steady

Purpose · At work

Treat interest as something you build

Next time work you used to like turns dull or hard, give it two more weeks of proper effort before you decide it's not for you.

no timeEvidence: worth trying

"Find your passion" assumes the interest is already in you, waiting to be found. The research points the other way.

Across five studies, people who believed interests are fixed, that you either have one or you don't, were less drawn to anything outside what they already liked. In one, when the material got hard, their interest fell away faster. Evidence: decent The belief cut interest off at the point where it usually gets built.

The catch: those were students doing lab tasks, not men ten years into a job. Whether it holds at work is untested, and the two weeks is my number, not the study's. Evidence: worth trying

Assume you can get better at it is the same idea for skill.

Source: O'Keefe, Dweck and Walton, 2018, Psychological Science (five studies) (link)

Same theme: At work

Arrows to move, Enter to open, Esc to close.