I was talking with my girlfriend recently about how to find something you are passionate about.

Having something you’re truly passionate about gives you a reason to get up in the morning and makes life more enjoyable. It’s more than just a hobby, it’s one of the key ingredients to doing great work.

But how can you find it? One way is to notice what is drawing your attention. Although this is a required condition for the answer, but it’s not enough. You need genuine interest. Plenty of things seem interesting at first, but the desire fades when you dig deeper. It’s easy to think you’d enjoy doing what successful people do, but you don’t always take action. Your mind tends to filter out things you’re not truly interested in.

Imagine you’re trying to help a 10-year-old figure this out. What often happens is parents suggest a prestigious profession: “Do you want to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer?” Then they explain what each does day-to-day. But the kid’s decision is usually based on surface-level factors—how respected the job is, the salary, or what society thinks, without really understanding what those professions involve. Parents usually follow up with, “Study hard, get into a good university, and become one of these.” At this point, the kid is thinking, “What do I do next? Just get good grades in every subject to become a lawyer?”

Not only this kind of advice does not get the kid anywhere. It also contains a trap from what I described earlier. Using prestigious professions is a way to make the suggestions look more interesting. It’s not bad to do this, but we should be aware that it can create a false sense of interest.

And this problem is not only in parents advice, but on the internet as well. It might sound a good idea to lookup introduction to different professions online and make a judgement based on that. But introductory materials online are very high level. For example if you search for how to become a programmer the first pages you’re going to land on is horrible. They are going to you the list of programming languages with how many jobs are on the market for each one, or list of different areas that you can work in how much you get paid for each one. Leaving one thinking which one should they use first. What it should do instead is to give them a taste of doing it. The search should lead them into some kind of experiment where they program a bit and see if fall in love with it¹.

Another way to look at it is to see what is the next step they can take. The kid is already learning some subjects in school. They must enjoy one of them more than the others and might have some hobbies already. If they like painting, encourage them to pursue it further. Maybe by learning about famous painters and their stories. If they enjoy math, suggest they look up concepts they don’t understand. For instance, when learning about Gauss’s formula for summing numbers, ask: Where was he from? What else did he do? They might check out his Wikipedia page and discover other theorems, clicking through to learn more. They will also see he was not only a mathematician, so by clicking on those links you discover more professions. The hours spent on this are productive time, because they show you new ideas.

I think the reason we are not thinking to provide a next step for kids is that the outcome is unpredictable. Parents want their kids to end up in one of the professions they think is a good choice. If the desired outcome for someone is that their kid must become an X they tell them next step to practice that and see if they enjoy it. They also don’t want risks for their kid, so they point out something that sounds safe and good enough.

When I look at my past I find a lot of good stuff when I was exploring. Exploring is about being curious and pursuing whatever you don’t know when you come across it. If you find yourself continually spending time on a subject, that’s a sign of genuine interest. Also exploring will give you more options to choose compared to when you start. At the beginning you have one topic in mind but when you go deep you find more topics. Take our Gauss example: now you know ten more things about him to study. You learn where he’s from and might explore more about that country and its language. You discover he wasn’t just a mathematician, leading you to other professions he had. This exploration reveals many new paths to consider.

Some people might think it’s pointless to just read about anything you hear. And while it sounds true, but it’s the source of new things. Unless you have found the topic you still need this source. And when you find new paths continue exploring until you find genuine interest. Then start working on the topic and see if the motivation and interest continues. You don’t need to fake enthusiasm for yourself. Move on similar topics that you discovered or change the topic entirely if it’s boring.

I think this is the way to show kids you they can discover what they want to do. Schools often fail at this, they are making kids focused on the predefined topics and nothing else to get good grades. The home works and tests different combinations of the same concepts you learned, and nothing new or extra is needed to pass. Not only you don’t get any benefits if you go deep into subjects. But you also don’t even get the chance to read about the subject because you have to study the important bits that show up in the exam. They cannot even see where the things they are learning are useful until very late in the education.

This is not only useful for teenagers. But also as an adult I still have the issue. I face this question a lot of the times. And for adults it’s even a harder problem to solve. During school time if you did not want to do anything you were just forced to do school stuff for the majority of the day and spend time that way. You can ignore the question since you already have huge pile of homework, classes and exams that seem like progress to distract yourself.

But as an adult you have less work imposed on yourself. So you have more time and if you don’t have something that gets you excited or make you happy doing you are forced to spend time with something to pass the day. Mostly TV, YouTube, social media, 5 second clips. Or you can drown yourself in your job and treat it like school. A very simple trick to understand if you use the job to distract yourself is if you are looking for something to spend your time on and then find the job as the answer then it’s not the actual answer.

So as an adult you still need to keep the habit of exploring things you don’t understand and stay curios. But as an adult one of the ingredients is harder to find: Random subjects and topics that you are forced to learn. In school, you are given some books and materials, perfect or not you have some initial point. You can start learning about topics you hear but don’t know about. You can get ideas by being curious. Books, writings, talking with others. But the point is that action is needed. And from that initial source you can again create more paths and find the interesting things.

Do not forget that the same challenges in the school can apply here. You might be very busy during the job to look into other areas or learn about them. Some problems in life might take the time and energy from you to explore unknown topics.

And when you encounter questions you don’t know the answer to write about it. I was reading learning by writing a few weeks ago which explains the point perfectly. You can use the writing to answer a question, and discover more questions as you write.

Do not worry that this does not guarantee a predictable outcome. The fact that outcome is not determined is the strength because each person has to determine the path for themselves.