketball, and you can find a basketball work, the difference is very big, like and you can, it across the miles, I believe that most people like to play games, interested in the game, very passionate, but the game can be eat? No, you see a guy make a world champion, but think about it, why should that be you? Do you have the talent? Do you have the resources to train you? You ask the guys who won, what did they lose? I like a lot of people say, so I’m more efforts, the world does not only depend on efforts can success, need more resources, need professional training, deliberate practice, most of the time, a professional training, your interest may not be as much as you’d think, tens of thousands of times, a boring action do you really think this is very interesting?
Following a hobby is often laziness
Unless you are a born rich second generation, otherwise, we will need to feed themselves, and even to feed the family, we may need to begin from moving bricks, rather than dream himself drove the car for a drive to everywhere, we say a lot of time to follow the interest, is lazy, because we don’t want to out of their comfort zone, the practice is too bitter, think learning too tired.
Interest is cultivated
Most of the time, yes, our interest is not the start or remains the same, a lot of times, our interest is that, is when we do a thing, we succeed in doing, or do better than others, we have a sense of accomplishment, then the sense of achievement if continuous positive cycle, then the passion on this matter. That’s why, a lot of times, we say that encouraging education is a hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times more important than interest education. That’s where those who say interest is the best teacher come from.
Following your passion is putting all your eggs in one basket
We know that it is a huge risk to put all our eggs in one basket, but to put one’s life in one basket is undoubtedly a crime. Firstly, we have no idea what the whole society will be like in a few decades, and secondly, what if this interest doesn’t work out? The possibility of not too much, for instance, most of our people’s interests are music, art, sports, but these eventually so few people can go out, and the country’s education system, let a person didn’t eat rice probability is too low, if you have a lot of resources, you have a lot of capital, you have a retreat, that there is possible, but if you don’t, The country’s education system is the safest way out for most of our ordinary families.
Many of the things we are not interested in will be important building blocks for things we will be interested in in the future
If you like computers but don’t like math, if you like sports but don’t like basic courses, this is not ok, more and more industries, are interdisciplinary, the more you go to the top, the more you find boring things useful, the more you find that boring things are your bottleneck. For example, when I was in college, I thought operating systems were useless, and I didn’t think I could use them in my advanced math life. But when I needed to see something about AI, I really regretted not doing it well. For example, what do you think is the relationship between making good bread and learning English? When you want to communicate with the whole world, you still think English is not important? What do you think is the relationship between learning Chinese and English? Do you think English is important when you want to spread Chinese culture to the world? You love Legos, you love architecture, you can’t do math, you can only build a few stories? Do you think art is important when you want to build world-class buildings? Is math important? Is physics important?
Advice for students
If you are still a student, I think you want to learn lessons well as his greatest interest, otherwise you wouldn’t have the good university, company, thus, a good university, have good resources, there are some outstanding students, they can do what you are interested in world class, do you like car, unmanned ah, you like the plane, flying to proxima ah, do you like lego, Building the world’s biggest building. Develop your interests outside the classroom while doing your homework well, unless you have demonstrated an exceptional talent early on.
Give advice to people at work
Most people are not rich second generation, accumulation of first to see which things can let you resources, to find a job, have a income, then spare capacity, talk about interest, according to my observation, most of the people, all is focused on a particular field, to study hard, work hard, then achievement, finally the people found that it is more and more interesting.
At first, I like to quietly write code, I don’t like to do management, however, short-term write code level won’t have huge ascension, and my own better at something management, better than some people do, so I do this work, write code can bring more income than I am, I can use my extra income, development of my interest, I can buy more books, better computers, pay to attend high-level conferences, etc., and eventually get better code. Isn’t that great?
If you like traveling, then you can improve your ability, do a good job, learn English well, and then go to other countries for business trip, can travel and contribute to the company, isn’t it great?
Find the things that bring out the best in you, find the things you can contribute the most value to.
Many people always think that they are interested in one thing and do not want to do other things. In fact, what we like and what we can contribute are not the same thing. Our value in society is ultimately measured by what we contribute to others.
We have already worked, don’t think about what you like to do, think about what you do, to the company’s greatest contribution, the greatest contribution to society, for example, you are to do the back-end, but the company is short of front-end, that you can learn front-end? You are a defender, but the team lacks a good midfielder at the moment, can we try to be a midfielder? Where you contribute to others, where you can play your strengths, where you will gain more, our happiness is a lot of time because of the needs of others, our happiness never comes from the need for others.
Therefore, find a thing to do it well, and then continue to increase the difficulty, continue to do it, slowly, this thing you will like, do not break off a monkey, today an interest, found not to do well, say no interest, tomorrow is the same, this will eventually accomplish nothing, life will be boring.