A speaker discusses balancing passion with skill development, citing the 10,000-hour rule for mastery. They introduce a design-thinking pattern called flare and focus: exploring interests in chapters of life, then testing and iterating to find what sustains you rather than chasing everything at once.
Chapters
You can be very, very, very good at something but not passionate about it. And if you aren't passionate about it, then you probably long-term will not be successful. Because ultimately, in most endeavors, I say it's about 10,000 hours. And although maybe I compressed it over 4 years, it was a lot of hours of training. And you have to really like it. And so, you know, go test these things out. See if you have some natural skill. If you really like it, you just can't wait to get to practice, or you can't wait to get to class, or you just can't wait to learn more about that, and so you start getting into a flow. And there's a book called Flow, which I highly recommend people read. It really helps you think. And when you're in flow of something, that is something where ultimately you could be very good if you match that up within the skills that you develop.
So a lot of people are super curious, and I'm not sure if this is two things that they're conflating or whether this is true. They're worried about the balance between saying yes and taking risks and then getting overcommitted and overwhelmed. So are those opposite sides of the spectrum or are those different things?
Well, if there were one of my challenges, I mean, we all have, as my mother used to say, you all have our assets and liabilities. Just hope that you build upon your assets and take care of your liabilities. So one of my liabilities is I do take on too much. And so I'm always having to kind of, okay, what can I load shed? What can I drop off? Because it is easy to go off in 27 different directions, but you do have to check yourself and begin focusing. But, you know, and Tina, you do a lot in design thinking, and so there's this thing called, you flare and then focus, and then flare and then focus. And so in that exploration phase, it's flare. It's like all those Post-it notes that are behind you in your background, but all kinds of different ideas and explore Explore. Find those things where you both have a passion and some skill and then start focusing on it. And I also think of doing things in chapters in life. So, you know, one chapter is a student, another chapter is an athlete, another chapter is a TV reporter, another chapter is becoming an airline pilot. And as passion maybe wanes in one area, you begin picking up in another area. And so I think it's just— life is too short to not love what you're doing. And so the moment you feel, hmm, maybe I've been doing this too long, maybe I should do something else, that's the time to flare again and start exploring other items, other areas. And then you can start latching on things and do things in parallel to de-risk it a little bit. And then you can move on to the next, the next area.
