Daniel Pink argues "What's your passion?" sets people up for burnout by demanding intense emotion. Instead, ask what they actually do and how they spend time. The real fuel for long-term work isn't hot emotion but room-temperature feelings: flow, meaningfulness, and knowing you contributed something.
People like to ask other people, what's your passion? Mm-hmm. And I frickin' hate that question, all right? That question drives me nuts because I kind of tense up in it 'cause I have to give a really good answer. And I think that's a less useful question than basically taking a step back and saying, what do you do? How do you spend your time? Even the word itself doesn't quite capture why people do what they do, particularly as they try to follow their path, as they try to do the work, because passion is a very kind of— is a hot emotion. And we do experience hot emotions, but what sustains us are emotions that are not super hot, you know, more kind of room temperature because they're calibrated to who we are. You don't want to have the heat turned up all the way all the time. You'll burn out. So what you want is you want an emotion that's sustaining, and those emotions tend to be things like meaningfulness, sense of intrinsic interest, the experience of flow at certain points, the feeling that you're making a contribution. And those are not hot emotions. Those are actually more calm emotions, but those are a source of incredible renewable energy.
