A Purpose, vs THE Purpose: When Passion Isn’t Enough

Intro

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, Iterations, where I discuss random thoughts, ideas, and stuff from my trials and errors that might hopefully be useful to one or two others.

Quote of the Week

“Those who talk should do, and only those who do should talk.”

If you read last week’s newsletter, you will know I have been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Skin in the Game, a book about risk and risk-taking, essential reading for any entrepreneur.

I wrote down many brilliant quotes and razors contained in it; I’ll just share this one with you all for now, though.

Behind the Scenes (Projects and Thoughts)

A Purpose vs THE Purpose

This is less about advice and more of a reminder to myself: that it’s enough to be working on A purpose as opposed to THE purpose. What do I mean by that? That you can build a business or work in a role that you like but are not smitten with. Something that provides you with A purpose, which is important to have in life.

We do get a lot of generic “follow your dreams and passions” advice in the business world, yet probably not enough advice akin to, “Find something you are sufficiently satisfied doing and can excel at.”

I’m passionate about football, for instance—well, that ship has sailed (or arguably never left any harbour).

Some of you might be into, I don’t know, knitting maybe. Can you remortgage your house to make a business from that? It might be unlikely.

Yes, I know there are tons of examples of people who make money from their passions, and that’s great. But I want to hear about more entrepreneurs who excel in something that they are around 50% passionate about but 100% good at making money at.

What I’m Experimenting With

Apple Notes

Okay, so nothing new to many of you, but there is a lot that I was not aware you can do above and beyond the standard stuff in this app.

Here is how I am using it to accompany my reading, in case that is helpful for anyone else to start doing:

• Creating a new note for each book I read.
• Adding photos of pages/quotes that I intend to reread.
• Writing down further reading quotes, such as names, essays, or studies that might be mentioned or I might want to search.
• Writing down my thoughts.
• Re-reading those notes and the parts that stood out to me that need further processing.

My next step will be to connect this in Notion to my list of books read, to be able to have all of my reading notes in one place and easily accessible. From there, I can join them to other pages, such as my reading list, or create a page of all of my favourite quotes, for example.

Podcast/Video Recommendation

Whilst in Berlin this week, I met up with business coach Kimberley Harris , and we were talking about the business of coaching and the power of LinkedIn for growing a coaching business. She asked me what prompted me to seek coaching.

The answer is the Michael Lewis′ podcast series Against the Rules specifically Season 1 dedicated entirely to the power of coaching, you can find it here. All of his podcasts are great, but this series is particulaly brilliant.

I wrote an article on my experience with career coaching after putting the advice contained in this podcast into action.

I’ve had quite a few people in my network reach out to me about that article and it′s nice to know my writing is making an impact on people.

Here is the link below in case you want to check that out too;

How To Increase Your Salary by 55%

Book of the Week / What I Am Reading

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - Laurie Lee

Lent to me by a friend, and not on my reading list, but that I see as a good thing!

It’s about a gentleman who walks from the UK to Spain and then all around Spain in 1934.

It fits with what I like, through Adventure, Spain, Risk-Taking and Embracing the Unknown

I′ve mentioned this before, the public pressure of writing this newsletter every week, in conjunction with my 10 pages of reading a day commitment, is allowing me to fly through books this year. I’ve never read at such a pace in my entire life.

Will I end up walking around the whole of Spain myself after reading this? Maybe!

What are your thoughts on being passionate or not about what you do? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Send me a direct message or comment if you want to add your say on any of those topics.

Have an incredible week ahead. Keep iterating, keep trying, and keep learning!

Yours faithfully,

Matthew Barton