“Love” finding algorithm?

-->DISCLAIMER: This is a big topic that is a subject of discussion in so many psychology and self-help books. I’m not claiming that my opinions below are valid. They are ONLY OPINIONS of a 28 year old Thai male with limited experience in almost everything.

In an ideal world, you wake up one morning knowing the loves of your life (job, place, relationship, lifestyle, etc.). You work very hard on it, overcome one challenge after the other, eventually become a happy-successful person and benefit the rest of mankind.

Unfortunately, this does not happen to most of us. Instead, you wake each day knowing what you are “kind of like.” You start working on it for awhile and things get more difficult. Then, you start to wonder if we actually “love” what we are working on. Since you are in doubt, we hesitate to commit your full resources on it. Nonetheless, you have yet to “hate” it to point that you can decide to quit. Sometimes, you think “…umm maybe if I work a little harder for a little longer the situation will get better.” Some other times, you think “…but what if I pick a wrong target from the beginning?” You are left in an unproductive grey zone between “fully committed” and “completely quit.”  Without being fully committed, you are unlikely to be successful in your current mission. By not completely quit, you bear an opportunity cost of not pursuing other “probably right” targets. 

I still think that the general idea of “figuring out what you love --> working hard on it --> being successful” is still valid. The problem is many of us fail to realize that “figuring out what you love” and “working hard on it” are two different processes that should be done separately and iteratively. By executing these two processes separately you are less likely to be trapped the unproductive grey zone I mentioned above. By cycling through these steps iteratively, you break down the gigantic mission of “figuring out what we love in life and being good at it” to the smaller and manageable missions of discovering different features of things we love and getting trained in various sets of skills to handle them. 

Let me elaborate my idea by describing what I call “love finding algorithms.”

(1)    Figuring out what you're “kind of like.” The goal here is to detect your preference. For most of us, I think this much easier to do than to answer the question “what is the love of your life.”  All of us of some preference…  I may like biology more than accounting, like ms.X more than ms.Y, like drawing more than playing football..etc. Of course, I can’t really say biology, ms.X, and drawing are “the love of my life.”Of course, I can’t really say that I should be a biologist, marry to ms.X and open my art gallery. Nonetheless, I should keep in mind that there is “some features” within “these preferred things” that make them more special than the other. I probably don’t know explicitly yet what these features are.

(2)    Doing something right away. The goal here is just to overcome inertia. You don’t need much courage or extensive planning here. You just need to start doing something simple and new about what you are “kind of like.” Such action should be simple enough that you can do right away: go to biology seminar, one friendly call to ms.X, one simple drawing, etc. Starting something right away helps you overcome inertia (Never ever underestimate the power of procrastination! Many of us keep postponing such first step toward what they may like forever…at the same time, they keep complaining how boring their lives are). 

(3)    Working hard without doubt. The goal here is to simulate the scenario in which whatever you are “kind of like” IS “the love of your life.” Let’s assume, without doubt, that it actually is! Let’s put your full effort on it for a fixed period of time. Let’s perfect a biology class… Let’s try to be the right match for ms.X… Let’s try mastering pencil sketch technique…for a fixed period of time. I believe that only when we “work hard without doubt” we can test our full potential, maximize our chance of success, earn new skills and explore all features (and bugs) of what we are “kind of like.”

(4)    Letting it go. The goal here is to simulate the scenario in which whatever you are “kind of like” IS NOT “the love of your life.” It is said that “if you truly love someone (or something) let them go, if they belong with you they’ll return.”  Let’s assume that we no longer want to spend any time/resources on them anymore and we are now free to do any other things we want to do. Let’s take a break. Stop doing biology, stop pleasing ms.X, stop drawing.During this time ask what do you miss the most about them and what other awesome things we can spend our time/resources with. 

After completing step (1)-(4), you should go back to step (1) again, hopefully with somewhat different landscapes of what you are “kind of like” and “can do”. I think the most likely outcome would be: 

(A)    you discovered that you “love” what you were “kind of like” more than you think Although a few bugs exist, with all good features, you still decide to stick to this thing (or person) longer. You have also learned how to handles/avoids those bugs so you can live better with this thing you choose during the next cycles.

(B)         You discovered that you have more interesting thing to switch to. Hopefully, what you learn from step (3)-(4) will inform you about what features to look for and what bugs to avoid.  

3.30 am 7 Oct 2012 @ Suwannaphum airport Bangkok