Pursuing your passion feels like cheatingPublished inThe Medium BlogSent as aNewsletter3 min readJust now-- Apple announced the first iPod 23 years ago today. Its the longest-lived Apple product to eventually be discontinued (in 2022).Issue #191: listening to the other side and doing just a few things wellBy Harris SockelThe phrase follow your passion gets thrown around so much its a joke. It sounds nice, but someone has to pay the bills and anything, if youre doing it for money, becomes work.Dan Pedersen asks a few questions that can help you land on a more useful definition of passion: What problems do you find easy to solve? In what way are you most creative?If youre doing something passion-y, it might feel like youre cheating because it feels easy or if not easy, at least interesting enough to keep doing even though its hard. In Harvard Business Review, Dan Cable calls this following your blisters. Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham calls it following your curiosity. Either way: What challenges do you keep returning to, what walls do you actually like banging your head against?Another lens on passion: the Japanese concept ikigai. Weve touched on this before, but its the idea that genuinely great work feels elusive because its the intersection of four things: what you love, what youre good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for. Passion is only the intersection of the first two (love + aptitude). Purpose, or ikigai, is all four.When you can find true purpose, youre not only happier. Youre also healthier. People with purpose in life sleep better and have more gray matter in their brains insula, lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and less of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva, wrote science journalist Marta Zaraska on Medium a few years back.So, what is happiness? Its not just passion. Its purpose. Something you love that people around you actually need.From the ol archive: the other side is not dumbIn 2016, Sean Blanda struck a nerve by saying something very true that no one wants to hear (especially in an election year): Youre not right about everything, and the other side is not stupid. Just like you, theyve reached their conclusions based on a combination of intuition and analysis.Blandas essay has been read by 3.5 million people and it offers a few tips for listening to each other in a world thats only gotten more politically polarized over the last decade.One tip: The next time youre in a discussion with someone who disagrees with you, dont try to win. Instead, actively try to lose. Ask them to convince you and mean it. Listen. As any debate club veteran knows, if you cant make your opponents point for them, you dont truly grasp the issue.And if you ever get the urge to drop a link in the group chat, ask yourself Am I sharing this link because it contains info I havent considered before? Or am I just sharing it to remind my pals that Im not on the Other Side?Your daily dose of practical wisdomYoull be happier, saner, and better at your job if you do fewer things well. Do not say yes to every piece of work that comes your way. (It took me a decade to learn this, and Im still learning!)