Fast Company: Fast Exercises To Find Your Purpose And Passion For Work

Meditation (Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn)

In September of 2012, Kaihan Krippendorff emphasized the importance of knowing your passion:

Finding your passion is an essential ingredient of winning armies, companies, and individuals. It is not a soft nice-to-have, but a strategic requisite.

How to do that?  He breaks it into three parts: Want It, Find It, Choose It.

Want It

This section is full of quotes, but what it comes down to is that flow is more important than prestige. 

Find It

This section is more in-depth, with 14 exercises we can talk about:

1. Build your portfolio

Don't just choose one passion, but build up several.  Maybe they can work together.

Well, that's nice, but I've read novels about knitting, and you have to invent a lot of non-knitting drama to make that work.

2. Write three lists

Those being: what you're good at, what you enjoy doing, and what gives you a sense of purpose.

Yeah, we've all struggled with those questions before, haven't we?

3. Recall flow states.

 Pretty self-explanatory, if you understand flow.

4. Explore the “four aims of life” 

I should just quote this whole section:

A Buddhist framework suggest there are four aims to life: (1) physical health and pleasure, (2) wealth and things and family, (3) becoming a perfect person, and (4) finding your greater purpose. Think of and write down three potential passions for each of these aims.

See, I can think of goals for all those things, but passions?  I just don't know...

5. Ask yourself

Meditation.  Not something I'm good at.  Next?

6. Create space

For "think time."  Yeah... "think time" doesn't tend to end well for me. Ask my husband how many times I've ended up really angry about something completely random by the time I'm done washing the dishes -- and it never has anything to do with the dishes!

 ...This could explain why I suck at meditation.

7. Write until you cry

Wow... this is like the "Guide to finding your passion and/or triggering a depressive episode", isn't it?

 ...I'm actually only half joking.

8. Envision your funeral

You know what?  I'm stopping here.  I'm not even doing the exercises as I review this article, and it's getting to me. I encourage you to check out the article if it sounds like something that might be helpful to you, but if you find yourself agreeing more with my snark than their tips, I think the article will just be aggravating.

 They can't all be winners, right?

 So, let's discuss this!  What very much does not help you find your passion?