This is more of a philosophical stance than one related to any given industry, and one I rather strongly disagree with. It revolves around the idea that a good enough person has a passion, that passion has been obvious to them since age 10, and it is something they should devote themselves to that in totality.
An essay of PG's [1] is in agreement with this concept, but even it at least makes note of a certain important point:
"Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side."
I think PG's essay was written with fairly privileged people as the audience, though. Most people are surviving, they don't really have room to study different things and juggle professions. What kind of people often do? Software developers. For all the bad rap that software gets, it still strikes me as one of the most mobile professions out there, and it's fairly easy to branch out into something else from it, and it provides enough money for a good buffer that such life changes need. Yet the blog suggests you shouldn't even touch software unless you're already passionate.
But, aside from that point, I have never seen any evidence that every single person on Earth has a passion deep inside of them that needs to be unlocked. That sounds very metaphysical, like some mysterious force out there is bestowing passions on people (especially ones that neatly fit into societal boxes called "jobs", and, yes, I know PG is not saying that, but the blog post author appears to imply it). I'm sympathetic to metaphysical ideas, but they need to have a reasonable basis, and this one just seems to be wishful thinking. You would at least hope that passions are more diffuse or that people can have multiple ones, because some programmers must have been born when computers didn't even exist yet!
This seems like a very dangerous idea to throw around, too, how are people without a passion supposed to feel? The implication seems to be that something is deeply wrong with them and they need to go fix it. Also seems to be ripe ground for impostor syndrome.
My guess is that single point passion is likely a genetic or early developmental trait, and is an uncommon thing, especially since the average person usually needs to do lots of different things at varying skill levels. I imagine it's also somewhat associated with impulsive behavior because a characteristic of a passionate person is that they can't stop themselves from engaging with their passion. Most people are not like this and can't understand it, from what I've seen. Most people want to do multiple different things, hence hobbies. I would like to have 3 professions, just not do them all 8 hours each, and preferably ones not really related to each other. Like programming, martial arts, and cooking. Really, I'd like to do 10-20 things, and the list can get bigger than that, but I'd be pretty happy with 3.
There is someone that this idea really benefits - that each person will pick just one thing, and work almost exclusively on that one thing and little else - but I don't think that someone is the person themselves.
An essay of PG's [1] is in agreement with this concept, but even it at least makes note of a certain important point:
"Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side."
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html
I think PG's essay was written with fairly privileged people as the audience, though. Most people are surviving, they don't really have room to study different things and juggle professions. What kind of people often do? Software developers. For all the bad rap that software gets, it still strikes me as one of the most mobile professions out there, and it's fairly easy to branch out into something else from it, and it provides enough money for a good buffer that such life changes need. Yet the blog suggests you shouldn't even touch software unless you're already passionate.
But, aside from that point, I have never seen any evidence that every single person on Earth has a passion deep inside of them that needs to be unlocked. That sounds very metaphysical, like some mysterious force out there is bestowing passions on people (especially ones that neatly fit into societal boxes called "jobs", and, yes, I know PG is not saying that, but the blog post author appears to imply it). I'm sympathetic to metaphysical ideas, but they need to have a reasonable basis, and this one just seems to be wishful thinking. You would at least hope that passions are more diffuse or that people can have multiple ones, because some programmers must have been born when computers didn't even exist yet!
This seems like a very dangerous idea to throw around, too, how are people without a passion supposed to feel? The implication seems to be that something is deeply wrong with them and they need to go fix it. Also seems to be ripe ground for impostor syndrome.
My guess is that single point passion is likely a genetic or early developmental trait, and is an uncommon thing, especially since the average person usually needs to do lots of different things at varying skill levels. I imagine it's also somewhat associated with impulsive behavior because a characteristic of a passionate person is that they can't stop themselves from engaging with their passion. Most people are not like this and can't understand it, from what I've seen. Most people want to do multiple different things, hence hobbies. I would like to have 3 professions, just not do them all 8 hours each, and preferably ones not really related to each other. Like programming, martial arts, and cooking. Really, I'd like to do 10-20 things, and the list can get bigger than that, but I'd be pretty happy with 3.
There is someone that this idea really benefits - that each person will pick just one thing, and work almost exclusively on that one thing and little else - but I don't think that someone is the person themselves.